How the verification
gets done.
Every review, comparison, and pricing page on this site follows the protocol below. It exists so you can audit the work, not take our word for it. Most review sites in this niche recycle vendor marketing; this page is what we do instead.
§ 01 · The Protocol
Four methods,
all reproducible.
Pricing forensics
We capture vendor pricing pages with dated archives, tabulate every plan, limit, and overage fee, and log changes over time. Vendors change pricing constantly and almost nobody tracks it. Our pricing pages aim to be the historical record, not a stale snapshot.
Public-records spot checks
County clerk and appraisal-district websites are free. Where a vendor publishes sample data or claims about data freshness and coverage, we check a sample of records by hand against the county source and report the match rate, with the method stated.
Changelog and docs archaeology
We read vendor changelogs, help documentation, and terms systematically. Feature claims in our reviews cite the vendor's own documentation, not a competitor's summary of it.
Community-signal review
App store reviews, BBB records, and public forum complaints get read in bulk and summarized with citations. Patterns across many users carry weight; single anecdotes do not.
§ 02 · Citation Rules
If it cannot be cited,
it does not ship.
Every factual claim about a tool carries a citation to a primary source: the vendor's own pricing page, documentation, changelog, or a public record. Citations are dated, because pricing pages and feature lists change without notice. Where a vendor page is likely to change, we archive a snapshot so the citation survives.
Every review and comparison carries two dates: when it was published and when its claims were last verified. A page whose verification date has gone stale gets re-checked or flagged, not quietly left to rot.
Secondary sources, including other review sites, are never used as evidence for a factual claim. They recycle each other; that is the problem this site exists to fix.
§ 03 · The Refusals
What we will not do.
No paid placements
No vendor pays to appear, rank, or be removed. There are no sponsored slots anywhere on this site.
No commission-led rankings
Verdicts are written before affiliate considerations enter. Tools with no affiliate program get covered on equal terms when the topic warrants it, and we say so on the page.
No fabricated hands-on claims
If we have not paid for and used a tool, the review says so plainly. Desk-research reviews are labeled as desk research. When we upgrade a page with hands-on testing, the page says when and how.
No private datasets
Everything we verify comes from sources you can check yourself: vendor pages, archived snapshots, county records, public filings. If a claim cannot be cited, it does not ship.
§ 04 · Method and Money
Where the work stops,
and where the money comes from.
Today, reviews on this site are structured desk research: vendor documentation, pricing pages, changelogs, archived snapshots, community records, and free public-records spot checks. They are not hands-on tests, and no page on this site will pretend otherwise. As revenue allows, we pay for subscriptions one tool at a time and upgrade the affected pages to hands-on coverage, with the upgrade date stamped on the page.
The site earns money from affiliate commissions when readers subscribe to a tool through our links. Affiliate links are disclosed above the fold on every page that contains them. The verdict on a page is written before any affiliate consideration; tools without affiliate programs get covered on the same terms. The full policy is on the affiliate disclosure and editorial policy pages.
The affiliate link is downstream of the verdict, never upstream.
§ 05 · Update Cadence
Nothing rots quietly.
Pricing pages get re-verified monthly; price changes are logged on the page with dates, so the change history is part of the record. Reviews and comparisons get re-verified within ninety days of their last verification date. Corrections follow the policy on the editorial policy page: errors are fixed in place and the correction is noted with a date.
Found something wrong? Email [email protected]. The point of a lab is that the work stays open to inspection.
§ · Next
See the protocol
applied.
Read the briefs, or check the standards we hold ourselves to.