There is no single free list of newly launched businesses, so you build one: search crt.sh for websites that just got their first HTTPS certificate, add your country's company register (in the UK, the Companies House advanced search), and keep only the names whose site you can open and check. Ready-made lists exist too, but how fresh they are and how well they were checked varies a lot, so it helps to know what a good one looks like either way.
What counts as a newly launched business?
Three different events get called "new business", and they can happen weeks or months apart.
| Event | What it means | Typical source | Useful for pitching? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registered | Someone filed the paperwork to form a company | Company register | Sometimes. Many never trade, or trade much later |
| Domain bought | Someone bought a website name | Newly registered domain lists | Rarely on its own. There is nothing to look at yet |
| Launched | The business is open, with a website or a public page, and a way to buy or get in touch | Certificate logs, announcements, social media | Yes. This is the moment you want |
For a freelancer selling web design, SEO, social media, ads or branding, "launched" is the event that matters. A launched business has a website you can open and find something wrong with. Owners also tend to answer faster in those first weeks, while they are still setting things up and waiting for their first customers.
A registered company with no website gives you nothing specific to say. A domain with no site behind it gives you even less. Both can still feed your list, but as names to check again later, not as leads to contact today.
Where do the names on a new business list come from?
Each source sees a different slice of new businesses at a different moment. Pick the two or three that suit your niche rather than trying to use all of them.
| Source | What you get | Cost | Main weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company registers | Company name, formation date, often an industry code | Often free to search | Registration is not launch. Addresses are often an accountant's |
| Certificate Transparency logs | A domain getting its first HTTPS certificate, close to the day its site goes live | Free to search | Lots of noise: test servers, subdomains, renewals |
| Newly registered domains | Names the day they are bought | Free or paid | Most never become a website |
| Local news and chambers of commerce | Openings, with the owner's name and story | Free | Slow, and only covers businesses that announce themselves |
| Social media | New accounts and "now open" posts | Free | Hard to filter by start date |
| Launch sites like Product Hunt | New software and apps, daily | Free | Mostly software, not local or small service businesses |
| Local licences and legal notices | New trading names and licences in some places | Free to read where published | Varies a lot by country and city |
Company registers
Most countries keep a register of companies, and some make it searchable by formation date. In the UK, Companies House has a free advanced search where you can set an incorporation date range and an industry code, and it also publishes free bulk data you can download. In the US, companies are formed at state level, so each state has its own business registry, and what you can search for free changes from state to state.
Use a register as an early warning. Keep the names that fit your niche, then search for each one again in two or three weeks. If a website has appeared, it moves onto your main list.
Certificate Transparency logs
A website needs an HTTPS certificate before it can load securely, and publicly trusted certificates are recorded in public logs as they are issued. This system is called Certificate Transparency. A domain's first certificate often lands within days of its site going live (some sites get one a little before launch), which makes the logs the closest thing to a public record of launches.
You can search them for free on crt.sh. Search a domain to see its certificates, or use % as a wildcard to find names containing a word, such as %bakery%. Keep the wildcard term specific, because broad searches are slow. Throw out subdomains like mail. or staging., and check that a domain's oldest certificate is recent, not only its latest one, because old sites renew all the time.
Newly registered domains
Daily lists of newly registered domains show names on the day they are bought, which is usually too early. If you want to try it anyway, our guide to turning newly registered domains into leads covers where to find the lists and how to filter them down.
Local news, social media and legal notices
Local papers, community newsletters, business improvement districts and chambers of commerce all announce openings. On Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, search "now open", "coming soon" or "grand opening" with your town or your niche, and look for accounts with only a few posts. In some places, new trading names or business licences are published as notices, often in a local paper or on the council's website. These sources are slow, but the names on them are almost always real, and the owner has just told the world they are open, so they are expecting to hear from people.
If you sell to online stores, new shops have their own trail, which we cover in how to find new Shopify stores.
What columns should your list have?
A list is only useful if you can act on every row without opening ten tabs. These are the columns worth keeping in a spreadsheet, and why.
| Column | Example | Why you need it |
|---|---|---|
| Business name | Fernleaf Studio | So your message uses the right name |
| Website | fernleafstudio.com | The thing you will look at and talk about |
| Launch date | First certificate on 21 October | Tells you how new it really is |
| Domain registered | 2 October | Separates new businesses from old ones on a new site |
| Niche | Florist, online shop | Lets you sort by what you sell best |
| Gap | No social preview image | The one specific thing your first message is about |
| Contact | hello@ address from the site's footer | Where the message goes |
| Source | crt.sh | Shows which source gives you the best leads over time |
| Status | To contact, sent, replied, not a fit | Stops you writing to the same person twice |
| Next step date | Follow up on 31 October | So nothing goes quiet by accident |
The two date columns do more work than they look. A domain registered last month with a first certificate this week is a new business launching. A domain registered ten years ago with a certificate this week is an established business on a new site, or with a new owner. Telling that second one it "just launched" ends the conversation, so check both dates. The registration date comes from an RDAP lookup (RDAP is the system that replaced WHOIS for generic domains like .com and .net), and the first certificate date comes from crt.sh.
The Source column pays off after a month. Count how many replies came from each source, and spend next month's time on the one that wins.
How do you check each name before it goes on the list?
Five minutes per name is enough, and it saves you writing to people who were never going to buy.
1. Is it a business?
A real lead sells something. Its site names a product or a service and gives you a way to buy, book or get in touch. Take off personal blogs, template demo sites, parked pages, and "coming soon" pages with no business name on them. Charities, churches and clubs can be lovely clients, but they rarely have budget for what you sell.
2. Is it new?
Fill in both date columns. If either one is old, mark the row and decide whether it still fits. A long established business on a brand new site can still be a good lead for SEO, but your message has to be different.
3. Can you reach a person?
Find the email the business publishes, usually in the footer, the contact page or the about page. Do not guess addresses like firstname@. A domain can accept mail while that mailbox does not exist, and every bounce hurts your sending reputation. If the only way in is a form, use the business's Instagram or LinkedIn instead.
4. What is missing that is your job?
Open the homepage, view the page source (right click, View page source), and search it with Ctrl+F or Cmd+F. Stick to things you can prove from the homepage, because a claim the owner can disprove in ten seconds loses them.
| Gap | How to check | What it costs the business |
|---|---|---|
| No meta description | No meta name="description" tag | Google writes its own snippet, which may be a cookie notice or a line of opening hours |
| No social preview image | No og:image tag | Links shared on WhatsApp, Facebook or LinkedIn show no picture, or the wrong one |
| No favicon | A blank or default icon in the browser tab | The site looks unfinished in tabs, bookmarks and search results |
| Images with no alt text | img tags with no alt, or an empty one | Screen reader users get nothing, and search engines learn less about the images |
| Old copyright year | A footer year from years ago on a site launched this week | A template nobody finished, which makes a new site look neglected |
| Pages over plain http | The site loads on http:// without moving to https:// | Browsers mark those pages as not secure |
Google's own guide to how it creates search snippets is worth reading before you pitch meta descriptions, so you describe the problem accurately.
If you cannot find one gap that matches your service, take the name off the list. It is tempting to keep a nice-looking business anyway, but you will have nothing specific to say to it.
Should you buy a list or build your own?
Both can work, as long as the names are fresh and somebody checked them.
| Build your own | Buy a ready-made list | Use a tool that finds launches | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Your time | One-off or monthly fee | Usually a monthly plan, sometimes with a free start |
| Freshness | As fresh as your last session | Depends on when it was made | Depends on how often the tool updates |
| Checked? | Yes, by you | Ask before paying | Depends on the tool |
| Gaps noted? | Yes, by you | Rarely | Some tools list them |
| Time per week | A few hours | Low, but you still check each name | Low |
Before buying any list, ask three questions. Where do the names come from? How old is the newest and the oldest name? Were the emails checked against the mail server, or just scraped? A list without clear answers to all three is a list of names to research, not a list of leads.
If you would rather skip the sorting, Vetted Leads does the certificate log part for you. It reads the logs as new sites go live and keeps the real businesses and online stores. Each lead comes dated, with the homepage gaps from the table above, and an email only appears once the business's own mail server has confirmed it exists. You can start with free contacts and no card, and browse the newest 50 leads each day for free. The pricing page has the plans, and the data sources page explains where every field comes from.
How do you keep a list of new businesses fresh?
A list of new businesses starts going stale the day you make it. A business that launched two weeks ago is a good lead. Three months later it is just a business, and someone else may already have built its site or taken on its social media. So keep the list small and turn it over often.
A weekly routine that works for most freelancers:
- Monday, 45 minutes: pull new names from your two best sources. Aim for 20 to 30 raw names.
- Monday, another 45 minutes: check each one with the four steps above. Expect to keep only some of them, and fill in every column for the ones you keep.
- Tuesday, 30 minutes: write to the best five to ten, one message each, each naming its gap.
- Friday, 15 minutes: send one follow-up to anyone who has not replied after four or five days, with something new in it.
- End of month, 20 minutes: move anything older than about six weeks to an "older" tab. Count replies by source and by gap, and drop the source that gave you nothing.
That is under three hours a week. After a month you have a short list of people who have heard from you once or twice, and your own reply counts showing which source and which gap work in your niche.
What do you send someone on your list?
Keep the first message short and about them. One detail that proves you looked, the gap and what it costs them, one small offer, and an easy way to say no. Here is one for a missing meta description, sent to a new physiotherapy clinic:
Subject: Your Google listing, Northgate Physio
Hi Sam,
Congratulations on opening Northgate Physio. The page about sports injury rehab is really clear.
One thing I noticed: the homepage has no meta description, so Google picks its own text from the page to show under your name in search results, and it may not say what you treat or where you are.
I write these for small clinics. Reply and I will send you three versions to choose from, free, and you can paste in whichever you like.
If someone already handles this for you, just ignore me.
Priya
If there is no reply after four or five days, send one short follow-up with the three versions written out anyway, so they can see the work. Then mark the row and move on.
What mistakes make a new business list useless?
- Leaving out the dates. Without a launch date on every row you cannot tell new from old, and old names creep in.
- Skipping the gap column. If you cannot say what is missing, you end up sending the same pitch to everyone.
- Collecting too many names. A thousand rows you never get through is worse than 30 you actually contact.
- Treating registrations as launches. A company formed last week with no website is a name to check later, not a lead to email today.
- Guessing emails. They bounce, and bounces make it harder to reach the people you do want.
- Never cleaning it. Move old rows out monthly, or the list slowly fills with businesses that stopped being new a while ago.
Open a spreadsheet with the ten columns above, pick one source, and get five checked names on it today. Our guide to finding new businesses online in their launch week goes deeper on each source when you are ready to add a second.
Questions people ask
Where can I get a list of newly launched businesses?
There is no single list. Company registers show new companies, the public certificate logs show new websites going live, and local news, social media and launch sites show openings. Most people build their own list from two or three of these and check each name before contacting it. Tools that read the certificate logs can do that checking for you.
Is there a free list of new businesses?
Several free sources exist, but none is a finished list. Some company registers, such as Companies House in the UK, can be searched for free by incorporation date. crt.sh lets you search the certificate logs for free. Local papers and chambers of commerce publish openings. You still have to collect, date and check the names yourself.
What is the difference between a newly registered business and a newly launched one?
A registered business has filed the paperwork to exist as a company. A launched business is open and selling, usually with a website and a way to contact it. Many registered companies never trade, or trade months later, so a list of launches is usually more useful for selling services than a list of registrations.
How fresh should a list of new businesses be?
For selling web, SEO or marketing work, the first few weeks after launch are the best time to reach out, because the owner is still setting things up. A name that launched three months ago is no longer new, and it may already have hired someone. Date every row and drop or move the ones that age out.
Should I buy a list of new businesses?
Check how the list was made before you pay. Ask where the names come from, how old they are, and whether the emails were checked. A cheap list of old or unchecked names costs you time and bounces. Building a small list yourself, or using a tool that dates and checks each lead, is often better value.
How many businesses should be on my list?
Fewer than you think. A list of 20 to 50 checked names that fit your niche, each with a gap you can name, will usually do more for you than a thousand raw names you never get through. Add to it every week rather than building one huge list at the start.