7 Directory Website Examples That Charge Businesses (2026)

A directory website sounds simple. You list businesses or professionals, people search them, and someone pays. The part that decides whether the site earns anything is who pays and what they get for it, and the answer changes a lot from niche to niche.

So this collection looks at seven directories that charge the people they list. Three are big names. Four are niche sites a small team could realistically build and run: a doula finder, a vetted wedding vendor list, a Black-owned business directory and a mediator directory. We opened every site and checked it on 3 October 2026, and each price below comes from the site's own pricing or join page.

Yelp and Yellow Pages are missing on purpose. Both blocked our browser with a bot check that day, so we couldn't confirm anything about them first-hand.

At a glance

Psychology Today

Psychology Today runs the best-known therapist directory in the US. The Austin page we opened says it has 3,000+ therapists, and every card shows a photo, the therapist's licence, how many colleagues have endorsed them, a short personal statement, a phone number and an Email button. Four quick filters sit at the top. All Filters opens the long list, which covers issues treated, therapy types, insurance plans, price, age group, language, faith and identity.

The profile pages work like a short sales page. The one we read showed the fee per session, sliding scale availability, insurance status, cards accepted, a Texas licence number marked "Verified by Psychology Today" and an offer of a free 15 minute call. Contact goes straight to the therapist.

Therapists pay a flat $29.95 a month with no contract, according to the sign-up page. That page also says 971,000 unique users browse the US directory each week. One plan for everyone is easy to sell and easy to explain.

DoulaMatch

DoulaMatch.net has been running since 2008, going by its footer, and it does one job well. The main search asks for the type of doula, birth or postpartum, then the due date and a ZIP code. Doulas keep an availability calendar and set how far they'll travel. A search only returns doulas who are free on that date and willing to come to that ZIP code.

The city lists are just as practical. Austin had 16 doulas when we looked. Each card shows the birth fee, the postpartum hourly rate, years in practice, the number of client testimonials and the date the profile was last updated. The top card had been updated on 2 October, the day before.

Doulas pay $25 a year for their first three years and $40 a year from year four, says the fee schedule. Black and Indigenous doulas pay $15 a year. The fees are tiny on purpose, since a cheap annual charge gets almost every working doula in a city to join. The site also lists doula trainings and childbirth classes.

Clutch

Clutch lists agencies and software firms for businesses that want to hire one. Its web design category said 97,850 companies on the day we checked. You filter by location, services, client budget, hourly rate and industry. Every card shows a star rating, the number of reviews, the minimum project size, the hourly rate, team size and a bar showing how the firm splits its work.

The pricing sits on the Get Listed page and comes in three layers. A Basic profile is free, but it gets no link to the firm's website from directory pages and no priority over other unverified firms. Verified costs $499 a year and adds the website link, the badge and placement above non-verified providers. Advertisers buy sponsored spots on custom pricing, and those cards are marked Sponsored.

Clutch says more than 12 million buyers use it to search. The category page also carries a short line saying Clutch may earn a fee for some placements. If you sell placement on your own directory, a note like that keeps visitors trusting the rest of the page.

Junebug Weddings

Junebug Weddings is a wedding blog with a vendor directory attached, and what it sells is a limited number of places. Each list is one category in one city, such as wedding photographers in Austin, and the page says Junebug hand-picks no more than 20 vendors for each list. Couples choose a location and a vendor type from two drop-downs and get a grid of portfolio photos.

A vendor profile has photos, an About section, how many years the vendor has been with Junebug and a "Junebug Promise" block that ticks off work quality, reviews, experience and inclusivity. Couples reach the vendor with a Contact Vendor or Get Custom Quote button.

Vendors apply first and hear back within ten business days. Accepted vendors sign a 12-month contract at $25 to $150 a month, depending on location and vendor type, according to the membership page. Members also get priority for features on the blog and Junebug's social channels.

Checkatrade

Checkatrade is the name most people in the UK know for finding a builder, plumber or electrician. A search for plumbers in Bristol returned a little over 40 trades. Each result shows a score out of 10 with the review count, a short list of services, a Request a quote button and a Show phone number button. A banner above the results says every job is backed by a £1,000 guarantee, terms applying.

Trades pay a monthly membership, and there's no public price list. On the join page you pick your trade, the postcode areas you want to cover and how many leads you'd like a year. Then you pass an ID, address and documents check before leads start. Memberships run for 12 months. The same page also sells sponsored listings and space in a print directory.

So the price follows the value of the area and the lead volume, which a flat fee can't do.

Support Black Owned

Support Black Owned is a directory of Black-owned businesses, from soul food restaurants and lawyers to payroll firms and pest control. The restaurants category had 352 results when we looked. The sidebar filters by category, star rating, business type, country, region and city, and you can switch the results between grid, list and map.

Of the seven, it has the clearest freemium ladder. A basic listing costs nothing. PRO is $19 a month, Featured $49, SmartBoost $89 and SmartBoost Elite $129, with a discount for paying yearly. Featured puts the business at the top of its category and on the homepage. The two SmartBoost tiers add monthly SEO articles and social media posts written for the business.

The site also has a small shop and runs display ads. It's built on Joomla with a directory extension, so none of this depends on WordPress.

Mediate.com

Mediate.com has listed mediators for a long time, and its copyright line runs from 1996 to 2026. Clients search by type of matter, which runs from divorce and elder care to construction, patents and pet disputes, plus a city, state or postal code and a last name. There are also quick lists by state and city and by practice area.

The profiles are long. The one we read had a phone number, website, email button, a full biography, education and certificates, and a list of practice areas.

Here the listing is one benefit of a professional membership. Core costs $9 a month, Premium $39 and Featured $69, or $90, $390 and $690 a year. The membership page lists a directory profile, featured placement on the homepage and in search results, a weekly newsletter, live Zoom events and member articles among the benefits. The site runs a job board too, and sells courses through Mediate University. New articles were going up in September 2026.

Build your own

Put the seven side by side and the same pieces keep turning up. Every one charges the people listed and keeps search free for visitors. The search is built around the visitor's actual question, whether that's a due date, a type of dispute or a project budget. Listing pages answer price and contact questions before anyone has to call. And each site gives a reason to trust the list, through licence checks, vetting, verified reviews or a hard cap on numbers.

Where they differ is the pricing model. Psychology Today and DoulaMatch charge one flat fee. Clutch and Support Black Owned give the basic listing away and sell visibility on top. Junebug sells scarcity, Checkatrade sells lead volume by postcode, and Mediate.com folds the listing into a membership.

On WordPress there are two ways to build something like this.

The first is a directory plugin on top of a theme you already have. GeoDirectory, Directorist and Business Directory Plugin are the best-known free ones on WordPress.org, each with at least 10,000 active installs and an update in the past two weeks. All three are free to start and sell add-ons for extra features. You'll spend time making the listing and search pages match your theme, and paid extras can add up as you go. We go through the trade-offs in more depth in our post on a directory theme versus a plugin.

The second is a theme built as a directory, where listings, search, accounts and payments come in one package. There's less to assemble. You're also tied to how that theme does things.

Our Directory Theme takes the second route. In the released 12.0.49 build you create listing plans with a price and a duration, and a plan can be set to recurring. When a member picks a paid plan, the listing waits as a draft until payment goes through, then it publishes and expires when the plan ends. You can also sell user memberships and banner space in eight ad zones, from the header to the gap between search results.

Search covers keyword, category, price range, minimum star rating and distance from a postcode, and results reload in place without a full page refresh. Listings get star reviews, opening hours with an Open now badge and a map that uses OpenStreetMap by default. If you seed the site from a CSV, TSV or XML import, real owners can press Claim this business, and you approve or refuse the claim. There are 42 homepage designs across 14 directory niches.

It has real gaps. A paid plan can switch on a highlighted border in search results, but the featured ribbon and featured-first sort are set by the admin per listing, so you can't sell them as an automatic upgrade yet. There's nothing like Checkatrade's pay-per-lead model. The theme outputs no review schema, so star ratings won't show in Google without an SEO plugin, and owners can't reply to reviews in public. Stripe, PayPal and other gateways are separate plugins, free for members. The licence is $99 once for unlimited sites you own, with six months of updates and then $49 per six months.

Final thoughts

If you're starting small in a niche of people who work alone, study DoulaMatch first. Its search by date and travel range is the feature to copy, and its low annual fee shows how to sign up a whole city quickly. Psychology Today is the same idea at scale, with richer profiles and a monthly price.

For a niche where quality matters more than coverage, look at Junebug Weddings. A capped list only works if you really vet, but it lets you charge more per vendor.

Planning a general or community directory? Support Black Owned shows the free-to-paid ladder in full, and Clutch shows how to keep paid placement honest with a label. Checkatrade and Mediate.com are best read as later-stage ideas. Pricing by lead volume and bundling a listing with training both come once you have members who already trust you.

FAQ

Sources

• Psychology Today sign-up page and Austin therapist search.
• DoulaMatch doula profile fee schedule and Austin doula list.
• Clutch Get Listed page and web design category.
• Junebug Weddings vendor membership page.
• Checkatrade join page and Bristol plumber search.
• Support Black Owned plans.
• Mediate.com membership page.
• WordPress.org: GeoDirectory, Directorist and Business Directory Plugin, with installs and update dates from the WordPress.org plugins API.
• Reddit r/Wordpress threads asking how to build one: Looking for recommendations for a directory site and Best "Business Directory" plug-in, theme or software?
• PremiumPress Directory Theme. Features are described from the released 12.0.49 build.

Checked on 3 October 2026.