How we review.

Four levels of evidence

Vendor published

The fact comes from the vendor’s own pricing or feature page. We give the number and say where we read it. This is the default for prices and plan limits.

Vendor confirmed

The vendor has confirmed something in writing that isn’t on a public page, such as a plan limit or a programme rule.

Our own work

We’ve used the tool in outbound work we run. We describe what we saw and keep it apart from the vendor’s claims.

Measured

We took the reading ourselves, for example from a test send, rather than taking it from a claim.

Today every review on this site is at the first level: facts read on the vendor’s own pages. Each review says so at the top, with the date we checked, and its test section stays empty until a real test has run.

What we don’t do

• We don’t write a review from a vendor’s marketing copy alone and present it as independent testing.
• We don’t report a vendor’s headline number without the limit that comes with it.
• We don’t publish a score, a ranking or a badge that a vendor has paid for.
• We don’t accept free access in exchange for a positive review, and if a vendor gives us access, we say so.

How we check prices

We open the vendor’s pricing page in a browser and write down the plan name, the price, the billing period and the limits next to it. Where a price depends on the billing period, we publish both. Where a page says two different things, we say so instead of picking one.

How often we re-check

Before publishing, and again whenever a vendor changes its pricing. Each review shows the date it was last checked.