390 Outbound Anchors, and Not One Rel Attribute Between Them.
Written by Submitator. Good Design Tools is one of the directories we file customers to, so read it as an interested party. Everything below is measured from their live pages rather than taken from a claim, and the footnote says exactly what was checked.
Good Design Tools is a design-only directory rated 25 by Ahrefs, with 443 tool pages across 28 categories. Submitting is free, takes one form, needs no account and asks for no badge.
On the link question it returned the cleanest result this measurement can produce. Sixty listing pages, 390 outbound anchors to third-party domains once the site furniture is stripped out, and not one rel attribute anywhere in the sample. Not nofollow absent, not sponsored absent: the attribute itself is simply not there, on any of them. The View site anchor points straight at the tool's own domain with no redirector in the middle.
We have measured DR 79 and DR 69 directories this year whose listings pass nothing at all, because the anchor runs through an internal path their own robots.txt blocks. A crawlable followed link from a 25 beats an uncrawlable one from an 80 every time, and the only way to tell them apart is to look. That is why every card in our catalog carries a Domain Rating and a no-equity mark where one is needed.
Good Design Tools at a glance
| What you get | Good Design Tools |
|---|---|
| Price to submit | $0 |
| The link | Followed and direct on 390 of 390 anchors |
| Redirector in the path | None |
| Domain Rating | 25 (Ahrefs) |
| Badge on your site | Not required |
| Account needed | No, one form |
| Description limit | 130 characters |
| Icon formats | .jpg, .jpeg, .webp, .svg, max 2 MB |
| Who it takes | Design tools only, 28 categories |
| Filed for you by Submitator | Free listing, plus 29 more directories from $29 |
Per gooddesign.tools, its home page, /all-tools, /design-tools-deals-and-offers, robots.txt, sitemap.xml and the submission form at tally.so/r/mBbA8N, all read on 15 September 2026. Domain Rating is Ahrefs' figure via submitator.com/domain-rating-checker, which returned 25. The sitemap holds 493 URLs: 443 under /tools/, 28 under /category/ and 19 under /tool-tags/; the home page says "+400 tools for digital designers". The link finding is a sample, not a full census: 60 listing pages, made up of a seeded random sample of 45 plus the last 15 URLs in sitemap order, which is alphabetical rather than chronological and therefore is not a recency cohort. Every page was fetched successfully and parsed with an HTML parser rather than pattern-matched, and every outbound anchor was classified by hostname. Two external hosts appear on every page and were identified as site furniture by frequency before attribution, tally.so at three anchors per page and buymeacoffee.com at one; 390 third-party anchors remain and none carries a rel attribute of any kind, so none is nofollow or sponsored, and none routes through an internal redirector. Four pages were then re-requested with a Googlebot user agent and returned the same anchors with the same absent rel, so the values are not being varied for crawlers. Their robots.txt is "User-agent: * / Allow: /" with two sitemap lines and no disallow rules. Form fields, the 130-character description cap, the Free/Freemium/Paid options, the deal and affiliate questions, the accepted icon formats and the 2 MB limit are read from the live form; the deal example shown in the form is "GDT25" for "25% off your first month". Some listings carry the tool's own affiliate parameter on the outbound link, which we observed on three of the sampled pages and on the home page. Nothing was submitted and nothing was purchased, so review time, acceptance rate, editorial standards and the terms of a "Premium listing" are outside what we can report; no price for a Premium listing is published anywhere on the site. No claim is made here about how often the catalogue is updated. Submitator files customers to Good Design Tools. Our plans are $29 for 30 directories, $49 for 60 and $79 for 100, one-time, chosen by you with each Domain Rating shown and no-equity marked where it applies, badges installed and kept live, rejections credited back as +1 directory and a 30-day refund policy on the conditions in our terms.
How to submit to Good Design Tools, step by step
- 1
Export a square icon with a solid background first
This is the only real friction in the flow and it is worth doing before you open the form. The field accepts .jpg, .jpeg, .webp and .svg at 2 MB or less. PNG is not on the list, so the transparent logo sitting in your assets folder is the one file that will not upload. The instruction also asks for a solid background colour rather than transparency, so flatten it onto your brand colour and export square.
- 2
Write to 130 characters, not to a paragraph
The description cap is 130 characters and the form says it goes straight onto your listing. That is roughly one sentence, so it has to carry the job rather than the story. Name what the tool does and who opens it, and cut the adjectives before the character counter cuts them for you.
- 3
Pick Free, Freemium or Paid honestly
Their own instruction is to choose freemium if the tool has free and paid plans. Readers filter on this and the label sits on your card, so overstating a trial as free earns a click from someone who bounces. Freemium is not a weaker word here, it is the more accurate one.
- 4
Decide about a deal before you reach the question
The form asks whether you would like to offer their readers an exclusive deal, with a code and a discount, and their own example is GDT25 for 25% off a first month. Saying yes puts you on the Good Deals page as well as in your category, which is a second placement for the cost of a coupon. Saying no changes nothing about the listing or the link.
- 5
Answer the affiliate question either way
They also ask whether your tool has an affiliate scheme. This is a free directory with no listing fee, and affiliate links and deals are how that arithmetic works. Declaring a scheme is not a condition of being listed and declining does not cost you the entry.
- 6
Use an inbox you will read on a Tuesday
The email field doubles as a subscription to their weekly round-up, which goes out each Tuesday, and it is the address they will use if anything about the entry needs a reply. A reCAPTCHA sits between the form and the submit button, so this is a human-in-the-browser flow rather than an API.
What no rel attribute actually means
Most directories that pass link equity do it with rel="noopener noreferrer" on the anchor, which is a security and privacy setting rather than a search one and leaves the link followed. That is the normal good result. Good Design Tools does not even carry that. Across every anchor in the sample the attribute is absent entirely.
For your purposes the outcome is the same as a clean followed link, and what makes it worth stating is the direction of the evidence. A directory can promise dofollow on a sales page and still deliver a redirector, a sponsored tag or an anchor its own robots.txt blocks. This one promises nothing on the subject at all, and then simply links at you.
The other half of the measurement is the path. The View site anchor on a listing goes directly to the tool's own domain. There is no intermediate tracking URL, no /go/ or /out/ route, and the site's robots.txt is a bare Allow: / with nothing disallowed, so there is no rule anywhere on the domain that could block the path to you.
Design only, and that is the point
The 28 categories are all design and they are specific: Figma plugins, Framer, Webflow, UI kits, icons, illustrations, mockups, type foundries, colour and palette tools, design systems, accessibility, stock images, design games, podcasts and books. There is a deals page and a weekly Tuesday newsletter on top of the directory.
That narrowness is the reason to file here and the reason not to. A Figma plugin, a UI kit, a mockup generator or a design-adjacent tool lands in a category where people are already looking for exactly that. A general B2B SaaS with no design surface has nothing to put in any of the 28, and a submission that does not fit a category is the kind that quietly never appears.
It is the first design-specific directory in our catalog, which is worth knowing if you have been picking from a list where everything is labelled AI or Startups.
Two questions almost no other form asks
Most submission forms want a name, a URL, a description and a logo. This one also asks whether you will offer their readers an exclusive deal, and whether you run an affiliate scheme. Both are optional and neither changes the link you get.
They are worth understanding rather than skipping past, because together they explain the price. A directory with no listing fee still has hosting, editing and a newsletter to pay for, and this one funds that through deals and affiliate relationships instead of charging you. Knowing that is more useful than guessing at it, and it tells you where the second placement is: say yes to a deal and you appear on the Good Deals page as well as in your category.
Good Design Tools review: the short answer
Free, one form, no badge, no account, a followed link straight at your domain, and a Domain Rating of 25 that is the least interesting fact about it. Prepare a square non-PNG icon and 130 characters before you start and the whole thing takes a few minutes.
Good Design Tools is free. Thirty directories are $29, each one measured.
One payment, every directory named in your dashboard with its Domain Rating on the card, a no-equity mark where the link cannot be crawled, badges installed and kept live where one is wanted, and a rejection credited back as another directory.
Free, followed, and it will not take your PNG.
A design-only directory at DR 25 with 443 tools across 28 categories. One free form, no account and no badge. Across 60 listings we found 390 outbound anchors and not one rel attribute among them, pointing straight at the tool with no redirector, the same under Googlebot. Bring a square icon that is not a PNG and a description under 130 characters. The whole catalog.
FAQ
Is a Good Design Tools link dofollow?
Yes, and the census came back as clean as this measurement gets. We parsed 60 listing pages and found 390 outbound anchors to third-party domains after excluding site furniture. Not one of them carries a rel attribute at all, so there is no nofollow and no sponsored anywhere in the sample. The primary “View site” anchor points straight at the tool's own domain with no redirector in the path, and four pages re-requested with a Googlebot user agent returned identical markup.
Is Good Design Tools free to submit to?
Yes. One form, no account, no payment step and no badge asked for. Some listings carry a “Premium listing” label and the site publishes no price for it anywhere, so the free route is the only one with a number attached to it, and that number is zero.
What does the Good Design Tools submission form ask for?
Tool name, a link, a description capped at 130 characters, whether the tool is Free, Freemium or Paid, whether you want to offer an exclusive deal to their readers, whether you run an affiliate scheme, a square icon with a solid background colour, and your email. There is a reCAPTCHA on the way out. The email field doubles as a newsletter opt-in for their weekly Tuesday round-up.
What image format does Good Design Tools accept?
Only .jpg, .jpeg, .webp and .svg, at 2 MB or less. PNG is not on the list, which catches people out, because the logo most products have on hand is a transparent PNG. The field also asks for a square image with a solid background colour rather than transparency, so a flat square export is the file to prepare before you open the form.
What is Good Design Tools' Domain Rating?
25, per Ahrefs on 15 September 2026. That puts it in the middle band of this catalog, and the reason it is worth a submission anyway is what the census found: the link is followed, direct and crawlable, which is not true of several higher-rated directories we have measured.
Does Good Design Tools accept any kind of product?
No, it is design only, and the 28 categories say so plainly: Figma plugins, Framer, Webflow, UI kits, icons, illustrations, mockups, type foundries, colour tools, design systems, accessibility, podcasts and books among them. A general SaaS with no design angle has nothing to file here. A Figma plugin, a UI kit or a design-adjacent tool has a real one.
Why does the form ask about deals and affiliate schemes?
Because that is how a free directory pays for itself. The deal question offers their readers a code (their own example is GDT25 for 25% off a first month) and feeds a Good Deals page, and some listings carry the tool's own affiliate parameter on the outbound link. Neither is required, neither changes the link you get and neither costs you anything to decline.
How many tools are listed on Good Design Tools?
The sitemap holds 493 URLs: 443 tool pages, 28 category pages and 19 tag collections. The homepage says “+400 tools for digital designers”, which the sitemap supports.
Do you need a badge on your site for Good Design Tools?
No. Nothing in the form or on a listing asks for one. Where a directory in your plan does ask, Submitator installs the badge through one component and keeps it live, so a badge requirement never becomes thirty snippets in your footer.
Does Submitator submit to Good Design Tools?
Yes, it is in the catalog with its Domain Rating on the card, and you tick it or leave it like every other directory. The form carries a reCAPTCHA, which our real-browser automation handles rather than working around, and if a directory rejects a submission it comes back as a credit for another one.
More submit-to guides.
Good Design Tools is free. Thirty directories are $29, each one measured.
One payment, each directory named with its Domain Rating on the card before you choose it, a no-equity mark where the link cannot be crawled, badges installed and kept live where one is wanted, and a rejection swapped for another directory.