AlternativeTo
3178 likes
AlternativeTo offers a crowdsourced platform for discovering software alternatives, with a vast collection spanning web, desktop, and mobile apps. Personalize your lists, read user reviews, and explore expert-driven suggestions for all platforms. Stay updated with daily tech news about software, apps, and SaaS.
License model
- Free • Proprietary
Application types
Country of Origin
Sweden
EU
Platforms
- Online
+17
Features
AlternativeTo News & Activities
Highlights • All activities
Recent News
- Maoholguin published news article about AlternativeTo
Introducing the New App Pages Design on AlternativeTo!Hey everyone! Some of you might have noticed something different on our site recently, and that's b...
- Maoholguin published news article about AlternativeTo
AlternativeTo Awards 2023: Best APPS of the year!2024 is just around the corner, but hold on! Before we dive into the new year, let's rewind and tak...
- POX published news article about AlternativeTo
AlternativeTo just got a fresh new design, support for multiple filters & much more!We're excited to announce that we've just introduced a fresh new design for AlternativeTo, as well ...
Recent activities
braky added AlternativeTo as alternative to Buy-European.net- nttldnknwn reviewed AlternativeTo
OpenSourceSoftware added AlternativeTo as alternative to LinuxLinks- Agibi liked AlternativeTo
What is AlternativeTo?
AlternativeTo Videos
AlternativeTo information
Developed by
27 Kilobyte AB Licensing
Proprietary and Free product.Rating
Average rating of 4.5Alternatives
146 alternatives listedNews
9 news article related to AlternativeToSupported Languages
Comments and Reviews
Thank you,
AlternativeTo , for your help in finding new solutions!
Does not allow country listings. So if the software restricted to one country, it isn't listed.
[Edited by TallGuysFree, February 07] 2 star changed to one star for USA favoritism. Completely unacceptable.
Hi there!
Geo restrictions is a mess and we do not like them more than you do. However we have to do the best of the situation and the best would of course be to have a global team with language experts and a localized site for most major countries and markets but that is expensive and not realistic for us as the moment. We do want to make improvements for this however and we will add a "market" attribute to apps sometime in the near future hopefully, we will probably only allow English though but it will be an improvement :)
But for now we have to draw the line somewhere and at the moment we have drawn that line to allow "Major US services" and of course allow stuff that are available in the US + more countries. And since we are humans we sometimes even do exceptions for that, for example (as we are from Sweden) we knew that when Spotify arrived it was going to be a major service with a large coverage of markets around the world so we would probably allow "the new spotify" here as well even if it only worked in the UK for example.
Another aspect of being human is that we also sometimes make mistakes and apps that shouldn't be allowed are slipping thru and we are open to discuss them with you :)
I'm not talking about other languages. This site is literally ALL USA and it's really, really unfortunate. AlternativeTo is completely useless to 36.29 million people in Canada and 65.64 million in United Kingdom and 24.13 million people in Australia.
Sorry that you feel that way but we are really focusing on global apps and software and the "services" part is actually just a little side thing. We want to expand on that and we want to make that better but it's takes a lot of time and development effort to make it happen. Its also much harder for our admins and mod to approve stuff that may only work in certain countries and so on.
And remember this site is founded in Sweden and we have people that helps us from all over the world, so we are not some US based service that doesn't understand that the rest of the world exists.
Again, sorry if you feel that way but we are doing the best we can.
Best you can? An employee removed my forum post raising the issue. Deleting the forum post is ignoring the issue, and doesn't let your users share ideas on how the site could be improved. As you know ,your users are how ad revenue is generated.
What forum post was this? We have asked around and nobody seems to know but we remove loads of stuff each day and some regular users also has moderator rights in the forum so it may have been some mistake from somebody, sorry for that but please continue the discussion here if you have more questions and / or suggestions. We are open to everything :)
The forum post was regarding geolocation. Can't you search by author and see what post I made? :)
Alternativeto has confirmed they "do not" allow apps restricted to a certain region, and the forum thread I made was deleted. I feel like something is covered up. Maybe I will make a new thread and send you a link (my word against alternativeto's)
My alternativeto review doesnt even show up publicly.
Ola, here is the discussion. https://alternativeto.net/discussions/about-alternativeto/55740/georestricted-apps-not-allowed-/
** I have archived it since the alternativeTo team seems to have somehow permanently lost it.. http://archive.is/5cnQI **
I wonder what was that app you couldn't add on AlternativeTo.net. Very strange, maybe it's an app that has no alternative ?
The site does a poor job of finding alternatives for specific applications. It seems to list almost any application that falls under a certain software category as an alternative.
For instance, Krita is software for digital drawing and painting. Yet, currently, the top 3 alternatives listed for it are GIMP, Inkscape, and Adobe Photoshop. GIMP is software primarily focused on image editing. Inkscape is software primarily focused on vector graphics. Adobe Photoshop is software primarily focused on image editing. While digital drawing/painting software and image editors share some features, they generally serve different purposes and target different users. Perhaps due to the relative lack of specialization in the software field currently, this difference isn't always obvious. However, if you consider Rebelle instead of Krita—where the focus on digital drawing and painting is much clearer—the distinction between these types of software becomes more evident. The problem with AlternativeTo is that the list of alternatives for a specific piece of software is barely distinguishable from simply browsing all software within a certain category – pretty much everything gets added, almost indiscriminately. This issue is partly reflected in the software descriptions themselves. For instance, Krita is listed as photo editing software, when in reality, it's software geared towards digital drawing and painting.
AlternativeTo lacks more nuanced and in-depth software categorization. Just because a program has image editing features doesn't automatically make it an image editor. The software type should reflect its primary focus, not every secondary use case. So, Krita is digital drawing and painting software, not an image editor. GIMP is an image editor, not digital drawing and painting software. Inkscape is vector graphics software, not digital drawing and painting software. Adobe Photoshop is image editing software, not digital drawing and painting software.
It would be far better if specific software categories, and perhaps even individual software listings, had dedicated curators who understand the subtleties and distinctions within software types and can determine what genuinely qualifies as an alternative and what does not. In Krita's case, true alternatives would be Clip Studio Paint, Rebelle, Procreate, and other software primarily focused on digital drawing and painting – not image editors or vector graphics programs.
Another issue with AlternativeTo is its tendency to promote Free / Open Source software.
And while I believe this is commendable from one standpoint, from another, as an AlternativeTo user, I find that instead of discovering genuinely good alternatives to a particular piece of software, I often just sift through lists of underdeveloped Free / Open Source software that isn't quite ready for real work. And in the comments, I see nonsense like, "I don't like this software because it's not free and open source." Software is a tool that, first and foremost, should do its job. Being Free / Open Source is a secondary, nice-to-have bonus, but it's definitely not the deciding factor in whether a piece of software is good or not.
I can't tell how helpful it has been and continues to be for me to search privacy-friendly and open source alts, a must-use website!
The best software website on the internet!
could be better if was open source
Often I am faced with non-relevant sites and forbidden.