How this site is funded
Two sources: display advertising, and occasionally affiliate links. There is no paid placement, no sponsored review, and no arrangement in which a company pays to appear.
Advertising
Ads are served by a third-party network and are clearly separated from editorial content. We do not choose which advertisers appear, and an advertiser has no influence over what we write. Nobody selling anything sees an article before it is published.
Ad slots have a fixed reserved height so they cannot push content around as they load, and none are placed above the first screen of content.
Affiliate links
Some outbound links to commercial products may be affiliate links, meaning we could earn a small commission if you buy after clicking. This never costs you more.
All such links are marked rel="nofollow sponsored" in the page source.
The rules we hold ourselves to
- No paid placement. A ranking position cannot be bought. Scores come from published criteria and we show the criteria.
- Commercial relationships do not change a verdict. Where a product we have an affiliate relationship with performs badly, we say so.
- Free and open-source options are ranked on merit. They frequently place above paid ones, and they earn us nothing.
- Criticism is not withheld. If a vendor has a poor security record, that is reported regardless of any relationship.
Rankings specifically
Ranked round-ups score every product on the same published axes, and the score is shown per axis so you can disagree with our weighting. If we ever accept payment that could affect a ranking, the ranking will say so at the top — and we would rather not run the ranking at all.
Questions
If something here reads like an advertisement, tell us — that is a failure on our part and we want to know. [email protected]