Editorial policy

How launches get on StartupList

Makers launch their startups by paying for a Permanent listing or the Featured package. We review every paid launch before it goes live: that the product works, that its details are true and that the person launching it runs it. We refuse a launch that misleads, breaks the law or copies another listing, and refund it in full.

We also add listings ourselves, for products people look for alternatives to, written from what their makers publish. Those are marked unclaimed and added by StartupList until their makers claim them.

How the leaderboards rank launches

The daily, weekly and monthly leaderboards rank launches by members' votes: one vote per signed-in member per launch, each day running from midnight to midnight Pacific time. Nobody adds votes by hand, us included, and paying for a listing or a placement doesn't move a launch up a leaderboard.

We remove votes from fake accounts, swapped votes and bought votes, and take a launch off the leaderboards if it relied on them.

What's paid for, and how we mark it

Everything a company paid to have shown is marked where it shows:

• Sponsor: the spot at the top of the homepage and the tab pages, and the newsletter's sponsor.
• Featured this week: a week in the Featured this week list.
• Ad: first place among a category's alternatives.
• Sponsored: a deal or an article a company paid for.

Some Visit buttons and deal links go through our affiliate links, as the note at the foot of every page says. Links that were paid for, affiliate links among them, are marked rel="sponsored" for search engines. Our How we make money page says who pays for StartupList.

Articles and guides

Our guides are written by Leo I, founder of StartupList, and say when they were last updated. When a fact in one changes, we update it.

A company can pay for an article about its product. We write it with Bloggable from what the company tells us and from its own pages, the company checks it before it goes out, and it's marked Sponsored.

If something we wrote is wrong, email hello@startuplist.tech and we'll correct it.

Reviews

Any signed-in member can review a launch, once. A review shows its writer's name and says it's unverified: we can't confirm that the writer used the product.

A review goes up when it's written. Our team then checks each one, and a review that passes earns its writer coins: the same coins whatever its rating, so a good review earns no more than a bad one. The Coins page says what each action earns.

Makers can reply to the reviews of their own launch, but can't remove them. Nobody can pay us to publish, hide or remove a review.

Fake reviews, and how to report one

We remove a review when:

• its writer hasn't used the product;
• it's about the writer's own product, their employer's or a competitor's;
• it was paid for, or written in return for anything but our coins;
• one person wrote it from a second account;
• it's spam or abuse, or breaks our Terms some other way.

The coins it earned go with it, and we may close the accounts behind fake reviews.

To report a review, press Report beside it, or email hello@startuplist.tech. We look at every report. If we removed your review and you think we got it wrong, email us and we'll look at it again.

Questions, answers and messages

Questions and answers follow the same rules as reviews, and can be reported the same way. Messages between members are private: we read one only when someone in the conversation reports it.