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Policy

Partner & Editorial Policy

These rules protect three things: reader trust, search visibility and legal compliance. They apply to every sponsorship, affiliate link and review on this site, and every sponsor accepts them before paying.

Last updated 23 October 2026

  • Rankings aren't for sale

    Payment never changes a rank, score or badge.

  • Paid is labelled

    "Sponsored" above the content, never in a footnote.

  • No link value sold

    Every paid link is rel="sponsored". No link building.

  • 3-day approval

    Every order is checked first, or refunded in full.

1. Editorial independence

  • Rankings, scores, "best for" labels and verdicts are decided only by testing against the published methodology. Payment, affiliate commission or sponsorship never changes them.
  • A sponsor can appear in a guide's ranked list only if it earned the place editorially. Sponsorship never moves it up or down.
  • Sponsors can fact-check a sponsored review (pricing, features, screenshots) within 3 business days. They cannot approve or remove criticism. If a sponsor won't accept an honest review, the order is refunded minus the $150 testing fee.
  • Guides show when they were last updated and last tested. Sponsored reviews are re-checked at renewal.

2. Disclosure and labelling

  • Every paid block or page carries a visible "Sponsored" label above the content, not in a footnote, in line with the US FTC Endorsement Guides and ASCI guidelines in India.
  • Sponsored reviews and articles open with: "This is a sponsored review. [Brand] paid for it. They had no control over my opinion."
  • LinkedIn and newsletter sponsorships say "Sponsored" or "#ad" in the first line, not hidden among hashtags.
  • The affiliate disclosure stays at the top of every guide and review.

4. Never offered

  • Paid positions inside ranked lists, "Top pick" or "Best overall" badges, or score changes.
  • Guest posts from vendors or agencies. A practitioner with something useful to say can contribute unpaid, with nofollow links, at my discretion.
  • Sponsored "X vs Y" comparisons or "alternatives to [competitor]" pages paid for by one of the vendors compared.
  • Unlabelled "native" content of any kind.

5. Who can sponsor

  • Accepted: B2B SaaS and AI tools relevant to marketing, sales, go-to-market, customer success, productivity, analytics, design or development.
  • Case by case: agencies, courses and communities with verifiable results; events in this space; developer infrastructure; consumer AI apps with business use. Early-stage tools with no paying customers can take a Spotlight, not a Review.
  • Never accepted: gambling, adult, crypto tokens and trading signals, payday or high-risk loans, CBD, weapons, essay mills, fake reviews, link-building agencies and link sellers, "AI detector bypass" or academic-cheating tools, and anything I would not recommend to a client.

6. Commercial terms

  • Payment upfront. Nothing goes live before payment and approval.
  • Every order is approved or declined within 3 business days. Declined orders are refunded in full.
  • Spotlights can be cancelled for a full refund before they go live; there are no refunds after go-live. For reviews, the $150 testing fee is non-refundable once testing starts.
  • One Spotlight sponsor per guide and one sponsor per category. Competitors of an active sponsor can still appear editorially.
  • Sponsored content may be removed, with a pro-rata refund, if the product changes materially, shuts down, or the sponsor breaks this policy.
  • Sponsored reviews stay live for 12 months. At renewal they are renewed at the current rate, unpublished, or turned into an unsponsored editorial review at my discretion.
  • Reports cover views, outbound clicks and AI-citation checks, sent at the end of the term (monthly for 90-day terms).
  • Rankings, traffic, leads and AI citations are never guaranteed. Reports show what happened.

See also: how tools are tested and ranked · sponsorship packages · affiliate disclosure