The Form Asks Which Products You Replace. That Field Is the Listing.
Written by Submitator. IndieHustles is one of the directories we file customers to, and it also sells a $99 submission service against our $49, which this page names rather than leaves you to find. Numbers are measured from their live listings; the footnote says exactly what was read.
IndieHustles is a directory of indie alternatives to well-known SaaS, rated 14 by Ahrefs. Its own description is the clearest statement of what it is for: "Discover the best indie alternatives to popular SaaS products. Support independent makers."
The link is clean and we can say so without sampling, because we read every product page the site links. All 21 carry a Visit Website anchor with rel="noopener noreferrer", pointing straight at the product's own domain. No nofollow, no sponsored, nougc, no redirector in the path and nothing noindexed.
The queue is the cost. Free is stated as "reviewed in 8-10 weeks", and $9 buys 48 hours. Nothing else about the listing changes between the two.
Most submission forms ask for a tagline and a logo. This one asks for Popular Alternatives, comma-separated, with the placeholder "Notion, Airtable, Coda". On a site whose entire structure is alternative-to pages, that field decides which pages your listing appears on and which searches it can ever be found through. It is the only targeting the form offers, it takes five minutes of thought, and almost nobody gives it any.
IndieHustles at a glance
| What you get | IndieHustles |
|---|---|
| Price to submit | $0, or $9 to skip the queue |
| Review time | 8-10 weeks free, 48 hours paid |
| The link | Followed and direct on 21 of 21 |
| Redirector in the path | None |
| Domain Rating | 14 (Ahrefs) |
| Badge on your site | Not required |
| The distinctive field | Popular Alternatives, comma-separated |
| Their own audience figure | 500+ monthly visitors, 900+ subscribers |
| Also sells | $99 for 60 directories; our $49 buys 60 |
| Filed for you by Submitator | Free listing, plus 29 more directories from $29 |
Per indiehustles.com, its home page, /submit, /advertise, /done-for-you and robots.txt, all read on 17 September 2026. Domain Rating is Ahrefs' figure via submitator.com/domain-rating-checker, which returned 14. The link finding is a census of the crawlable set rather than a sample: their robots.txt is "User-agent: * / Disallow:" with no sitemap line, /sitemap.xml returns 404, and no browse or all-products route we tried resolved, so the 21 product pages linked from the home page are what a crawler can reach from the front door. All 21 were fetched successfully and every anchor was located by regex on the anchor element rather than by a parser, after an HTML parser silently truncated a similar page elsewhere this week; each carries rel="noopener noreferrer" on a Visit Website anchor to the product's own domain with a ?ref=indiehustles parameter, and none of the 21 is noindexed. Product URLs are UUIDs under /product/. Their /advertise page states "150+ Listed Products", so the 21 are a crawl path rather than the catalogue size, and we make no claim about how many listings exist in total or how the rest are reached. Plan names, prices and review times are quoted from the submission form: "Standard review queue. Your product will be reviewed in 8-10 weeks" at $0 and "Skip the queue! Your product will be reviewed within 48 hours" at $9, the latter marked Recommended. The advertise tier is $29 one-time for one of three spots, and the figures "500+ Monthly Visitors", "900+ Newsletter Subscribers" and "150+ Listed Products" are their own claims, which we did not verify. Their /done-for-you page, linked in the navigation as Improve Domain Rating, sells 60 hand-picked directories for $99 one-time in 5 business days, describing a database of "147 directories tracked" and "150+ directories" maintained; that product competes with ours and nothing here is a measurement of it, since we bought nothing. The Domain Rating comparisons are between the figures printed on that page and live readings from our own checker taken the same day: Fazier listed 45 against 83, Uneed 55 against 76, AI Tools Guide 7 against 25, AITopTools 46 against 54, HuntScreens 53 against 36. Domain Rating moves between crawls and a published table ages, so these are flagged as rows to re-check rather than as errors of fact, and 74 rows of their list were readable to us of the 147 they say they track. The three directories named as examples of measurement rather than rating are ones we have measured and written up ourselves and are not claims about IndieHustles' delivery. Their stated 5 business days and 48-hour review sit against Submitator's terms, which state an aim of 2 to 3 days and a committed ETA of 30 days from purchase, so this page makes no speed comparison in either direction. Submitator files customers to IndieHustles. 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 IndieHustles, step by step
- 1
Write the alternatives list before you open the form
Popular Alternatives is comma-separated and their placeholder is Notion, Airtable, Coda. Name two or three incumbents a person would actually type into a search box, not the closest competitor nobody has heard of. This is the field that puts your listing on a page somebody arrives at; the tagline is what they read once they are already there.
- 2
Be honest about the comparison you are inviting
Claiming to be an alternative to a product you do not meaningfully replace puts your listing beside it and invites the comparison you lose. Pick the incumbent whose specific job you actually do better or cheaper, and let the tagline say which part of that job you mean.
- 3
Have the X handle ready, because it is shown
The form notes that the Twitter/X handle "will be shown on your product's founder card". This is a site built on supporting independent makers, so the founder card is part of the pitch rather than metadata. Use the account you actually post from.
- 4
Decide about the $9 on queue length, not on the link
Free is stated as 8-10 weeks, Priority as 48 hours for $9. Nothing about the listing differs, so this is purely a question of whether waiting two months costs you anything. If you are filing a batch of directories in one sitting and want them live together, $9 is a cheap way to keep the set in sync.
- 5
Send the canonical URL with nothing appended
The Website field is what becomes the link, and the outbound anchor gets a ?ref=indiehustles parameter added on their side. Give them the plain canonical homepage so the link lands where you want it, with no campaign parameters of your own on top.
- 6
Check the listing when it appears, and bookmark it
Product URLs are UUIDs rather than slugs, so you will not be able to guess your own page later. Save the link when it goes live, confirm the Visit Website button points at you, and check that the Alternatives To line reads the way you intended.
They also sell what we sell
Worth naming plainly rather than leaving in a footer. The item in their navigation headed Improve Domain Rating is a page at /done-for-you selling a Directory Submission Service: $99 one-time for 60 hand-picked directories in five business days, drawn from a database they describe as 147 tracked and 150+ maintained.
Our $49 buys sixty directories, and our $79 buys a hundred. So tier for tier that is about double, and the difference in what you get is the part worth understanding: they hand-pick the sixty for you, we show you more than 120 with a Domain Rating on each card and you tick the ones you want.
Credit where it is owed, and they earn some here. They publish the whole database, with a Domain Rating printed against every row and a dofollow or nofollow flag at the top. Most services in this market will not tell you what is in the pack before you buy it, and we have written about two that say outright they keep the list private. This one shows you the list.
A published rating is not a measured listing
Which brings us to the one thing worth being careful about, on their list or on anybody's. A Domain Rating tells you how strong a domain is. It does not tell you what that domain's listing page passes to you, and the gap between those two things is where most of this market's disappointment lives.
Three entries from their own published list, all of which we have measured ourselves and written up:
FutureTools, listed at DR 68 and reading 69 today, which is correct. Its listings route your link through an internal path that its own robots.txt disallows, so no crawlable route to your domain exists at all. Our catalog card for it carries a no-equity mark for that reason. ActiveSearchResult, listed at DR 74 and reading 74, also correct. A submission there produces a record in a search index rather than a page that carries your URL, which is why we keep its guide outside the directory catalog entirely. Hacker News, listed at DR 91 and reading 91. We measured 178 stories and found the link is nofollow until a post earns roughly twenty points, which the median Show HN never does, and their own rules require the maker to post it rather than an agent.
None of that is an accusation about IndieHustles, whose ratings for those three are accurate. It is the difference between compiling a list from Domain Rating and measuring what each listing actually delivers, which is the whole reason our catalog prints a no-equity mark next to the rating rather than the rating alone.
Five rows worth re-checking
Separately from the above, several ratings on their published table have drifted, in both directions. We read the list and checked it against live Ahrefs figures the same day.
| Directory | On their list | Ahrefs, 17 Sep | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fazier | DR 45 | DR 83 | +38 |
| Uneed | DR 55 | DR 76 | +21 |
| AI Tools Guide | DR 7 | DR 25 | +18 |
| AITopTools | DR 46 | DR 54 | +8 |
| HuntScreens | DR 53 | DR 36 | -17 |
Fazier at 45 when it reads 83 understates a good directory by nearly forty points; HuntScreens at 53 when it reads 36 overstates one by seventeen. Published tables age and nobody updates them on a schedule, ours included, which is why we wire ours to a live checker and publish the date. Run any row you are counting on through a checker before you decide, theirs and ours alike.
The small numbers, published
Their advertise page states 500+ monthly visitors, 900+ newsletter subscribers and 150+ listed products, and charges $29 for one of three featured spots. Publishing a traffic figure that modest, in public, on the page where you are asking for money, is a more honest thing to do than most directories manage.
It also tells you exactly what to expect, which is the useful part. This is a clean followed link from a small, focused site, filed in a batch alongside thirty others. It is not a traffic event and it does not pretend to be one.
IndieHustles review: the short answer
Free, followed on every listing we could reach, eight to ten weeks unless you pay $9. Spend the preparation on the alternatives field, because on this site that field is the listing.
Their $99 for sixty. Our $49 for sixty you pick.
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.
Followed on all 21. Eight weeks, or $9.
A DR 14 directory of indie alternatives to popular SaaS. Every one of the 21 crawlable listings passes a followed link straight to the product. The free queue is 8-10 weeks and $9 cuts it to 48 hours. Prepare the Popular Alternatives field, which is the only targeting the form offers. They also sell 60 directories for $99, which is what our $49 buys. The whole catalog.
FAQ
Is an IndieHustles link dofollow?
Yes on every listing we could reach. We read all 21 product pages linked from their home page, which is the entire crawlable set, and each one carries a Visit Website anchor with rel="noopener noreferrer" pointing straight at the product's own domain, plus a ?ref=indiehustles parameter. No nofollow, no sponsored, no ugc, no redirector and nothing noindexed.
Is IndieHustles free to submit to?
Yes, with a queue. Their form offers Free at $0 with the note “Standard review queue. Your product will be reviewed in 8-10 weeks”, and Priority at $9, marked Recommended, with “Skip the queue! Your product will be reviewed within 48 hours.” The $9 buys review speed and nothing else about the listing changes.
What does the IndieHustles submission form ask for?
Your name, email and Twitter/X handle, which they note “will be shown on your product's founder card”, then the product name, website, a category, a tagline, and a comma-separated list of Popular Alternatives with the placeholder “Notion, Airtable, Coda”. That last field is the important one, because the whole directory is built on which products you replace.
What are Popular Alternatives on IndieHustles?
The field that decides where your listing appears. IndieHustles describes itself as a place to “Discover the best indie alternatives to popular SaaS products”, and a live listing renders an Alternatives To line naming the incumbents. So naming the right two or three well-known products is worth more preparation than the tagline, and naming vague ones wastes the only targeting the form offers.
What is IndieHustles' Domain Rating?
14, per Ahrefs. It is a small site and their own advertise page says so plainly, quoting “500+ Monthly Visitors”, “900+ Newsletter Subscribers” and “150+ Listed Products”. Publishing a traffic figure that modest rather than hiding it is a point in their favour, and it tells you what to expect: a clean followed link and a niche audience, not a flood.
How discoverable is an IndieHustles listing?
Less than the catalogue size suggests. Product URLs are UUIDs rather than slugs, so nothing in the address carries your product name. There is no sitemap.xml, their robots.txt contains no sitemap line, and no browse or all-products route resolved for us. The home page links 21 products against the 150+ they say are listed, so a listing's crawl path is whatever the home page gives it.
Does IndieHustles sell a directory submission service?
Yes, at /done-for-you, linked from their navigation as Improve Domain Rating. It is $99 one-time for 60 hand-picked directories from a database they describe as 147 tracked and 150+ maintained, delivered in 5 business days. That is the same 60 directories Submitator sells for $49, so it is worth naming plainly rather than letting you find it at the bottom of a page.
How does the IndieHustles $99 service compare to Submitator?
Tier for tier it is about double. Their $99 buys 60 directories they choose for you; our $49 buys 60 you choose yourself, and our $79 buys 100. They publish their whole database with a Domain Rating on each row, which is genuinely more than most services do. The difference is what the number on the row means: a domain's rating is not a measurement of what its listing passes.
Are the Domain Ratings on the IndieHustles directory list accurate?
Several are well out of date in both directions. We read their published list and checked it against live Ahrefs figures on 17 September 2026: Fazier is listed at 45 and reads 83, Uneed at 55 reads 76, AI Tools Guide at 7 reads 25, AITopTools at 46 reads 54, and HuntScreens at 53 reads 36. Domain Rating moves and a published table ages, so check any row you are counting on rather than treating the list as current.
Does Submitator submit to IndieHustles?
Yes. It sits in our catalog with its Domain Rating on the card, the link measured rather than assumed, and you tick it or leave it like every other directory. A rejection comes back as a credit for another one.
More submit-to guides.
Their $99 for sixty. Our $49 for sixty you pick.
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.