This week 10 years ago, we launched AlternativeTo. Even though I believed we had a good idea, I didn't think I would sit here 10 years later and write a little post about our anniversary.

I came up with the idea for AlternativeTo when reinstalling my computer in 2008. I remember when I was about to install WinRAR, I started thinking "There must be some better alternative to WinRAR I can use," and then started to Google for "winrar alternatives". I have no idea what I found (probably some blog post mentioning 7-Zip), but I remember what I did not find, and that was a site dedicated to software alternatives.

I started to think about the idea and planned a little bit, and very soon I talked to AlternativeTo Co-Founder Markus, and he really liked the idea. We were already working together on some hobby projects, but for this idea, we thought we had to go for it.

AlternativeTo was made available to the public for the first time on March 11th, 2009. It has been ten years filled with fun, interesting challenges and great growth alongside the ever-changing world of software. We here at the AlternativeTo Crew are happy that we’ve made it this far.

Wanting to go further than just listing applications in different categories, we founded AlternativeTo to focus on providing relevant alternatives to software while also being guided by input from the community. The whole Crew here believes that it has continued to succeeded well in that goal.

Just like on our fifth anniversary, the feedback we've received is more important than anything else. We continue to receive positive and kind words and suggestions from all of you alongside positive press coverage. The fact that people use and enjoy AlternativeTo has driven the entire Crew to keep improving the site and provide new features and content for you all.

With that, here we are today. To everyone that's visited AlternativeTo in the past ten years: thank you. On top of that, we want to give a special thanks to everyone who has helped people worldwide in finding better software by contributing to AlternativeTo's ever expanding database of alternatives to apps and services of all kinds, from construction to gaming to social networks and more.

Happy birthday, AlternativeTo! This is for the entire community! Please continue to spread the word about the site on Facebook, Twitter, and the social media service of your choice. Here's to another happy and healthy ten years and beyond!

Ola, Markus, A2 and the rest of the AlternativeTo Crew

We're keeping up the momentum on AlternativeTo by continuing to release more updates and improvements to the site. Since our last major update, we’ve been receiving and listening to your feedback, so we have since made some improvements based on that feedback.

Improvements to Lists

• One feature that was most in-demand from our users, and the crew, was to have the ability to create "sections" in Lists, and to be able to create sub-lists within a List. This will allow you to have greater control and organization over the lists you create. We think this is a great improvement to the Lists platform and we think you'll like it too.

  In order to create a section within a list, simply navigate to the List you are creating, or editing, at the top near the “Add an app” section, you will now see a function to “Add section heading.” Clicking this will bring up an area to create a title for the new section, and place it where you’d like in your list. The image below will show you the new field and what to look for:

• We’ve also added the ability for users to "Like" Lists. This will allow us to better rank popular and high-quality Lists, featuring them on the front-page of the site for better visibility.

  The “Like” button for Lists is located both at the top and bottom of the List page, as seen in the image below:

• Now when browsing Lists, you are able to select how they are ordered when viewing, to better help you find what you’re looking for. You can now order the Lists by "Recent Views," “Date Created,” and by number of “Likes.” You can see the new option to sort at the top right when browsing the Lists, as seen in the image below:

• Have you used our List feature before? Please, let us know your suggestions, give us feedback, and tell us what more we can do to improve this feature. Your feedback is invaluable to us and future updates!

Email Notifications

• We know that it is important for many users to be able to control the frequency of email notifications they receive from the website. In the most recent update, we’ve made some changes that give users more control over the email notifications they receive from AlternativeTo.

  In case you aren’t sure how-to change the existing email notification settings, here’s how: Simply click your username in the top-right navigation bar, then click "Settings" in the drop-down menu. This will bring you to your user-settings page. At the bottom of this page, you’ll see a section called “Notifications Settings,” here you can check or uncheck different notification settings according to your preferences, as shown in the image below:

• The new feature we’ve added is that users can now modify these email notification settings directly from any email they receive from AlternativeTo. Within the email you’ll see a link at the bottom for "Notification Settings," clicking this will direct you to the dashboard to update your preferences, all without having to have logged in.

Other Misc. Improvements and Updates

• We’ve made some minor improvements to the layout and responsiveness of AlternativeTo when browsing from a mobile device. This will allow for easier navigation and readability, giving a better user experience for when you need to check out AlternativeTo on-the-go.

• The name of the "Windows RT" platform has been updated to “Windows S.” Windows RT support officially ended in January, marking the end of that platform. Since Windows S is considered the successor to Windows RT by many users, we updated the name of the platform. Both Windows RT and Windows S are capable of running Windows Store apps only, so the updated platform will allow users to filter alternative and apps available only on the Windows Store.

Thank you to all of the AlternativeTo users who voiced their opinions, sent in suggestions, and submitted their feedback. As we've said before, your feedback is invaluable to us and has a tremendous impact on future updates. Please continue letting us know how we can improve your experience on AlternativeTo!

One of our goals at AlternativeTo is to create a platform that encourages engagement from our users. Ultimately, this is part of our overall mission of being the best crowdsourced and community-centric software recommendation service. This month we have made some major updates to our UI and have improved the overall look and feel of AlternativeTo. We hope that this creates an even better experience for our users, enabling them to more effectively use our service to find what they need and to help others in the AlternativeTo community do the same.

New User Profiles

The most notable update to the UI is the revamped user profiles. We have completely updated the look and feel of user profiles, with a focus of providing a better view of your activity and contributions as a member of AlternativeTo. This includes a number of new features, such as an improved “About Me” section, improved activity feed, user stats, and achievements.

Comments, reviews, opinions, and likes are now all shown directly in your user activity feed. Your activity feed can help other users in finding the best alternative they are looking for. Your user profile now also showcases your contributions to AlternativeTo and displays enhanced stats on your activity in the community. This will allow other users to like and agree with actions you’ve taken on the site, which is part of our mission to create a more engaged community and better crowdsourced recommendations.

Basic Achievement System

We’ve added an achievement system to user profiles as well. Achievements are awarded as badges and are displayed on your profile for things such as quality contributions, top opinions, the popularity of lists you’ve created, length of time you’ve been a user on AlternativeTo, and amount of apps you’ve added. We hope that these achievements will be a fun way to encourage user activity and contributions. For now, the achievement system and badges are fairly basic, but we are planning to add more later this year. We’ll discuss more our future plans for the achievement system in the next blog post, so stay tuned.

Better Private Message System

Our private message system has been improved to create a better conversation flow between users. Reading your message history, sending replies, and engaging with others is now much easier. All of your conversations are now in one place, making engagement with other users seamless.

Improved Start Page

AlternativeTo provides you with a lot of information, this is why the start page of the site has now been updated to focus more on the information that matters most for our users. We’ve increased the space for news and content that is posted, so you won’t miss any software related news. Of course, below our news, we have the applications and services that people are searching for most, those that are most viewed, and listings of those that have been recently discontinued. The restructuring of our front page is aimed to help users navigate to what matters most more easily and to keep you informed.

Coming Up…

We are working on some improvements and minor updates for the Lists platform. This includes updates to the look of the Lists as well as improved functionality. We will post more information about this on the blog soon.

We hope that these improvements have a big impact in making our experience on AlternativeTo better and more enjoyable. We are looking forward to continuing improvements to the UI in the coming months, as well as adding new features that help you in finding the information you need. As always, we encourage and greatly appreciate any feedback and suggestions you may have, please let us know!

The year 2017 has come to an end and we are excited to start 2018 with you. Let’s look back and reflect on the exciting year that has passed, before we look forward to the year ahead.

Lists - A Major Feature Added to AlternativeTo

Perhaps the most exciting update we’ve released on the site was the addition of the Lists feature for users. One major thing that became increasingly clear was the interest users (and the Crew) had in being able to create their own "curated" lists of applications. Everyone on the internet, at some point in the day, is likely viewing a “Top 10 list of…” something. People find it useful to have a condensed and curated list of information or content for a given topic. So we decided to implement this type of feature into AlternativeTo.

The new Lists feature allows AlternativeTo users to create their own "lists" for a variety of contexts. Whether you want to have a “Top 10 List of Graphic Design Applications,” a “Best Applications for Saving Money,” or simply want to keep a list to remind you about applications you want to try later. We hope that the Lists update will inspire users to create quality content and share it with everyone.

The Lists update is still very new and will be updated and improved. So please try it out, use it, and give us your feedback, so we know what features we need to improve or add!

Here are some example lists to inspire you and give you an idea of what they can be used for:

• Top Cryptocurrencies to Watch Now
• Mac Apps I Used
• Got a New Mac? Install These Apps First...
• My Favorite Games of All Time
• Save Space on Your Android Device

Updates to Pricing and License Information on Application Pages

We have also updated how the pricing and license for an application or service is displayed on an application’s page. This will make it easier to find the details of an application’s license and approximate pricing.

HTTPS as Default Protocol

This year we also made updates so that AlternativeTo uses HTTPS protocol by default, rather than HTTP. Many of our users were requesting this, and we knew it was an essential and important update in order for AlternativeTo to join the ranks of other websites choosing to make HTTPS the standard by default.

If you aren’t sure about SSL or HTTPS and what this means for you as a user, here is a quick rundown of what using HTTPS by default aims to do:

• Reduces the risks of user data being leaked by encrypting all traffic between your browser and AlternativeTo.

• We hope that it shows you, the users, that AlternativeTo wants to maintain a secure environment. While we may not process credit card transactions or host extremely sensitive personal data, it is still important to maintain a high standard of security with any transmission of data online.

2018 and Beyond at AlternativeTo…

So what updates can you expect to see from AlternativeTo in 2018? Well, for starters, one thing we are going to do is update the users more often on what is happening with AlternativeTo "behind the scenes." On the AlternativeTo Blog we will be posting more regularly and periodically on updates planned for the website, address feedback from the community and users, and interesting things the AlternativeTo Crew is working on. We hope that this will keep you all, the users, more informed about the things going on with AlternativeTo and enhance our communication with the user community.

Also, we plan to improve user profiles in the upcoming months. We will wait until we are further down the roadmap before going into too many details. But you can expect that users will be able to have their profiles be more personable and able to include more information about your contributions to AlternativeTo. This may include things such as Lists you have created and your top application reviews or comments that other users have found useful.

Finally, all of us here at AlternativeTo want to say that we are extremely thankful for our driven users and contributors. We are excited to see how AlternativeTo is growing and proud to see such an enthusiastic community of users that find AlternativeTo so helpful. We hope you had a great 2017. Let's all look forward and hope for a great year to come.

We have just released the first major redesign of AlternativeTo since we launched the site back in 2009. Feel free to call it AlternativeTo v2 if you want. Anyway, here’s what’s new:

Responsive

A few years ago we launched a separate mobile version of the site. This version didn’t have all the features of the full desktop site and we always planned to make a major update to a responsive version because that is simply the best way to support all different screen sizes and devices.

And here it is. We now support most common screen sizes, and you will get more or less the same experience on any device. If anything looks or acts weird on your device then please let us know and we will do our best to improve.

Modern design and features

We wanted to keep the old feel of the site, but at the same time make it more modern. One noticeable change is that we now use different styles of Proxima Nova as our default font instead of Helvetica and Arial. We have also made most elements of their site larger. It simply looks better, and most people use larger screens with higher resolutions nowadays. We have also replaced all of our icons with modern font versions.

New and more interesting start page

The new start page features more news and more dynamic lists of new and fun apps to explore and to find alternatives to. This will most definitely continue to evolve, so let us know what you want to see on the start page in the future.

Even more

Of course there has been a ton of changes under the hood that is not worth mentioning here. If you are interested in what tools, apps and frameworks we use to build this site, then have a look at our new custom list What we use to build AlternativeTo.

We really hope you all enjoy the new site and and let us know if you have any suggestions, find any bugs or just want to give us a thumbs up!

Check out the new site right away!