How to Submit Software to Alternative.me, and What to Have Ready
Alternative.me is a software alternatives platform run out of Hamburg, and getting listed on it costs nothing. There is no public submit page: you register at /signup/ with a display name, an email and a password, and the form opens from your account dashboard. Ahrefs rates the domain 75.
That form is the longest of any directory in this cluster. Seventeen labelled blocks, three of them repeaters with their own Add button and two more that take one entry per Enter, plus an icon, a screenshot gallery, YouTube links and a features autocomplete. Alternative.me sits in our own catalog, so everything below is a route we take, written out in the order the form asks for it.
Platforms is a closed vocabulary of six. Browser, Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and Linux, added one at a time through Add Platform, and no seventh value appears anywhere on the site. Features is the opposite kind of box: an autocomplete over terms already in their database, silent until you have typed three characters, and the same vocabulary that Filter Features browses on every entry page. A phrase that is not already in there never comes back, so search the plain version of what you do rather than your own wording and take the term other entries are already filed under.
Alternative.me submission at a glance
| Feature | Alternative.me |
|---|---|
| What it is | A software alternatives platform |
| Where | Your dashboard, after signing in |
| Account | Display name, email, password |
| Captcha | None on the domain |
| The form | 17 blocks, 3 of them repeaters |
| Name limit | 100 characters |
| Taxonomy | 4 types, 60 categories |
| Platforms | Six fixed values |
| Price | None published anywhere |
| Links | nofollow, 11,088 of 11,088 |
| Domain | DR 75 on Ahrefs |
Per alternative.me, its robots.txt, how-to, about, imprint, terms, privacy and report pages, its signup and login pages, its /api/search endpoint, its four type hubs and all 60 category pages, plus a census of 11,088 published entries, read on 14 August 2026. Domain Rating is Ahrefs' figure via submitator.com/domain-rating-checker; no second provider was queried. The block list, its order, the 0 / 100 counter on Software Name and the two dropdown defaults are as the form renders it behind the account; nothing was submitted and no entry was created during this check. Verified from the public surface: /submit, /submit/, /add, /new, /software/submit and /submit-software all return 404, the real account routes redirect to /login/ while non-existent ones 404, /signup/ and /login/ carry three and two inputs with no social button, and a search of the pages, the 546,294-byte script bundle and the stylesheet finds no captcha library of any kind. The Features autocomplete is a live call to /api/search with type=features that returns nothing under three characters. The entry census is a crawl of every root-level slug reachable from the four type hubs and all 60 category pages, expanded through the alternatives lists on the entries themselves until the frontier closed: 11,088 pages returned an About This Article block, against the 12846 items the homepage counts. A parallel crawl that also queried their /software_search/ endpoint reached 11,259, so this corpus is the link-reachable catalog rather than the whole of it, and every proportion below is over the 11,088. Across those 11,088 the Visit Homepage anchor carries rel='nofollow' 11,088 times, with sponsored and ugc absent entirely, and 11,087 carry a canonical pointing at themselves. 3,433 carry a robots meta of noindex, follow and 7,655 carry no robots meta at all; every page in that second group names Alternative.me as its composer, 7,399 of them were created in 2018, and none of the 2,927 entries composed by anyone else is in it. A Googlebot user agent is served the same markup as a browser one. Optional blocks were counted the same way: 5,355 entries carry a screenshot gallery, 3,930 a video, 3,298 a Features list and 659 a Pricing table. Creation dates across the corpus run from 2018 to 26 October 2022, and the four entries sitting in the homepage's Recently Added Software panel were all created in October 2022. The taxonomy is a census of the four type hubs and their 60 category pages, and the platform and monetization vocabularies are the values rendered across the entry corpus. No price for submitting is published anywhere: 43 commercial paths were probed and every one returned 404, and no payment provider appears in the markup, the script bundle or the stylesheet. The site does not describe submitting as free either. No turnaround is stated anywhere on the domain, so none is quoted here. Operator, register number and address are from /imprint/. Submitator submits here as part of its catalog: $29 for 30 directories, $49 for 60 and $79 for 100, one-time, chosen by you in the dashboard with DR shown, badges installed and kept live, a live link per completed listing, rejections credited back as +1 directory and a 30-day refund policy on the conditions in our terms.
Alternative.me categories: four types, sixty names
Every published entry carries exactly one type and one category from that type's list. Pick the pair before you open the form, because the type you land on decides which names you are choosing between.
- Mobile Apps (25)
Books, Business, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Food & Drink, Games, Health & Fitness, Kids, Lifestyle, Magazines & Newspapers, Medical, Music, Navigation, News, Photo & Video, Productivity, Reference, Shopping, Social Networking, Sports, Travel, Utilities, Weather, Widget
- Web Apps (13)
Business, Development, Games, Health, Kids, Knowledge, Lifestyle, Media, News, Security, Social, Tools, Travel
- Desktop Software (13)
Business, Development, Games, Health, Kids, Knowledge, Lifestyle, Media, News, Security, Social, Tools, Travel
- Business Software (9)
Analytics, Customer Support and Management, Design, Finance and Accounting, Human Resources, IT and Operations, Marketing, Productivity and Communications, Sales
How to submit to Alternative.me, step by step
- 1
Write both descriptions before you go near the form
There is a Short Description and a Full Description, and the long one publishes as plain text with your line breaks preserved. Their markup sets white-space: pre-line on that block, so whatever shape you paste is the shape that goes live, and there are entries on the site carrying a homepage headline split across several lines in the middle of a sentence. Write prose in a plain editor rather than lifting the copy off your hero section.
- 2
Settle the type and category pair
Business Software is the one people miss. Its nine categories are business functions (Analytics, Design, Human Resources, IT and Operations, Marketing, Sales and three more), so a B2B tool usually belongs there rather than under the plain Business category, which exists three separate times: once under Mobile Apps, once under Web Apps and once under Desktop Software. Four places on the site carry that word and only one of them is a type.
- 3
Put the assets in one folder
A square icon, since their own note under the upload reads "It is very recommended to use square images (same width and height)." Then screenshots, which go in by drag or click, and any YouTube URLs, which take one per Enter. Both are worth having: across the 11,088 published entries, 5,355 carry a screenshot gallery and 3,930 carry a video, so an entry without either looks thinner than the pages around it.
- 4
Register, then find the form
/signup/ wants a display name, an email and a password, and that is the whole of it. The Submit a Software link in their footer goes to the how-to page rather than to a form, so ignore it once you have an account: the button lives on your dashboard. If you need to get back there later, Edit Info on a published entry sends you to the same place with its slug attached.
- 5
Fill the top block and watch the counter
Software Name is capped at 100 characters and the form counts them for you, which is generous by directory standards but still short enough to matter if your product name carries a tagline. Then Icon, Category, Short Description, Full Description, Homepage URL and Pricing URL, which the form marks optional.
- 6
Set Type, Monetization and Status, then add platforms
Monetization opens on Free and Status on Released, so both need a look rather than a scroll past. Published entries use four monetization values, Free, Freemium, Commercial and Opensource in their spelling, one word, and whichever you pick becomes the tag that sits on your card next to your name. Platforms go in one at a time: choose, press Add Platform, repeat.
- 7
Features, social links, pricing and synonyms
Features answers only after three characters and only with terms that already exist, so search for the plain version of what you do (API, Dark Mode, Team Collaboration) rather than your own phrasing. Social Links pairs a Link Type with a URL behind Add Link; the types that actually show up on published entries are Facebook, Twitter, AngelList and GitHub. Pricing takes a name and a cost per month, and it publishes as a list: one live entry reads "Standard (1 Year) ($8.25 / month)", so the name you type is the name people read. Synonyms take one per Enter, and they are the last thing on the form.
- 8
Send it, and note the date yourself
Two lines of terms sit under the form. The first has you declare you hold the rights to everything you entered, and the second grants Alternative.me a non-exclusive licence to use it. After that it is moderation, and the site states no timeframe anywhere. Once your entry lands it carries an About This Article block with its creation date, its last editor and a view counter, which is where you check on it.
What a finished entry carries
More than most directories hand you. The fixed part is a Description block, a Platforms row, a Links row with your homepage button on it, an Alternatives section with a Suggest an Alternative button under it, Reviews, Comments, a Table of Contents and the About This Article block. The page is its own canonical, which held on 11,087 of the 11,088 entries.
The rest appears only if you filled it in, and this is where the form repays the extra ten minutes. Of those 11,088 entries, 5,355 carry a Screenshots gallery, 3,930 carry a video, 3,298 carry a Features list and just 659 carry a Pricing table. That last one is the rarest block on the site and among the cheapest to fill: two boxes per row, a name and a monthly figure, and it publishes as a tidy list on the entry page.
The link and the robots line
Two things about what a published entry carries, both counted across every page on the site. The first is the homepage anchor: across 11,088 published entries, all 11,088 of them put rel="nofollow" on it, the social links and the pricing-page link included.
The second is the robots line. 3,433 of those 11,088 pages carry <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow"> and 7,655 carry no robots meta at all. Every page in that second group names Alternative.me itself as its composer, 7,399 of them were created in 2018, and none of the 2,927 entries composed by somebody else sits in it. A Googlebot user agent gets the same markup as a browser does.
So file this one as a listing rather than as a link. What it is good for is the page itself: your copy, your screenshots and your price table on a domain Ahrefs rates 75, in a catalog people browse by category. Their pages also carry <meta name="referrer" content="unsafe-url">, so anyone who does click through arrives in your analytics with the entry's URL attached instead of stripped, which makes this one easy to measure for what it actually sends.
Who runs it
tobieskrambs GmbH, at Margaretenstraße 46 in Hamburg, registered as HRA 185155 at the Amtsgericht Hamburg with Victor Tobies as Geschäftsführer and a phone number on the imprint. Their About page names a team of two and introduces the other half in one line: "Gregor, creator of strawpoll.com and experienced web developer just had his 10-year-anniversary in Perl development." (their grammar) That also explains the stack, since the site still runs on Perl. On editorial policy they say "Mostly open to public opinion but heavily moderated".
Scale, in their own counter on the homepage: "Currently, we compared 12846 software items with the help of 27379 registered users." In April 2018, the first archived copy showing the directory carried 8247 in the same spot. Their homepage also carries a Recently Added Software panel holding four entries, and all four were created in October 2022. The two help hubs, /faq/ and /how-to/, both read "We are currently rebuilding this section. Please be patient to see a well-updated page here soon!"
Add Platform. Add Link. Add Pricing.
Three buttons pressed once per row, on one form out of thirty. The pack you assemble never changes. Only the labels on the boxes do, and typing it out again is the part worth handing over.
Worth doing?
Yes, on the terms above. It costs nothing, there is no captcha and no badge to install, the operator is a named German company with a register number and a phone number on its imprint, and what you end up with is a real page carrying your own copy, your screenshots and your price list on a DR 75 domain. For a free listing that is a good ratio of effort to result.
Treat the form as packing rather than writing. The two descriptions, the square icon, four or five screenshots, a video link, the platform list and the price rows are the same pack the next twenty-nine directories ask for in a different order and under different labels. Assemble it properly once, then decide how many of those twenty-nine you actually want to sit and type out.
Seventeen blocks, no price.
Register at /signup/ with three fields, then open the form from your dashboard. The name caps at 100 characters, platforms are six fixed values and Features stays silent until the third character. Pricing is the rarest block on the site and two boxes per row to fill. Nothing on the domain states a turnaround, so note the date yourself. The whole catalog.
FAQ
Is Alternative.me free to submit to?
Yes. No price is published anywhere on the domain: no pricing page, no advertise page, no featured tier, no checkout and no payment provider in the markup. One caveat on the word itself: the site never applies free to submitting anywhere, so calling it that is our summary and not their claim. The revenue visible on the site is Google AdSense, which runs on the entry pages themselves, plus Amazon affiliate links in its physical-products section, and neither of those is something a software vendor can buy into.
Do you need an account to submit to Alternative.me?
Yes, and their how-to states it: "The submission of new software on our platform is generally open to everyone. However, a user account is required to create new entries." Registration is three fields at /signup/, a display name, an email and a password. There is no Google or GitHub button, no captcha script anywhere on the domain and no terms checkbox. The display name you choose is what draws the little avatar that then appears on anything you submit.
Where is the Alternative.me submission form?
On your account dashboard rather than at a public URL. /submit, /add and /software/submit all return 404, and the Submit a Software link in their footer points at the how-to page instead of a form. Their instruction is plain: "The easiest way to submit new software is going to your account dashboard. There you will find a button submit new software, as well as manage your previous submissions." One shortcut is worth knowing: the Edit Info button on any published entry sends you straight to /account/submissions with that entry's slug attached, which is the same place the form lives.
What does the Alternative.me submission form ask for?
Seventeen labelled blocks, in this order: Software Name (counted to 100 characters), Icon, Category, Short Description, Full Description, Homepage URL, Pricing URL, Type, Monetization, Status, Platforms, Screenshots, Videos, Features, Social Links, Pricing and Synonyms. Monetization opens on Free and Status on Released. Platforms, Social Links and Pricing are repeaters with their own Add button, while Videos and Synonyms take one entry per Enter. Three blocks are marked optional on the form itself: Pricing URL, Videos and Pricing.
Are Alternative.me links dofollow?
No, they are nofollow. Across 11,088 published entries the Visit Homepage anchor carries rel="nofollow" every single time, the same eight characters, with sponsored and ugc appearing nowhere on the site. The social links and the pricing-page link on an entry carry it too. What the page does carry is a canonical pointing at itself and a referrer policy of unsafe-url, so a click reaches your analytics with the listing URL attached rather than stripped.
How long does Alternative.me take to publish a listing?
They publish no timeframe. Nothing on the domain states a turnaround for a software submission, and both their FAQ and their How-To hub read "We are currently rebuilding this section. Please be patient to see a well-updated page here soon!" What the About page does say about the project is that it is "Mostly open to public opinion but heavily moderated", so an entry is reviewed rather than published on the spot. Note the date you sent it, because nothing on the site is going to do that for you.
What categories does Alternative.me have?
Four types with 60 categories underneath them. Mobile Apps carries 25, running from Books to Widget and including Photo & Video, Social Networking and Utilities. Web Apps and Desktop Software carry the same 13 each: Business, Development, Games, Health, Kids, Knowledge, Lifestyle, Media, News, Security, Social, Tools and Travel. Business Software carries 9, and those are business functions rather than topics: Analytics, Customer Support and Management, Design, Finance and Accounting, Human Resources, IT and Operations, Marketing, Productivity and Communications and Sales.
Does Alternative.me require a badge?
No. No badge programme appears anywhere on the site, there is nothing to embed and nothing that checks your pages, so the entry does not depend on anything showing up on your own site. The whole job happens inside their form, which means nothing here waits on a deploy at your end.
Does Submitator submit to Alternative.me?
Yes. Alternative.me is in our catalog, which is why this guide reads as a walkthrough rather than a survey. Seventeen blocks is the longest form we handle anywhere, and the pack behind it (two descriptions, a square icon, screenshots, a video link, the platform list and the price rows) is what the next twenty-nine ask for under different labels. Our entry plan is $29 for thirty directories, each one named with its rating attached before you spend a slot on it.
More submit-to guides.
Seventeen blocks, and you type none of them.
One payment of $29, thirty destinations, and the typing stops being yours. You pick the thirty off a rated list, we keep alive any badge a site asks for and each entry that publishes reports back with its address.