Most software round-ups do not tell you how they were made. We think that is the single most useful thing a reader can know, because it tells you how much weight to give the recommendation. So here is our process in full, including its limits.
What our articles are
Our articles are desk research and comparative analysis. We read the vendor's own documentation and pricing pages, follow the product changelogs and release announcements, and read what credible independent sources report. We then organise that into a structured comparison and give an opinion about which type of team each tool actually suits.
That is a genuinely useful job — vendor pricing pages are designed to sell, not to be compared side by side, and putting six of them into one consistent table saves a reader real time. But it is a specific job, and it is not the same as a hands-on lab review.
What our articles are not
We want to be blunt here, because this is where a lot of software content quietly misleads people:
- We do not run benchmarks. If you see a load time, an accuracy percentage or a throughput figure on this site, it is attributed to its source. We do not generate our own.
- We do not claim to have tested every tool in every article. Where an article is based on documentation and public sources rather than sustained personal use, it is research, and we describe it as such.
- We do not invent user statistics or survey data. No "we surveyed 500 teams" unless we actually did, which so far we have not.
- We do not accept payment for a ranking or a favourable verdict. See our disclaimer for how the site is funded.
If a competitor's article claims hands-on testing of twenty products, it is worth asking how one person credibly did that. We would rather tell you what we actually did.
Where pricing comes from
Every price we quote is taken from the vendor's own public pricing page at the time the article was written or last updated. We record:
- The plan name exactly as the vendor names it, so you can find it again.
- Whether the figure is the monthly or the annual-billing rate — these often differ by 20% or more, and articles that omit this are effectively quoting a discount as if it were the standard price.
- Any minimum seat count, which can make a cheap-looking per-seat price much more expensive in practice.
Pricing changes often, and we are not always the first to notice. Every article shows when its pricing was last checked. Treat our figure as a starting point for comparison and confirm the current number with the vendor before you buy. If you find a price on this site that is out of date, please tell us — we will correct it and update the check date.
How we choose which tools to include
We include a tool when it meets at least one of these: it is a market leader that readers will expect to see compared; it is the strongest option for a specific, well-defined use case; or it is meaningfully cheaper than the leaders while remaining viable. We leave tools out when they are effectively abandoned, when pricing is entirely hidden behind a sales call with no public reference point, or when they duplicate an option we already cover with no distinguishing strength.
We do not aim for a fixed number in a headline. If a category genuinely has three tools worth your attention, the article covers three.
How we use AI, and where a person is responsible
We use AI tools to help with research and first drafts. We are not going to pretend otherwise, because the honest disclosure matters more than the appearance of purity. What AI does not do here is decide anything: every article is read line by line, checked against the source, edited, and given its point of view by a named human editor before it is published. Nothing goes live automatically, and a real person is accountable for every claim on this site.
How we handle corrections
We would rather be corrected than be wrong quietly. If you find an error — a stale price, a feature that no longer exists, a plan limit we got wrong — contact us. Substantive corrections are made in the article itself and the update date is changed so you can see the page has moved.
What we are working on
We are honest about where this site is weaker than it should be, and what we are fixing:
- First-hand screenshots. Our articles currently illustrate with stock photography rather than the product interfaces themselves. We are replacing these with real screenshots of the tools we use directly, starting with the ones we use daily in client work.
- Deeper coverage over wider coverage. We would rather publish fewer articles that go further than many that skim. Some older, thinner articles are being rewritten rather than left up.
If something here does not match what you find on the site, that is a gap we want to know about. Tell us.