Editorial Process: How Facts Are Verified 2026

Every fact on this site goes through the same six steps: capture from the vendor’s own site with a URL per fact, scoring on the scoring sheet, drafting, a fact check against every cited URL, a ship test, and a dated change log entry. A page is published only after all six steps pass, and the cycle repeats at least every 90 days.

The verification pipeline, step by step

1. Capture vendor-site facts. We read the vendor’s pricing page, product pages and documentation, and record each fact (price, price unit, currency, trial length, card requirement, finite capacity, automatic rescheduling, integrations) as its own field with the exact URL it came from and the date it was read. If a page blocks reading and only a search snippet of the vendor page is available, the fact is labelled as a snippet.
2. Score on the scoring sheet. Each product is scored 0 to 5 on every criterion of each list where it competes. Every score has a one-line rationale, a source URL and a verification date. Criteria and weights are fixed per segment before any product is scored and are published on the methodology page.
3. Draft. Pages are written from the captured facts and the scoring sheet only. Prices, counts and statistics appear with their source and an “as of” date. Totals and ranks are computed from the sheet and imported, not typed.
4. Fact check against cited URLs. A separate check opens every cited URL and compares each number and each yes or no field with what the source says on that day. Any claim the source does not support is removed or corrected before publication.
5. Ship test. Before a page goes live we check that the rendered page shows the right totals and order, that every link resolves, and that the verification and next check dates are present.
6. Dated change log. Every change to a price, trial, score or weight is recorded as a dated line in the change log of the page it affects. Factual corrections are also listed on the corrections log.

What "verified" means here

A field marked verified on a given date was read on the vendor’s own site on that date and matched the value shown. It does not mean the vendor reviewed or approved the page. Each page shows its verification date and its next check date, which is set 90 days later. On each re-check we open every cited source again. If a source cannot be reached, the field is shown as unverified since the last good date rather than given a fresh date. A vendor price or trial change triggers an update before the scheduled check.

What "not published by the vendor" means

“Not published by the vendor” means we looked for the fact on the vendor’s own pricing, product and documentation pages on the date shown and did not find it. It is a statement about the vendor’s public information, not a guess about the product. The most common case is price: when a vendor sells only by quote, the price field reads “quote” and we do not estimate a figure from third-party sources.

How missing data and ties score

Missing data scores 0. When a criterion cannot be evidenced from the vendor’s public pages, the score is 0 and the rationale reads “not published by vendor”. We never fill a gap with an estimate, a sales call or a review-site comment. This keeps the lists comparable: every product is scored on the same public evidence a buyer can check.

Missing data can be fixed. When the vendor publishes the fact, or sends us a link to a public page that already states it, we verify it and re-score. If the new score changes the order of a list, the list changes the same day.

Ties. Products with the same weighted total show the same total and are listed alphabetically by product name. No criterion is used as a hidden tie-breaker.

Report an error

If a page shows a fact that differs from the vendor’s current site, send the page URL and the source URL through the request form. See the contact page for details.