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SaaS directories and review sites: where to list your product and what it is worth

Review platforms, launch sites, niche directories and cloud marketplaces compared, with AWS Marketplace fees worked through and a review checklist within FTC rules.

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Your product is live, and a dozen sites offer to list it. Some are free, some charge, some promise backlinks. You have limited hours and a small budget. You need to know which listings bring buyers, which only bring email, and which ways of asking for reviews break the rules.

A SaaS directory is a website that catalogs software products so buyers can find and compare them. Some add customer reviews, some run launch days, and some let buyers pay through an account they already have. If the subscription model itself is new to you, start with What is SaaS?.

A directory in plain terms

Think of how a new restaurant gets found. A guide with diners’ reviews brings people who are comparing options. An opening-day stall at a street fair brings a crowd for one afternoon. A list run by a trade association reaches a few people who need exactly your dish. A department store food hall puts you on the shelf where buyers already shop, and takes a cut of each sale.

Software listings work the same way. The four types reach different buyers at different moments, and each one asks for a different kind of payment: time, money or a share of revenue.

Four types of listing

Every rule and fee below comes from the platform’s own page, checked on October 17, 2026.

Type What it does for you What it costs Example and its rules
Review platform Puts you in front of buyers who are comparing products, with reviews as evidence Your time to collect reviews; paid programs vary, so read the vendor’s terms G2 caps any review incentive at $100 and bars undisclosed incentives, positive-only solicitation, and reviews from your employees or a direct competitor’s (G2 community guidelines)
Launch site A one-day spike of attention from early adopters Preparation time Product Hunt requires a personal account to post; its day runs in Pacific time and posts go live at 12:01 AM (Product Hunt help)
Niche directory A small audience in one industry or one tech stack Often free or a flat fee Judge each on whether your buyers actually use it
Cloud marketplace Lets a buyer purchase through their cloud account A share of the contract value AWS Marketplace charges 3% on SaaS public offers; private offers pay 3% under $1M, 2% from $1M to under $10M, 1.5% at $10M or more, and 1.5% on all renewals (AWS docs)

AWS adds a 0.5% uplift when a channel partner resells the offer, so a SaaS private offer under $1M through a partner pays 3.5%. A 1% regional fee applies on top for buyers in South Korea.

A listing can send you two things: visitors and a link. Google asks sites to mark paid placements with rel="sponsored" and user-generated links, such as comments and forum posts, with rel="ugc" (Google Search Central). A link you paid for is a paid link under that guidance. So judge a paid listing by the buyers it sends, not by the link.

Reviews work differently. A buyer who reads twenty reviews of your product on a third-party site is doing research you cannot do for them on your own website. That is the real value of a review platform: evidence from people who are not you.

Worked example: what each listing costs per customer

Example: two labeled hypotheticals. The first uses AWS’s published fees; the second uses invented directory numbers.

A marketplace deal. A buyer wants to purchase your $48,000-a-year contract through AWS Marketplace as a private offer.

  • Year 1: the contract value is under $1M, so the fee is 3%: $48,000 x 3% = $1,440. You receive $48,000 - $1,440 = $46,560.
  • Through a channel partner instead: 3.5% x $48,000 = $1,680.
  • Year 2 renewal: 1.5% x $48,000 = $720.
  • Two years direct: $1,440 + $720 = $2,160 on $96,000, or 2.25%.

A paid directory listing. A directory charges $8 per click. Of 1,000 clicks, 2% start a trial and 10% of trials buy.

  • Cost: 1,000 x $8 = $8,000.
  • Trials: 1,000 x 2% = 20. Customers: 20 x 10% = 2.
  • Cost per customer: $8,000 / 2 = $4,000.

Compare the two. If your average customer pays $48,000 a year, $4,000 per customer may be fine. If they pay $600 a year, it takes almost seven years ($4,000 / $600 = 6.7) to earn the click cost back. The marketplace fee is a percentage of revenue you already won. The click cost is paid whether anyone buys or not.

How to prioritize

  1. Ask your last ten customers where they compared options. Their answer outranks any directory’s traffic claim.
  2. Claim and complete the free profiles first. Add accurate pricing, screenshots and the integrations you support.
  3. Add a cloud marketplace when buyers ask for it. Check the fee against your margin first, as in the example.
  4. Use launch sites when you have something new to show. A launch day without a clear story is one quiet day.
  5. Pay for placement last, and only with tracking that follows a click to a paying customer.

For what your own site needs before you send directory traffic to it, see SaaS website examples.

Checklist: asking for reviews within the rules

The FTC’s Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule took effect on October 21, 2024 (FTC Q&A). Platform rules add their own limits.

  • Ask every customer in a segment, not only the happy ones. G2 bars any method that “segments out potentially negative reviews”.
  • If you offer an incentive, never make it depend on a positive review, disclose it, and keep it within the platform’s cap ($100 on G2).
  • Do not buy reviews, write them, or pay a broker to supply them.
  • Ask employees and other insiders who post about the product to disclose their relationship to you.
  • Never threaten a reviewer or make an accusation about one that you know is false.
  • Do not present a review site you control as independent.
  • Reply to negative reviews with facts and a fix, in public.

Common mistakes

  1. Buying listings for the backlink. Google’s guidance tells sites to mark paid links as sponsored. Why it happens: link-building advice predates that guidance. Instead: pay only for listings your buyers read.
  2. Asking only happy customers for reviews. G2 removes reviews when it finds a seller soliciting only positive ones. Why it happens: an NPS survey makes the happy customers easy to find. Instead: send the same request to a whole segment, such as every customer who renewed this quarter.
  3. Listing everywhere and maintaining nowhere. Old prices and dead screenshots on a profile cost trust. Why it happens: a listing feels like a one-time task. Instead: review every profile each quarter, starting with the ones that send trials.
  4. Measuring listings by visits. Traffic that never starts a trial has no value. Why it happens: visits are the only number most directories report. Instead: tag every directory link and report cost per trial and per customer, as in the example. For the trial-led funnel itself, see PLG SaaS.

Sources

In three sentences

SaaS directories come in four types: review platforms, launch sites, niche directories and cloud marketplaces, and each reaches a different buyer at a different cost. In the example, an AWS Marketplace private offer costs $1,440 on a $48,000 first year and $720 on renewal, while a paid directory at $8 a click costs $4,000 per customer. List where your customers say they research, measure cost per customer rather than visits, and ask for reviews from everyone in a segment within the FTC’s and each platform’s rules.