I’m building a SaaS for engineers and want to publish on sites developers actually read

Absolutely — for an engineering SaaS, the best “sites developers actually read” are usually a mix of:

1. community news / discussions
2. engineering blogs with strong credibility
3. dev tool directories / marketplaces
4. podcasts / newsletters / niche communities

Here’s a practical shortlist by category:

High-signal developer communities

These are the places where engineers actually pay attention and discuss tools.

• Hacker News – best for technical products, launch posts, deep technical stories
• Reddit – especially:
  • r/programming
  • r/devops
  • r/webdev
  • r/selfhosted
  • r/ExperiencedDevs
  • niche language/framework subs
• Dev.to – good for educational content and product-led technical posts
• Indie Hackers – more founder/startup focused, but many devs read it
• Product Hunt – strong for launch visibility, especially if the product is easy to understand
• Lobsters – smaller than HN, but very technical and skeptical in a good way

Engineering publications / blogs developers trust

Good for guest posts, sponsored content, or earned media if you have something technical to say.

• InfoQ
• The New Stack
• DZone
• Smashing Magazine if relevant to frontend/dev experience
• CSS-Tricks if frontend-specific
• Auth0 / AWS / HashiCorp / Segment / Cloudflare blogs as reference models for content style

Developer-focused newsletters

Useful if you want recurring exposure rather than a one-time spike.

• JavaScript Weekly
• Python Weekly
• Go Weekly
• DevOps Weekly
• Frontend Focus
• Hacker Newsletter
• TLDR
• The Pragmatic Engineer (highly respected, though hard to get into)

Developer directories / marketplaces

Very effective if your SaaS fits a category.

• GitHub Marketplace
• Atlassian Marketplace
• Visual Studio Marketplace
• JetBrains Marketplace
• AWS Marketplace
• Docker Hub / Docker extensions ecosystem
• npm / PyPI / crates.io adjacent ecosystem pages if relevant
• AlternativeTo
• StackShare
• OpenAlternative
• SaaSHub and similar directories

Communities where engineers gather around specific stacks

These can outperform broad tech sites if your product is niche.

• Discord communities for specific stacks/frameworks
• Slack communities for DevOps, data, frontend, security, etc.
• GitHub Discussions in relevant open-source projects
• Framework ecosystems:
  • React
  • Next.js
  • Vue
  • Kubernetes
  • Terraform
  • Rust
  • Python
  • Go
  • .NET
  • Java

Best content types for these audiences

To get traction, don’t lead with “here’s our SaaS.” Lead with value:

• technical teardown or benchmark
• “how we solved X”
• migration story
• architecture deep dive
• performance comparison
• security or reliability lessons
• open-source companion project
• free tool / calculator / generator
• “what we learned building…”

Recommended approach

If your goal is reach + credibility, I’d prioritize:

1. Hacker News
2. Dev.to
3. Product Hunt
4. Relevant subreddit/community
5. A niche newsletter
6. A technical guest post on a respected blog
7. Marketplace/directories relevant to your stack

Quick question

If you tell me:

• what your SaaS does
• who the target engineer is
• what stack/category it fits into

…I can give you a ranked list of the best sites and communities specifically for your product, plus suggested post angles for each.