ListMySite Alternative: Free Listings and the Catch Behind Them

Free submission sounds like found money. The cost is not hidden in the price — it is in the hours, the reciprocal-link requirements and the quality of the catalogs that accept anyone.

The short answer

ListMySite is a reasonable second purchase and a weak first one. As a breadth layer after a followed baseline exists it adds referring domains cheaply; as the thing you buy first it produces a submission log and a flat DR chart. The baseline we sell is the alternative: 50+ indexed, dofollow directories, $30 for 5 links, $50 for 10, $90 for 20, $120 for 30, $140 for 40, $150 for 50 dofollow backlinks, tracked per placement, refundable for 90 days.

Why founders look for an alternative

Badge and link-back requirements clutter your footer.
Queues stretch to months, so timing is out of your hands.
Free catalogs skew towards low authority and auto-approval.
Your time is the actual price, and it is not cheap.

What ListMySite does

A listing service that submits sites to free directories, sometimes bundling a paid tier for the ones that charge for review or for a dofollow link.

What to ask before paying

Ask what a free listing requires: a badge, a reciprocal link, or a queue measured in months. Those are costs even when the listing is free.

The structural limit

Free tiers frequently require a badge or a reciprocal link, publish on a queue measured in months, and sit on catalogs with little authority to pass.

Why ownership keeps coming up

Third-party submission is a bet on someone else’s queue. An owned network replaces the bet with a schedule, which matters most when a launch date is already public.

What ListMySite gets right

Zero cash outlay, and a reasonable way to learn what directory forms look like before spending money on a network.

How BoostDomainRating compares

	ListMySite	BoostDomainRating
Who owns the directories	Third parties	Us
Link attributes	Decided by each catalogue	Dofollow across the network
Time to live	Each catalogue’s queue	Immediate
Proof per placement	Submission log	Detail page with daily Ahrefs DR
Pricing shape	Per package	$30 (5 links) to $150 (50 links)
Refund	Vendor policy	90 days

Pricing is by step, not by bundle: five placements for $30, ten for $50, twenty for $90, thirty for $120, forty for $140, fifty for $150. Each step adds distinct referring domains inside directories we operate, which is why the count you buy is the count that appears.

If you would rather stay manual

Doing ten by hand is still the cheapest education available: you learn which forms demand a screenshot, which taxonomies have no sensible home for your product, and which catalogues send a visitor rather than a crawl. Our walkthrough covers the sequence, and the dofollow list gives you targets.

When ListMySite is still the right call

The ten best free catalogues are worth submitting to by hand — they are cheap, and a handful are followed. The other nine hundred are a weekend you will not get back.

The reciprocity trap

A free listing that requires a badge or a link back is not free. It costs a footer link, and footer links are the weakest links on any site: sitewide, identical, and worth very little individually. Ten of them turn your footer into a wall of small logos and dilute the internal link equity you were trying to concentrate.

If the requirement is a backlink, ask where it goes. A resources page link is acceptable. A sitewide footer badge on a site with forty other badges is a cost disguised as a benefit.

What free submission is genuinely good for

Two things. It teaches you the shape of a directory form — the fields, the categories, the way reviewers phrase rejections — in an environment where mistakes cost nothing. And it occasionally turns up a catalogue with real traffic that simply does not charge.

Both are worth a weekend. Neither is worth a second weekend, because the marginal free catalogue is almost always an auto-approve site with six pages.

Choosing the ten worth doing by hand

Pick by category fit first, then by whether the catalogue's own listing pages appear in search. Ten well-chosen free catalogues produce a handful of followed citations and a clear picture of the landscape; nine hundred produce a spreadsheet nobody opens again.

When you want the rest handled at a known price, the option is 50+ indexed dofollow directories we operate, $30 for five placements through $150 for fifty, with daily DR per placement and a 90-day refund.

FAQ

Are free directories worth it?

The ten best are. The other nine hundred are a way to spend a weekend.

What does a paid baseline cost?

$30 for 5 dofollow placements inside an owned network — about four hours of minimum-wage labour, spent once.

What does BoostDomainRating cost? $30 for 5 dofollow placements up to $150 for 50. Every placement carries an Ahrefs DR figure synced daily, and the set is refundable within 90 days.

Placements you can count

BoostDomainRating runs 50+ indexed, dofollow directories and inserts your product directly — no external reviewer, no rejection category, one link standard. From $30 for 5 links to $150 for 50 dofollow backlinks, daily DR sync, 90-day refund.

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