Editorial policy and method
How Tool Grading decides what to cover, how pages are researched, and what we will never do.
The rubric
Every tool is scored on four sub-scores from 1 to 5: ease of use (onboarding, interface, time to first result), features (depth of the core job, integrations, limits), value (price at 1, 5 and 20 users against what you get), support (channels, documented response times, help centre quality). The overall score is the unweighted mean. We publish the checklist behind each sub-score and apply the same one to every tool in a category.
Evidence
Vendor documentation, pricing pages and their history, release notes, and verified user reports from multiple independent sources. We do not run paid hands-on labs and we do not say we do.
What we never do
- Sell a ranking, a score, a placement or a positive sentence.
- Claim personal testing we did not perform.
- Publish numbers without a source and a date.
- Let a commission rate decide coverage.
- Use invented reviewers, invented testimonials or stock "customer" quotes.
Frequently asked
Do you personally use every product you cover?
No, and we will not pretend otherwise. Where a page is based on first-hand use it says so, with the plan and the dates. Otherwise it is built from documentation, pricing history and verified user reports, and it says that too.
Can a vendor pay to be included or to improve a score?
No. Vendors can send corrections with sources, which we check like any other evidence.
How often are pages updated?
Prices and features are re-checked on a schedule and each page shows its last-checked date. Readers’ corrections are handled as they arrive.