How to Submit to AppRater: A 2026 Walkthrough

AppRater is a review-based app directory: products live or die by ratings and user comments. The listing itself is easy; the social proof is the work.

The short answer

The submission is the easy part. What decides whether AppRater was worth the ten minutes is whether the listing gets published, whether the outbound link is followed, and whether the page is indexed six weeks later.

What AppRater is

An app directory where products are listed with descriptions, categories and user ratings or reviews. Sign-up and submission both live at apprater.com.

Before you touch the form

Line up the first few reviews before submitting, and give those people one sentence describing what the product does. A rating page with no comments reads as brand new, and new is not what visitors shop for.

Submitting, in order

Ask five real users to review
Write the description as an outcome
Upload current screenshots
Submit to the closest category
Reply to each review

One thing that catches people out

Seed the first few reviews honestly from real users in launch week. An app with three genuine reviews outranks one with zero on every review-driven directory.

What it is good for

App and software catalogues reach people looking for something to install or subscribe to, which suits products with a visible interface and a short time-to-value.

Checking what you actually got

Search the exact listing title in Google — absent means not indexed
Count how many outbound links sit beside yours on the page
Inspect the rel attribute on the link to your domain
Follow the link and confirm it lands on the page you submitted
Write the outcome in the sheet the same day

Where SaasHunt fits

SaasHunt is the launch half of the same plan: SaaS-specific, publishing at 08:00 UTC, daily and weekly Top 5 with the weekly winners going to the newsletter, and a dofollow link on every approved listing. Free requires the badge and can queue for up to 270 days; Premium at $9.9 skips the queue; Premium Plus at $12.9 adds earliest scheduling and a permanent featured slot; SEO Growth at $49 adds the newsletter and a dedicated review; DR Booster at $50 adds ten permanent dofollow links from DR 30–65 sites.

SaasHunt

Seed reviews before you list

A review-driven directory converts on social proof. A listing with zero ratings reads as untested, and visitors who are choosing between three apps choose the one that has been used.

Ask five real users for an honest review before submitting, with a link to the product page they should rate.

Give each reviewer one sentence

People want to help and do not know what to write. A one-line brief — what the product does and which part to mention — produces a usable review instead of "great app".

That is not coaching the sentiment, it is removing the blank page problem.

Why zero reviews reads as new

New is not a neutral signal on a review site; it is a negative one. It suggests the product may not work, may not be supported, or may be abandoned.

Three reviews change that reading entirely, and they cost an afternoon of asking.

Honest reviews versus seeded ones

Reviews from people who have not used the product are detectable and corrosive: they read generic, they cluster in time, and they undermine the credibility the listing was meant to build.

Ask real users, accept mixed sentiment, and answer the criticism publicly.

Responding to negative reviews

Reply once, factually, without defensiveness. A well-handled complaint is more persuasive than five five-star ratings, because it demonstrates that the product has real users and a real team.

Never argue. The audience reads the exchange as a sample of your support.

What ratings do to placement

Many review directories sort by rating or by review count, which means social proof compounds: better placement produces more reviews, which produces better placement.

That makes the first five reviews disproportionately important. Later reviews matter, but they arrive into an established position.

Measuring the listing's effect

Referrals from review sites are small and high-intent. Track trials by referring domain, and check whether the reviews themselves are being read.

If the listing ranks for the product name, the reviews are doing more work than the link.

Five reviews, one fortnight

A cluster of reviews arriving together moves a listing; one review a month does not. Ask five users in the same week, and ask each for a sentence rather than a star.

The cluster is the mechanism, not the total count.