Hotfrog Business Listing, Superpages, Cylex: Worth It?

A Hotfrog business listing is a free profile on hotfrog.com that you create with an email account, a company name and an address, then confirm with an ownership check, according to Hotfrog’s own support center. Our take: do Hotfrog and Cylex, keep MerchantCircle and EZlocal as optional, treat Superpages as part of the Thryv network you reach through Yellow Pages, and skip ShowMeLocal until its add-business form actually opens for you. None of them is a ranking lever. Their job is to hold your name, address and phone number consistently in public. This page covers six directories people search for together: what each says it offers today, what it sells on top, how to add or claim a free listing, and whether it earns ten minutes.

How we researched this, and what we could not open

Every platform claim below comes from the directory’s own pages, read in November 2026. Five of the six sites made that hard. Hotfrog’s home page and a US claim page opened, but on our final re-check its support center and legal pages returned HTTP 403, so for those two we rely on search-result excerpts of the pages themselves. Cylex’s US FAQ and Premium Entry pages opened. MerchantCircle’s home page, merchant store and help pages opened, but its sign-up page returned an access-denied response. EZlocal’s help center opened, but its home and pricing pages returned a security check. Superpages answered our research tools with a block page on every address we tried. ShowMeLocal’s home page served only a “Security Verification” check that says it protects the site from automated traffic.

Where a page would not open, we say so and rely on the nearest official page (for Superpages, Thryv’s own pages), never on a guess. Prices appear only where a page showed one, with the date and the link.

Hotfrog, Superpages, Cylex, MerchantCircle, EZlocal and ShowMeLocal at a glance

Directory	Who runs it, per its own pages	Free listing	Paid on top	Our verdict
Hotfrog	Locafy Ltd (Hotfrog’s legal pages)	Yes, “absolutely free”	Hotfrog AdVantage, optional, USD 10.00 a month on a US claim page	Yes, ten minutes
Superpages	Thryv (Thryv’s own pages)	Not confirmed on Superpages itself	Thryv advertising products	Do it through your Yellow Pages claim
Cylex	Country editions; operator not named on the pages we read	Yes, registration is free	Premium Entry, $11.90 a month	Yes, ten minutes
MerchantCircle	Buyerlink Inc. (home page footer)	Yes, per its home page	Premium Listing, Web Sync, Hero Ads	Maybe, if your category fits
EZlocal	Not stated on the pages we could open	Yes, per its help center	Dash Pro and Dash Premium	Maybe, check the sign-up opens
ShowMeLocal	SHOWMELOCAL Inc (page footer)	Could not read	Could not read	Skip for now

In our own catalog, Hotfrog is labelled free (the listing is free, and paid AdVantage is an optional extra) with a domain rating of 78 in our records (a third-party backlink metric, not a Google number), and its country editions for the UK, Ireland, India, Hong Kong, Japan and Poland are in the catalog too. MerchantCircle (free, DR 73), EZlocal (free, DR 58) and ShowMeLocal (free, DR 78) are in the catalog but marked inactive. Cylex Australia is active in our catalog, while the German-run international edition is labelled paid and inactive. Superpages is not in our catalog under that name.

Hotfrog: free profile vs Hotfrog AdVantage

Hotfrog’s About page says Hotfrog is now part of Locafy Ltd and continues to operate as Hotfrog Pty Ltd across dozens of countries (its About page and a Hotfrog support page give two different counts, so treat any number as approximate). Its legal pages and support center footers say it is owned and operated by Locafy Ltd. The hotfrog.com home page footer separately prints “Business data © 2026 fate16 Ltd”, and none of the pages explains how those two names relate, so we state both and no more.

	Free profile	Hotfrog AdVantage
Cost	Free	Paid, optional; USD 10.00 a month on a US claim page at the time of writing (November 2026)
What it is	A directory profile for your business	A targeted ad plus an advertising-free page for your business, per Hotfrog
Billing	None	No up-front fees, cancel any time, charged on the same date each month, per Hotfrog’s support pages
Locations	Up to ten listings at no charge per organization	More than ten needs Hotfrog’s API service for a “modest fee”

Hotfrog’s support center answers the “what’s the catch” question directly: the profile is absolutely free, the upgraded paid option exists, and there is no obligation to sign up. On the US claim page we read, the choice is a “Claim for Free” button or a “Select Plan” button for AdVantage at USD 10.00 a month, described there as unlimited clicks and calls, a spot at the top of search results for your chosen keywords, and cancel at any time. That figure came from one listing’s claim page, so confirm it on the screen you are shown before paying.

How to add or claim a Hotfrog business listing

Hotfrog’s support article gives these steps:

1. Click “Add Business” on hotfrog.com. It opens the login and registration page. Click “Don’t have an Account?”.
2. Enter your email and click “Get started”. Hotfrog sends a confirmation email.
3. Verify the email and set a password. The link opens in a new tab.
4. Fill in the basic profile. Company name and address, then click “Find address” to pin the location on the map.
5. Submit the profile.
6. Click “Verify now” to verify ownership. The article says to complete the account setup for the company submission.

Search first. Hotfrog’s support center says its data may have come from public records, websites, commercial data suppliers or other companies in the Hotfrog group, so your business may already have a profile. Hotfrog’s US listing pages carry a claim page that offers a free claim (“Claim for Free”) or the paid plan, so if your business already appears, claim it there instead of creating a second one. The claim page we read describes no verification method. Our guide to finding and fixing duplicate listings covers what to do if you end up with two.

Verification. Hotfrog’s article names the “Verify now” step and nothing about its method (code, call or document), and the claim page we read is silent too, so follow whatever the screen asks on the day.

Edit or delete a Hotfrog listing

• Edit: Hotfrog’s About page says its support team does not change business listings, and that additions, alterations and deletions cannot be done over the phone or by email. Use the links on the listing and your dashboard.
• Delete: per the support article, log in, open “Basic Details” from the dashboard, scroll to the bottom, click “Inactive”, choose “Ceased trading” and click “Submit Report”. That is a status change, so expect a review, and the page does not give a timeline.
• Personal data: the support center says to use the Contact Us form to reach its Privacy Officer.

Superpages: a Thryv brand, not a separate sign-up we could confirm

Superpages blocked every research request we sent, so we could not click through its claim form. What Thryv itself says is narrower. Its extended search solutions page says online business listings “will appear on Yellowpages.com, Superpages.com, Dexknows.com” and that the footer notes free plans have limited functionality. It shows no plan prices and does not describe a Superpages claim form.

Our reading, flagged as inference: a Thryv listing is the way into the Superpages network, so claim once at Yellow Pages and then search Superpages for your name a few days later. Our Yellow Pages business listing guide walks through Thryv’s four-step free claim.

Cylex: free entry, Premium Entry at $11.90 a month

Cylex runs separate country sites, and the US FAQ is the clearest official page we could read. It says adding your company is “completely free and easy”: click Register on the home page, create a user account, sign in, then choose “Register business” and enter your details.

	Standard (free)	Premium Entry
Cost, at the time of writing (November 2026)	Free	$11.90 a month, or $9.90 a month billed yearly (excluding tax)
Search position	Normal	Top position in Cylex results
Profile	”Max. 5” images and products (our reading of the page’s table)	Ad-free profile with no nearby competitors, higher image and product limits
Reach	Your locality	Nearby localities, 50 km extended search radius
Extras	Basic profile	Extended listings on its sister sites FindOpen, Firmania and Yably; the page also lists a Cylex Trusted certificate, though its table does not make clear that this is Premium-only

The Premium Entry page lists $11.90 a month (the $9.90 yearly rate is in the FAQ, not on that page) and marks a few features, such as a branded profile URL, as annual only. It does not state renewal or cancellation terms in the text we read, so check those at checkout. Cylex’s UK site shows £11.90 a month excluding VAT on its own Premium page.

Edit and delete: per the US FAQ, open your company profile, click “Report incorrect data”, then “Edit your page” (if you have claimed it) or “Claim this business” (if you have not). Changes are reviewed by a Cylex employee before they go live. To delete, use “Report incorrect data” then “Remove Listing”; only Cylex staff can complete it.

MerchantCircle: free listing, paid store

MerchantCircle’s home page says “Set up your free listing in under 5 minutes.” Its footer names Buyerlink Inc. as the parent, while an older About Us page on the same site calls it “a proud member of the Reply! Inc. family”. We cannot tell which is current, so we quote each as written.

Its merchant store showed these prices at the time of writing (November 2026):

Product	Price shown	What the page says
Premium Listing	$30 a month (with $40 crossed out, “limited time offer”)	Featured at the top of the search page, up to 5 locations, no ads on your page
Web Sync	$10 a month, billed annually	Updates your listing across 90+ publisher partners
Hero Ads	$19.95 a month	Extra promotion for your brand
Premium Cities	$2.50 a month	Extra cities where you appear

Our sign-up was not testable: the sign-up page returned an access-denied response to our research tool, so we cannot tell you what the form asks for.

Remove: a MerchantCircle article on removal says it is free. If you have an account, log in, go to My Account, Account Settings, follow the steps and confirm by email (about 48 hours). If you never registered, click “Claim this listing” on the page, create the account and then do the same. The article also lists a removal form and says deletion can take up to 2 weeks.

EZlocal: free web listing, paid Dash software

EZlocal’s help center says yes, it offers a free business listing on its web directory, plus a 14-day trial of its Dash software. The paid side is Dash Pro (syncing data across 40+ directories and apps) and Dash Premium (adds data aggregators, Google Business Profile tools, and AI content generation), plus a full-service team. That page states no prices and points to a pricing page that returned a security check to our tool, so we print none.

Its step-by-step guide says: open the free business listing page, click “Create Your Free Business Listing” (or “Claim Listing” if your business already appears), search by exact name and phone, create an account if asked, enter name, address, phone, website, category and hours, write a description, then verify by text, call or email. The help center lists articles on claimed-listing problems and cancellation, but none on deleting a listing, so contact EZlocal for that.

ShowMeLocal: could not be read

ShowMeLocal’s home page shows “Security Verification” and says it protects the site from automated traffic, with a 2026 copyright for SHOWMELOCAL Inc. Past that wall we saw nothing, so we cannot report whether a free listing exists, what is paid or how to remove one. A ShowMeLocal visitor on a normal browser may see more. Until you can open its add-business form and read the terms, the safe verdict is skip it.

Do these directories help local SEO?

No independent source we found publishes any of these six as a confirmed Google ranking factor, so the honest answer is hedged. What is defensible: each is a public record of your name, address and phone, and search engines and AI assistants compare those records to decide whether your identity is stable. Domain rating in our records (78 for Hotfrog, 73 for MerchantCircle, 58 for EZlocal, 78 for ShowMeLocal) describes backlink strength, not ranking power. The paid tiers add placement inside the directory, not in Google. Run the free NAP checker after you finish to see which versions of your details disagree.

The ten-minute order we would use

1. Hotfrog, then Cylex: both state a free listing.
2. Superpages through your Thryv or Yellow Pages claim, not a separate form.
3. MerchantCircle and EZlocal if the sign-up opens and your category fits. MerchantCircle’s home page categories lean toward Autos, Home & Garden, Legal & Financial, Education, Professional Services and Real Estate.
4. ShowMeLocal only once you can read its form.

Match name, address and phone to your website character for character, save each profile URL and re-search a week later. Pricing and phone numbers on these sites change; our free business listing sites roundup and Manta guide show the same free-versus-paid pattern.

Common mistakes

• Buying an upgrade to “get listed”. Every free listing above exists without one.
• Creating a second profile. Hotfrog says a profile may already have been assembled from public records and commercial data suppliers; search before you create.
• Trusting one price. Cylex’s own pages show $11.90 and $9.90 depending on billing; confirm at checkout.
• Ignoring other countries. Hotfrog runs country editions; a UK or Indian business should use its own edition. See our United Kingdom and United States lists, or pick your country and industry in the local citation finder.