Affiliate disclosure
Required by the FTC, and a fair question regardless. Here is exactly how this site makes money and what that money does not buy.
The short version
Some links to software vendors on this site are affiliate links. If you click one and go on to become a customer, we may receive a commission from that vendor. It costs you nothing — you do not pay more than you would going direct.
What commission does not buy
No vendor can pay us for:
- A place on any list, or a better position on one
- A higher score, a softer review, or the removal of a criticism
- Inclusion in a comparison, or exclusion of a competitor from one
- Advance sight of, or approval over, anything we publish
Products are ordered by cheapest published price first on comparison tables, and our shortlist is organised by use case. Neither ordering is influenced by commercial relationships. Several products we recommend pay us nothing, and several that do pay carry prominent criticism on their own pages.
Where the disclosure appears
Every page carrying an affiliate link shows a disclosure above the first
link, not only in the footer. Outbound vendor links are marked
rel="sponsored" where a commercial relationship exists and
rel="nofollow" otherwise.
Why we use this model
The alternatives are worse. Charging vendors for listings creates a pay-to-play directory. Charging readers puts a paywall in front of pricing information that vendors should have published in the first place. Affiliate commission is the least distorting of the three, provided it never touches editorial decisions — which is why the rules above exist and are published.
Our methodology sets out how prices are sourced and where the limits of this site are.
Questions
If you think something here reads like it was bought, say so. That is a failure worth knowing about.