BetaList vs Open-Launch
Both are directories tools. Here is what separates them.
| BetaList | Open-Launch | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Directories | Directories |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Price from | Paid | Freemium |
| Upvotes | 16 | 16 |
| What it does | Early-stage startups, listed before they have anything to show. | Daily launches with a badge and a backlink, run in the open. |
What BetaList is
BetaList is a directory of early-stage startups, made for readers who want to find products before they are widely known and for founders who want a first audience. Listings are organised into topic categories including AI, Commerce, Dev Tools, Finance, Health, Marketing, Productivity, and Security and Privacy, and each category is split again into subcategories: Commerce holds 84 of them and Media and Content holds 72. A free daily email digest carries the newest listings to readers who would rather not check the site. Getting listed is a paid, reviewed process. Founders sign in and use the Submit Startup option, and there is no free submission route at all. The startup must have a domain of its own, so free hosting subdomains and app store links are turned away as submission URLs. Selection favours a clear value proposition, good design and an original idea. If a submission is rejected the payment is refunded in full automatically, but no individual feedback is given on why, and the founder is free to make improvements and submit again. Submission plans differ mainly in two things: how quickly the startup is featured, and whether a newsletter slot is guaranteed. The review and featuring times for each are shown during checkout and repeated in the confirmation email, so the timing is known before paying rather than after. At least 24 hours pass between a startup being featured on the site and it appearing in the newsletter. Featured startups also receive do-follow backlinks, which BetaList states are delivered through 301 redirects. Two promotion packages sit on top of a listing. Boost starts at $99 per week, or $199 per month, which the advertising page describes as a 50 percent saving against the weekly rate. It buys homepage placement and a newsletter slot, can be cancelled at any time, and marks the startup with a BOOSTED tag next to its name so the placement is visibly paid. The sponsorship package is $4,999 per month and covers a homepage banner, a newsletter promotion and social media coverage. The practical point for a founder is that the money buys speed and visibility, not entry. A paid submission still goes through review, and the refund policy is the only guarantee attached to it.
What Open-Launch is
Open-Launch is a directory where makers submit a product and it is ranked against the other products launching on the same day. Submissions go in through a form at /projects/submit, and every launch goes live at 08:00 UTC. Listings are grouped into categories including Artificial Intelligence, SaaS, Productivity, Marketing Tools and Design Tools. A free launch costs nothing and puts the product on the homepage, but its backlink is conditional. A free launch earns a dofollow link only if the product finishes in the top three for its launch day and the product displays the Open-Launch badge on its own site. A premium launch costs 12 USD as a one-off payment per launch. It skips the waiting queue, goes live the next day, and carries a guaranteed dofollow backlink from what Open-Launch describes as a domain with a Domain Rating of 71. Only ten premium slots are sold per day. The SEO Growth Package costs 59 USD as a one-off payment, listed against a 199 USD reference price, and bundles a premium launch with a written review article about the product. Payments are final and non-refundable, and billing disputes have to be raised within seven days. The badge requirement is specific enough to be worth reading before you count on the link. Attribution must use one of the official Powered by Open-Launch image badges, because text-only attribution does not satisfy the requirement. The badge has to be at least 150 by 44 pixels, and it has to appear on every page of the linking site. Placement is not decided by the day's ranking alone. Open-Launch runs a submission streak system, and products from users with a high streak are given promoted placement on the main page. The software behind the site is released under a licence called the Open-Launch License, which permits use, copying, modification and redistribution provided the original copyright notice is kept. One condition attaches to that: any web application built on the Open-Launch codebase must display a dofollow link back to open-launch.com. Signing up to the directory itself asks for a name, an email address and a password, with a username and photo optional. The service records usage data such as pages visited and interactions, along with device type, operating system, browser and country. Open-Launch states that it does not sell personal data, and users can request deletion of their personal data, subject to legally required retention.
We are not affiliated with either product. Upvote counts come from the published formula and neither position was paid for.