Every review site says it is independent. That claim is worth nothing without a description of what actually happens, so here is ours — including the parts that are less flattering.
We score before we know what pays
This is the rule that matters most.
A tool is researched, scored and ranked before anyone checks whether it has an affiliate programme. Affiliate links are attached afterwards, to a verdict that is already final. If the best tool in a category pays us nothing, it still wins — and we will say so on the page.
You can hold us to this. If you ever see a recommendation list that lines up suspiciously well with a commission list, tell us and we will either justify it or fix it.
Two kinds of article, always labelled
We publish two types of comparison, and we never blur them.
Hands-on
- We signed up, completed a real task, and hit real limits
- Screenshots are ours, from actual use
- We record how long setup took and where it went wrong
- We state which plan tier we were on
Research-based
- Built from published pricing, plan docs and fee schedules
- Cross-checked against independent sources
- Clearly labelled “not yet hands-on tested” at the top
- Upgraded to hands-on later, and relabelled when it is
A research-based article will never use the word “we tested”. If a page says we tested something, we tested it.
What we do when sources disagree
We tell you. Software pricing and plan limits change constantly, and vendors are not always the clearest source on their own products. When we find a genuine contradiction we cannot resolve, it goes in the article as a flagged warning rather than being quietly resolved in favour of whichever answer reads better.
An unresolved question you can go and check is more useful than a confident answer that might be wrong.
What we will not do
Never
- Claim testing that did not happen
- Invent authors, biographies or credentials
- Publish statistics without a citable source
- Use AI-generated headshots as if they were real people
- Let a commission rate change a ranking
- Publish review schema with ratings for products nobody reviewed
Always
- Publish under the site’s own name — never a writer who doesn’t exist
- Show the publish and last-updated date
- Disclose affiliate relationships above the first affiliate link
- State what we did not test
- Cite sources for factual claims
- Correct errors in public rather than quietly
Why there is no author photo
This site is run by one person who has chosen not to publish under their own name. Articles carry the site’s name instead of a personal byline.
That is a privacy decision, not a credibility dodge — and it is why this page exists in the detail it does. Everything an author bio would normally signal is written down here as rules you can check our work against. If an article breaks one of them, you have grounds to say so.
What it does not mean: there are no invented staff writers, no borrowed qualifications, and no “our team of experts”. One person, not named, is different from a team that does not exist. The second of those is what this site did before, and is precisely what these policies prevent.
How we choose what to cover
We write for freelancers, consultants and one-to-five-person agencies. If a tool is not realistically usable by a business that size — enterprise-only pricing, mandatory sales calls, minimum seat counts — we either say so plainly or leave it out.
We favour specific questions over broad ones. “Best invoicing software” has a thousand answers and none of them fit you. “Best invoicing software when you bill in two currencies and have four clients” has about three, and one of them is right.
How we make money
Affiliate commissions. If you sign up for a tool through one of our links, the company may pay us a percentage — usually recurring for as long as you stay a customer. You pay exactly the same either way.
Two consequences worth naming. First, recurring commissions mean we only earn if you stay subscribed — so recommending something you abandon in two months costs us money. Our incentive genuinely points at accuracy. Second, we do not run display advertising, and we do not intend to. Ads would compete with the content for your attention and make the site worse.
Full details on the affiliate disclosure page.
Tell us when we are wrong
Pricing moves, plans get restructured, and good tools go bad. If something here is out of date or simply incorrect, let us know. Corrections get made on the page with the date changed, not silently edited away.
A note on this site’s history. GearAndGrowth previously published product reviews under author profiles that were not real people, with testing claims that had not happened. That content has been removed and the policies on this page exist to make sure it cannot recur. We would rather state that plainly than hope nobody notices.