How we verify prices

How we collect prices

Every price is read off the vendor's own public pricing page and recorded with the date a human checked it. That date travels with the number: you see it next to the total, so you can tell a figure checked this month from one checked last spring. Monthly billing is quoted by default; where a vendor advertises an annual-billing price, we show the real monthly cost and note the difference, because those two numbers are rarely the same.

How we handle hidden pricing

When a vendor hides pricing behind a sales call, we say so instead of guessing. A tool with no verified price is left out of your totaland labelled “no verified price” — never counted as $0, which would quietly understate what you pay. The same rule protects the recommendation: a tool we can't price is never offered as a replacement, because costing it at nothing would manufacture savings that don't exist.

Some tools in the catalogue carry no verified price. We would rather show you a total marked “at least this much” than a confident number built on a guess.

How usage fees are estimated

Plenty of tools charge by contacts, seats or sends, so one tool has several honest prices. We resolve those against a stated assumption — the “Pricing for” toggle on the calculator — and the same function produces the number in the picker and the number in the verdict, so the two can never disagree. Usage-based add-ons (email sends, SMS credits, automation tasks) are listed as separate line items with conservative light-use estimates, never folded silently into a total.

When we tell you to keep your stack

The verdict is arithmetic, not opinion: your stack's total against the cheapest combination of tools that covers the same capabilities at comparable quality. We show you the before, the after and the difference, so you can check the subtraction yourself. A “keep your stack” answer gets the same visual weight as a savings answer.

Recommendations are ranked by fit and price, never by commission. How we make money.