Directify vs Softr A Softr alternative built for directory websites

Looking for a Softr alternative? Start here

Softr is a genuinely strong tool. The Airtable integration is the cleanest in the category, the authentication primitives are best-in-class, the workflow builder is real, and the AI Co-Builder is useful for getting from blank canvas to first draft. If your project is shaped like an app — a client portal, an internal dashboard, a gated marketplace, a member-only directory — Softr earns the recommendation and Directify isn't the right tool for you.

So why are you here? Almost certainly because the shape of your project is a public directory rather than an app, and you've started to notice that Softr is priced and architected for app-shaped use cases. The entry tier is $49/mo, branding doesn't fully come off until $139/mo, the Business-plan user count was just cut from 2,500 to 500 with no price drop, and Softr apps are single-page applications — meaning a 5,000-listing public directory has SEO trade-offs that a server-rendered builder doesn't.

Directify is the database-first directory builder. Submissions, paid listings, custom fields, categories, ads, and lead capture are first-class features. Pages are server-rendered, listings are crawlable, and pricing starts at $12/mo without metered AI credits or workflow actions to plan around.

What Softr actually is in 2026

Softr is positioned as a no-code app builder for client portals, internal tools, and Airtable-backed apps. The headline experience is connecting a data source — Airtable, Google Sheets, Softr Database, or (on Business plan) Postgres/MySQL/HubSpot — and assembling an app from blocks: Lists, Item Details, Forms, Maps, Kanban, Stripe Checkout, and so on.

The strengths that genuinely set Softr apart in 2026:

• Authentication. User groups, magic-link sign-in, sign-in with email code, conditional block visibility per role. If your app needs roles (admin / member / paying member / staff), Softr ships those primitives natively.
• Workflows. A real workflow builder with 20+ connectors (Slack, Gmail, Notion, plus generic Call API for everything else). This is a feature most builders in this category don't have.
• AI Co-Builder. Generate app scaffolding from a prompt — the fastest way to a first draft if you're not sure what blocks you need.
• Airtable integration. Other builders connect to Airtable; Softr's connection is the cleanest. Field-type fidelity, two-way sync, Stripe-attribute-based user grouping all just work.
• SOC 2 compliance and SAML/SSO on Enterprise. Procurement-grade security for B2B sales.

For app-shaped use cases — client portals, member directories, internal CRMs, partner dashboards — that's a strong stack and a fair $49–$269/mo price.

For public directory websites, several of those primitives are either misaligned or absent:

• Single-page-app architecture. Softr apps are SPAs. They have SEO settings (Site SEO, Page SEO, Item Details SEO) and they generate sitemaps, but the browse-and-filter pattern of a large public directory hits well-documented SPA SEO trade-offs that don't apply to a server-rendered builder. The Softr docs include a "SPA Custom Code Guidelines" page that exists because the architecture creates non-trivial gotchas.
• No native paid-to-submit-listing flow. Stripe Checkout exists, the Simple Checkout Form exists, the Customer Portal exists, the user-group-by-Stripe-attribute trick exists. None of those is a built-in "visitor pays $X, a listing record gets created, admin gets notified" flow — that's a Workflow + form combo you assemble.
• No native featured-listing or banner-ad management. Both can be modelled with conditional visibility and a flag column in your data source, but they're not first-class objects.
• Branding. A "light" Softr badge stays on the Basic plan ($49/mo) and only fully comes off on Professional ($139/mo) — most directory builders remove branding at the cheapest paid tier.

None of this makes Softr a bad tool. It makes Softr a tool shaped for apps, where directory-shaped use cases sit at the edge of what it's designed to do.

Where Directify is the right call

Directify is shaped for the public-directory job from the ground up. Practically, that means:

• Listings are first-class records with search, sort, bulk actions, CSV import/export, full-text search, and an admin dashboard. There's no per-app record cap to plan around.
• Pages are server-rendered. A listing URL returns a fully-rendered HTML page with Schema.org Article, BreadcrumbList, and ItemList markup. Crawlers index the content the same way they index a static site, no SPA workarounds.
• Public submissions are a toggle. Anyone with a link can submit a listing; you decide whether they go straight live or wait for moderation.
• Paid submissions are the same toggle, plus a Stripe or Creem key. The submission form becomes a checkout. Featured-listing upgrades and recurring submissions live in the same flow — no Workflow chain to assemble.
• Featured listings, banner ads, and lead capture are dashboard features, not blocks you wire up.
• Twelve+ directory templates — real-estate, restaurants, jobs, events, SaaS tools, business directories — picked to be the closest visual starting point for the directory you're building.
• Bring-your-own-data is unnecessary. Directify's database is the data source. No Airtable subscription on top.

If your reaction to that list is "I don't need any of that — I need user roles and workflows," Softr is the right call. If your reaction is "I'm going to need at least three of those," Directify will save you the assembly work.

Where Softr is the right call

Being specific so this is actually useful, not generic.

You should pick Softr over Directify if you are building:

• A client portal — clients log in, see their own data, upload documents, kick off workflows.
• An internal team tool — CRM, project tracker, applicant tracking, staff intranet — where the user count is bounded and authentication is the centre of the product.
• A gated marketplace or member directory where every visitor is an authenticated user, not a public visitor coming from Google search.
• An Airtable-first project where your team already lives in Airtable and you specifically don't want to migrate.
• A workflow-heavy app where Slack, Gmail, Notion, and Stripe events drive automated processes.
• An enterprise B2B app where SOC 2, SAML SSO, and audit logs are procurement requirements.

In any of those scenarios, Softr is the right call and Directify would feel under-specced — Softr's auth and workflow primitives are stronger than ours, and we're not trying to compete on that ground.

On the recent user-count cut

This deserves its own section because it's the most current point of community frustration and worth understanding before signing a Softr annual contract.

In November 2025, Softr cut the Business plan user limit from 2,500 to 500 with no corresponding price reduction. The plan still costs $269/mo (yearly billing) — a 5× reduction in the headline allocation. The community thread on this change is full of customers who picked the Business plan specifically for the 2,500-user ceiling. A January 2026 Trustpilot review captures the tone: "Recent changes to the user count has degraded me and my clients trust in this platform. With a 90% drop in user accounts per plan this is no longer a viable solution for client portals and management."

Softr offers user add-ons ($10/10 extra users on Professional, scaling on Business) and the Enterprise plan for unbounded user counts. That's a workable answer if your user count is bounded. It's a planning consideration if you projected your costs against the old 2,500 ceiling.

This isn't an "avoid Softr" point — they shipped a price-list change, customers got annoyed, the platform is still strong. It's a "go in with current information" point.

On total cost — a real comparison

Headline pricing is far apart at the entry tier ($12/mo Directify Starter vs $49/mo Softr Basic). The gap stays meaningful the whole way up.

For a typical public directory project — submissions, paid listings, featured upgrades, ads, blog, ~10,000 listings — the configurations look like:

• Directify Professional ($39/mo, $33/mo yearly): unlimited listings, custom domain, native paid submissions, lead capture, ads, analytics, integrations.
• Softr Professional ($167/mo, $139/mo yearly): 100 app users, 500,000 records, no branding, webhooks, custom code, 50 AI credits — plus an Airtable Team subscription if you're using Airtable as the data source ($20–25/seat).

Softr Professional is roughly 4× the Directify Professional price before adding Airtable. Add Airtable Team for one editor and you're at ~$160/mo of stack vs $39/mo on Directify.

If your project is an app — client portal, internal tool — that price gap is fair, because Softr's auth and workflow primitives genuinely cost more to build and run. If your project is a public directory, you're paying app-builder prices for app-builder primitives you don't need.

Migration: typical path from Softr to Directify

Most people landing on this page have already built half a directory on Softr (often Airtable-backed), hit the public-SEO or pricing wall, and are looking for a way out. The usual path:

1. Export your Airtable base to CSV (or pull it via the Airtable API if your base is bigger than Airtable's CSV export comfortably handles).
2. Spin up a Directify free trial and import the CSV. The import preview lets you map columns to fields before committing.
3. Replace text columns with typed fields where it helps — turning a "Cuisine" column into an enum, a "Phone" into a phone field, a "Cover image URL" into an image upload. This is the moment your data model gets cleaned up.
4. Pick a Directify directory template that's the closest visual starting point.
5. Plug in Stripe or Creem for paid-submission flows.
6. Repoint your custom domain at Directify when you're ready to ship.

In our experience the bulk of the work is an afternoon. The longest part is usually deciding whether to keep Airtable as a back-of-house tool for your own ops while Directify handles the public-facing directory.

Final recommendation: is Directify the right Softr alternative for you?

Softr is one of the strongest no-code tools on the market — for apps. Directories live somewhere between an app and a website, and the answer of which side you're on usually comes down to one question: is the visitor logged in?

If your visitors are authenticated users — clients, members, staff — you're building an app, and Softr is the right tool. If your visitors are search-engine traffic looking through a public list, you're building a directory, and Directify is built for that exact shape.

If you're not sure: directories tend to have one of three signals — (1) public submissions, (2) more than 500 records that share a structure, or (3) monetisation via paid listings, featured upgrades, or ads. Any one of those, and Directify is the right Softr alternative for you.

Start a 7-day free trial below — full access, cancel any time before day 7, and if Directify isn't the right fit we'll be the first to point you back to Softr.