Disclosure
Some links on this site are affiliate links — if you sign up through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This is how the site stays free to read and how we fund the hands-on testing time every review requires, and we think you deserve to know exactly how that works.
How Affiliate Links Work
Most links to vendor sign-up pages on this site, including the buttons on review pages and the links inside comparison and best-tools articles, are affiliate links. If you click one and later subscribe, typically within a window set by the vendor's own affiliate program, we receive a commission. The price you pay is the same whether you use our link or go directly to the vendor's site; commissions come out of the vendor's marketing budget, not added to your bill.
Why This Doesn't Affect Our Scores
These commissions do not influence our scores. A tool's rank comes from the same weighted criteria described on our Methodology page — capabilities, quality of output, ease of use, and price & limits — applied the same way regardless of whether that vendor pays a commission or nothing at all. We have, at times, ranked a lower-commission or no-commission tool above one that pays more, because the scoring formula does not know or care what the commission rate is while a review is being written.
How We Choose What to Test
We do not accept payment in exchange for a positive review, and we do not let a vendor preview or edit a review before publication. When a company reaches out asking us to cover their tool, that request goes into the same testing queue as everything else, with no guarantee of a favorable outcome or even inclusion, since some tools we try do not end up meeting our bar for a full review at all.
Editorial Independence
The person writing a review and the business relationship with a vendor's affiliate program are kept separate on purpose. Our writers do not see commission rates while testing or scoring a tool, and a pricing or feature change on a vendor's site triggers a review update regardless of whether that vendor participates in our affiliate program. If a tool's quality drops, its pricing gets worse, or it falls behind on a feature competitors already ship, we update the review and the score even if that tool is one of our better-performing affiliate partners.
What We Never Do
We never let a vendor's advertising spend or commission rate override a testing result, we never publish a review written or edited by the company being reviewed, and we never remove a published review because a company asked us to after an unfavorable result — only because we found a factual error worth correcting. If a vendor disputes a negative review, that review stays up unless we independently determine something in it was actually wrong.
What to Do If You Represent a Vendor
If you work for a company whose tool is reviewed here and believe something is factually wrong, our Contact page is the right channel — include the specific claim and your evidence. We will investigate and correct genuine errors, but a review will not be softened, removed, or reworded simply because the company involved disagrees with our conclusion.
Updates to This Policy
This page is reviewed alongside the rest of the site whenever our affiliate relationships change, and any material update is dated so returning readers can see when something shifted. If we ever add a monetization method beyond affiliate commissions, such as sponsored content, it will be disclosed here specifically and labeled clearly on the article itself.
Questions About This Policy
If anything here is unclear, or if you believe a specific review does not live up to the standards described above, we want to hear about it. Questions about this policy, or about any specific review or ranking on this site, can go through our Contact page, and we respond to every message personally.