StacksVerdict

Affiliate Disclosure

Plain English, no lawyer voice: we earn commissions on some links. Here is exactly how that works and what it does not affect.

An affiliate link contains a tracking identifier. If you follow it and later become a paying customer, the vendor credits us with the referral and pays a commission — usually a percentage of your first year, sometimes a flat fee. The price you pay is unaffected; commissions come out of the vendor's marketing budget, not your invoice.

Every affiliate link on this site is marked in the page source with rel="sponsored nofollow", which is what Google requires and what an honest publisher does regardless.

Where you will see disclosure

  • A notice at the top of every article containing affiliate links, above the content — not below it.
  • This page, linked from the footer of every page on the site.
  • Machine-readable rel attributes on every commercial link.

What commissions do not affect

This is the part that matters, so we will be specific.

  • Scores. Every product is scored against the six weighted criteria on our methodology page. The rubric is applied identically whether a vendor pays us or not.
  • Rankings. Position in a roundup is determined by weighted score, not by commission rate. Where two products are close, we say so rather than breaking the tie commercially.
  • Criticism. Every product we recommend also gets a "what doesn't work" section and a "skip it if" line. Several of our top picks have affiliate programmes; the criticism is the same either way.
  • Coverage decisions. We include products with no affiliate programme when they are the right answer. Wave and Obsidian, both recommended on this site, pay us nothing.

Current relationships

We participate or intend to participate in affiliate programmes operated by vendors in the categories we cover, including CRM, project management, email marketing, accounting and productivity software. Programme participation changes over time.

Display advertising

Separately from affiliate links, we display advertising through Google AdSense. These ads are served automatically based on Google's targeting; we do not select individual advertisers and advertisers have no contact with our editorial process. Google and its partners may use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites.

You can control personalised advertising through Google Ads Settings, and opt out of third-party vendor cookies at aboutads.info. See our privacy policy for full details on data handling.

Questions

If you want to know whether a specific link is an affiliate link, or whether a specific vendor pays us, ask — we will tell you. Contact us here.