Advertising and affiliate disclosure
This site is free to use and costs money to run. Here is exactly how it makes money, and the wall that keeps that money away from the scores.
Three ways we make money
- Referral fees. When you click "Visit website" and sign up or buy, some vendors pay us a referral fee or a per-click fee. Links that may earn a fee are tagged
rel="sponsored"and go through our/go/redirect so we can count them. Not every vendor pays, and you pay the same price either way. - Sponsored placements. A vendor can buy the slot labeled Sponsored at the top of a category page. It is visually separate from the numbered ranking, carries the label on every view, and the product's real score and rank still appear in the list below.
- Nothing else. We don't sell your data, run display ad networks, or accept payment for reviews, "awards" or badges.
What money cannot buy
- A score, a subscore or a position in a ranking. Rankings are sorted by BSR score automatically.
- A pro, a con, or a change to the verdict text.
- Removal or suppression of a verified negative review.
- A "Top pick" label. Those are computed from the subscores (highest overall, highest Value, highest Ease).
- Early sight of a score or a review before it publishes.
The people who test and score products do not sell placements and do not see revenue figures by vendor. If a vendor ties a payment to an editorial request, we decline the payment and note it in the product's file.
Products that don't pay
A product that pays us nothing is tested, scored and ranked exactly like one that does. Several of the highest-ranked products on this site pay us nothing, and products that do pay appear below them. If we ever couldn't say that truthfully we would say so here.
Reviews
We don't pay for reviews and don't allow vendors to. Reviewers aren't offered gift cards, discounts or entries in a draw. Every published review comes from someone who confirmed they use the product. See the review guidelines.
Trials and demo accounts
To test a product we use the public free trial or free plan where one exists. When it doesn't, we may accept a time-limited demo account from the vendor. We never accept free paid plans beyond the testing period, hardware, travel or gifts.
This disclosure is written to meet the FTC's guidance on endorsements and the requirements of our affiliate partners. Questions about it go through the contact page. The full scoring method is on the methodology page.