Editorial Policy
How products get selected for coverage, how reviews are researched, and what every review must include before it publishes.
Selection
Products are chosen editorially, based on relevance to the audience this site writes for. No vendor can pay for coverage or for a specific rating, and having an affiliate relationship with a vendor is never a reason to cover — or not cover — their product.
Research
Pricing and feature claims are verified directly against the vendor’s own site before publication, not carried over from memory or copied from other sources. Every review states plainly whether it reflects hands-on testing or is based on the vendor’s own published information — pages show a visible “hands-on tested” or “hands-on testing pending” status, and an initial listing is never presented as a completed, tested review.
Vendor-published testimonials
When a review includes testimonials, they are quotes the vendor chose to publish about its own product, always labeled as such, attributed exactly as the vendor published them, and linked to their source. We prefer paraphrasing over direct quotation, and never turn them into star ratings, averages, or percentages. If a person quoted has a financial or ownership stake in the company — a founder, an executive, an investor — that’s disclosed alongside the quote. Vendor testimonials are never presented as an independent sample or as a substitute for our own hands-on testing.
What every review must have before it publishes
A minimum number of pros, cons, and FAQ entries, at least one screenshot (real or a clearly labeled “pending” placeholder — never a vendor marketing image presented as ours), a named author, a stated last-updated date, and the disclosure block shown near the top of every review. These are structural requirements enforced before a page can be published, not a style guideline.
Ratings
Not every review carries a numeric rating — one is only assigned once hands-on testing is complete. See our scoring methodology for how ratings are calculated.
Monetization and AI use
How affiliate links work is covered in our affiliate disclosure. Where AI assists research or drafting, that is disclosed on the page itself — see our AI disclosure.
Corrections
See our corrections policy to report a factual error.