Software Category Finder — Vendors & Companies Using Software

Every software category is a market map waiting to be drawn: who sells in it, how they are rated, what they charge — and on the other side, who buys it and what they wish it did better. Sales teams need the first half to build competitive and partner lists; they need the second half to find companies already paying for a tool like theirs.

This Actor draws both halves from public software directories, as clean rows: the vendors in a category (product, website, domain, ratings and review counts from every directory that lists it, entry price, pricing model, free trial, industries) and the reviewers of a product (name, title, company, rating, what they like, what they dislike, what they switched from).

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Who it is for

• Outbound and partnerships teams — a category is an account list: every vendor with its domain, ready for enrichment, and every reviewer's company as a warm "already buys software like this" lead.
• AI / GTM agents — one call, a flat dataset, no login and no key. product, website, domain, rating, reviewCount, entryPrice on every vendor row; reviewerCompany, rating, dislikes, switchedFrom on every review row.
• Product marketing and competitive intelligence — the full field in a category, rated and priced side by side, with each directory's rating kept apart so you know which number you are quoting.
• Investors and analysts — market sizing by vendor count, pricing tiers and review momentum.
• Founders — see who you are up against before you position, and read what their customers complain about.

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What you get

Vendors mode — one row per product

{
  "product": "Pipedrive",
  "vendorCompany": "Pipedrive Inc.",
  "website": "https://www.pipedrive.com/",
  "domain": "pipedrive.com",
  "category": "CRM Software",
  "tagline": "Streamline your sales process: comprehensive, automated, and data-driven.",
  "rating": 4.4,
  "reviewCount": 5284,
  "ratingSource": "directory-b",
  "ratings": {
    "directory-a": { "rating": 4.4, "reviews": 29, "rank": 3, "url": "…" },
    "directory-b": { "rating": 4.4, "reviews": 5284, "score": 92, "rank": 2, "url": "…" },
    "launch-community": { "rating": 4.9, "reviews": 20, "followers": 900, "rank": 7, "url": "…" }
  },
  "entryPrice": "$14 Per Month",
  "pricingModel": "Per User",
  "freeTrial": "14 Days",
  "industries": ["Accounting", "Financial services", "Logistics"],
  "sources": ["directory-a", "directory-b", "launch-community"],
  "sourceCount": 3,
  "rank": 2
}

The same product listed by three directories is one row. Each directory's rating and review count is kept under ratings — never averaged — and the headline rating / reviewCount come from the directory with the most reviews, named in ratingSource.

Reviewers mode — one row per review

{
  "product": "Zoho CRM",
  "reviewer": "Davin Joseph",
  "reviewerTitle": "CEO",
  "reviewerCompany": "My Enamel Pins",
  "rating": 4,
  "sentiment": "positive",
  "reviewTitle": "Great integrations with other services",
  "reviewText": "…",
  "likes": "Workflow automation and the mobile app.",
  "dislikes": "Reporting could be more flexible.",
  "switchedFrom": null,
  "usageLength": "1 Years",
  "date": "2023-03-20",
  "sourceUrl": "…"
}

Set maxRating to 3 and you have the unhappy customers of a competitor — with their company on the row.

Two dataset views are built in: Vendors and Reviews.

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How to use it

You want	Set
Every vendor in a category	mode: vendors, categories: CRM, Email Marketing, …
The established players first	sort: most-reviewed (default)
The best-rated products (5+ reviews)	sort: best-rated
Only vendors with a website on the row	requireWebsite: true
Who reviews a product	mode: reviewers, products: Zoho CRM, HubSpot, …
Only critical reviews	maxRating: 3

Category and product names are matched on the directories themselves; a directory URL works too. Anything that cannot be found is reported in the run summary under notFound, never invented.

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Accuracy, on purpose

• Every field is read from a directory page. A field the directory did not show is null.
• Ratings from different directories are never combined into one number.
• A product is merged across directories only when the website domain matches, or the name matches once the category's own words are removed ("Pipedrive CRM" = "Pipedrive"). Same name, different site = two rows.
• sentiment is derived from the reviewer's own star rating (4–5 positive, 3 neutral, 1–2 negative) — not guessed from the text.
• No login, no API key, no browser. A few pages per category.

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Cost

Vendors mode: pay per vendor row. Reviewers mode: pay per review row. Plus the platform's start fee. Duplicates, rows removed by your filters and empty runs are never charged; the caps limit both rows and spend.

Pairs well with

• Company Enrichment — turn every vendor domain into firmographics and a tech stack.
• Technology Lookup — find the companies running a product from the category.
• Decision-Maker Finder and Email Finder & Verifier — from a reviewer's company to a verified inbox.
• Switch-Intent Finder — the unhappy reviewers of your competitors, scored and ready for outreach.