Source Forge review

At a glance

Our verdict

Source Forge is one of the strongest domains you can get a listing on (DR 93). Its listing links are nofollow, so the value is referral traffic and discovery rather than link equity. You can list for free, with paid options to go faster or get featured.

Best for B2B software vendors who want a comparison-site profile, and open-source projects that want free download hosting and a place in a browsable directory.

About Source Forge

SourceForge has two sides: a business software directory where buyers "find, compare, & review business software and IT services" (it says it has over 124,300 titles), and an open-source hosting service where developers have created over 500,000 projects. It says it gets about 20 million visitors a month, made up of software buyers and people downloading open-source software.

What a listing gets you

• A business listing page in a directory where software can be compared by price, features, category and audience
• Basic listings are shown below paid ones on category, alternatives and integration pages and do not get a "Visit Website" button
• Open-source projects join the Open Source Directory, categorized "by topic, platform, license, etc", where users can review them
• Open-source hosting includes unlimited download bandwidth, download statistics, forums, issue tracking, wiki and code repositories

Pricing, timing and links

Pricing

Anyone can request a basic business listing through the form, which mentions no fee. The paid tiers (PLUS, PREMIUM, AMPLIFY, PRECISION ABM, ENTERPRISE) have no published prices. PLUS adds "Unlimited clicks to your website", promotion in up to 2 categories and removal of advertising from your profile, and PREMIUM adds promotion in up to 4 categories and buyer intent data. Open-source projects get what SourceForge calls its "free, managed, global mirror network" for downloads.

Links

Checked an open-source project page (KeePass), whose homepage link carries rel="nofollow"; a basic business listing (Slack), where the website is plain text rather than a link; and a category page, whose paid "Visit Website" buttons also carry rel="nofollow".

Before you submit

• The business listing request form asks for your name, email, company, title, website, phone, founding year, location, software title, logo, product description and audience
• Logo: "best if square & hi-res. JPG, GIF, or PNG files expected"
• Product description: "Describe the full functionality of your software, product, or service. Please be as descriptive as possible"
• Submitting means agreeing to the SourceForge Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and to receiving communications from SourceForge
• Open-source projects are created at sourceforge.net/p/add_project, with Git, Mercurial or Subversion hosting and an optional import from GitHub

• Submissions openYES

How to get approved

• Write the product description in full, as the form asks, because a basic listing has no Visit Website button and the description is what buyers read.
• Pick the audience and categories carefully, because buyers compare software by category, audience, price and features.
• If your open-source project is on GitHub, use the GitHub importer so releases keep syncing to SourceForge's download mirrors.
• Upload a square, high-resolution logo in JPG, GIF or PNG, as the form asks.

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