A partner or integrations directory is one of the highest-intent pages a software company can own. When someone searches “[your product] integrations” or “[your product] partners,” they’re a warm prospect looking for one more reason to buy. So we pulled the search data on companies running that page through PartnerPage — and found the same quiet problem, over and over.
The setup: a directory you don’t quite own
PartnerPage is hosted software. On standard plans, your directory renders on PartnerPage’s own infrastructure — either on a subdomain you point at them with a CNAME record (like partners.yourcompany.com), or fronted by a CDN path — rather than as native pages inside your own CMS. On enterprise plans a customer can serve the directory under their own root domain — and the biggest ones do: Zapier runs its PartnerPage directory at zapier.com/partnerdirectory and Apollo at apollo.io/product/integrations, not on a partnerpage.io subdomain. But that takes an enterprise tier plus a CDN reverse proxy or custom API build — real engineering work most smaller teams skip, which is why the subdomain stays the default.
To their credit, PartnerPage is candid about the trade-off in its own help center: it notes that a subdomain “would be considered net new” for indexing, and recommends the CDN setup instead so that directory traffic is “indexable under the main domain.” In other words, they know the subdomain route doesn’t build your root domain’s authority the way native pages would.
What we found
Here’s the catch: many PartnerPage customers are on exactly the subdomain setup those docs warn about. A few real examples, with estimated monthly search volume from Ahrefs (July 2026):
| Ranking for… | Est. searches/mo | Who ranks — and where |
|---|---|---|
| “the jay group” | 1,300 | Loop, #3 — on loop.partnerpage.io |
| “nri distribution” | 800 | Loop, #1 — on loop.partnerpage.io |
| “dripjobs” | 1,300 | DripJobs — on dripjobs.partnerpage.io |
| “cin7 integrations” | 200 | Cin7 — on cin7.partnerpage.io |
Every one of those is a genuine win — these companies rank well for valuable, high-intent terms. Look at the URL, though. The pages live on loop.partnerpage.io, not loop.com. All the authority those subdomain-hosted rankings earn accrues to partnerpage.io — not to the company that earned it.
Why that’s a quiet, expensive problem
Search authority compounds on the domain that hosts the content. When your best-performing pages live on a vendor’s subdomain:
- The link equity and topical authority build your vendor’s domain, not yours.
- If you ever leave the platform, the pages — and their rankings — go with it. You’re left with nothing on your own site.
- Even PartnerPage’s recommended CDN path still serves the pages from their infrastructure: you don’t control the HTML, the structured data, or the canonical tags.
At $500/month for PartnerPage’s Growth plan (list price, July 2026), that’s a premium price to build someone else’s SEO.
This isn’t a knock on these companies
To be clear: the companies above made a perfectly reasonable call. PartnerPage is quick to launch and looks polished. The issue isn’t them — it’s the model. And it isn’t rare: we identified dozens of companies running their directory on a partnerpage.io subdomain, each quietly handing their directory’s SEO to their vendor.
The fix: put the page on your own domain
If a directory is worth ranking, it’s worth ranking on your domain. The alternative is straightforward: build it natively on your own site, so every integration or partner becomes an indexable page you own — yourcompany.com/integrations/… — with the structured data, canonicals, and SEO equity staying with you for good.
That’s exactly what we built Integrations Directory to do: a WordPress plugin that turns your integration list into a searchable, schema-rich directory hosted natively on your site, from $16.59/month. If you’re weighing the two, here’s a full, honest side-by-side: Integrations Directory vs PartnerPage →
Sources & disclosure
PartnerPage pricing and hosting model: partnerpage.io and the PartnerPage help center (as of July 2026). Search volumes, rankings, and hosting confirmed via Ahrefs and live pages (July 2026). PartnerPage is a trademark of its respective owner; this is an independent analysis and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by PartnerPage.