Before a SaaS goes live on SaaSDB, the founder gives us its pricing model, starting price, billing model and free plan, and confirms they match the product’s website that day. We then look for those facts on the product’s own site. Facts we find go live with the date we checked them. Facts we can’t find stay off the listing.
Submitting a product to most directories takes two minutes, and what you type is what appears. That is convenient for the founder and risky for the buyer. Nobody checks whether the price in the form is the price on the site, and nobody notices when the two drift apart.
At SaaSDB, a submission goes through two confirmations before its pricing facts are shown: one by the founder and one by us. This article explains both, what happens when they don’t match and what changes after a product is live.
What a founder tells us
The submission form asks for the same four facts that every listing carries. The pricing model is Free, Freemium or Paid. The starting price is the cheapest amount a customer can pay. The billing model says how that price is charged, for example monthly, yearly, per seat or once. The free plan field says what a customer gets without paying, or how long the trial lasts.
We ask founders to copy these facts from their own pricing page, as it is that day, rather than from memory or from an old pitch deck. Founders know their product better than anyone, but they don’t always remember that last month’s price change never reached the landing page.
The founder’s confirmation
Before the form can be sent, the founder has to tick a box confirming that the pricing details match their website today. The form won’t go through without it.
A checkbox doesn’t make a fact true. What it does is make the founder look. In practice, most mistakes in submitted prices are honest ones: an old plan, a launch discount that has ended, a currency mix-up. Asking the founder to confirm the facts against their own site catches many of those before they reach us.
Our confirmation
Once the submission arrives, we look for the facts on the product’s own website. We check the home page and the pricing page, because those are the pages a buyer would open.
For a paid or freemium product, we look for the starting price the founder gave us. For a free product, we look for the site saying it is free. If we find what the founder told us, the listing goes live with its pricing facts and the date of our check. That date is shown on the listing, so buyers know how recent the facts are.
When we can’t find the facts
Sometimes we can’t find the price on the site. The pricing page may be behind a sign-up, the site may show prices only in another currency, or the price in the form may simply be out of date.
In that case the listing still goes live, but without its pricing facts. We don’t publish a price we couldn’t see on the product’s own website, even when the founder has confirmed it. The facts can be added once we are able to confirm them, and the listing then gets its check date.
This can feel strict to a founder whose pricing page is perfectly clear to them. The reason is simple. A buyer reading a SaaSDB listing should be able to trust that every price on it was visible on the product’s site on the date shown. One exception would make every price less trustworthy.
What a confirmed listing gets
A new listing whose facts we confirm shows them under the description, with the check date. On a paid plan, it also earns the Checked by SaaSDB badge, which the founder can put on their own site. The badge shows the date of the check and links to an explanation of what it means, so anyone who sees it knows exactly what was checked.
New listings also start a price history. The facts we confirm at listing time are the first entry. You can read more about how badges work in Meet Our Badges: Checked and Reviewed by SaaSDB.
What happens after a product is live
Confirming the facts once is not enough, because prices change. When we check a listing again and something has changed, the listing shows the new facts, the check date moves forward and the previous facts go into the price history.
If a founder changes their pricing, the fastest way to get the listing updated is to tell us. We confirm the new facts on the site in the same way, and the listing reflects them from that point on.
If a product stops working, we take the listing down. We would rather have a smaller directory where every listing leads somewhere than a larger one full of dead ends.
Why we do it this way
There are faster ways to run a directory. Accepting every submission as it comes would mean more listings, sooner. But a directory full of unchecked prices is not much use to the people who read it, and a directory nobody reads is not much use to the founders who list in it either.
Checking facts before they go live is how we make sure a SaaSDB listing is worth reading. The rest of the system, from use filters to hands-on tests, is described in How SaaSDB Works, and how we fill in each listing is in How We Complete Every Listing, and Why Each One Shows a Check Date.
Frequently asked questions
Can my listing go live if my prices aren’t public?
Yes. Your listing goes live with its description, category and use tags, but without pricing facts, because we can’t confirm them on your website. If you later publish your prices, tell us and we will check them and add them.
Do you check the facts on paid listings too?
Yes. Free and paid listings go through the same confirmation. Paying changes how fast a listing goes live and what comes with it, not whether its facts are checked.
What if my price is shown only after a currency switch or a toggle?
We look for the price as a visitor would see it. If the starting price only appears after switching currency or choosing yearly billing, say so in the billing model field. That helps us find it and tells buyers how the price is charged.
How do I get my listing updated after a price change?
Contact us with the new facts. We confirm them on your website, update the listing, move the check date forward and record the previous facts in the price history.