Affiliate disclosure
The whole disclosure is on this page, in plain words, and the part that matters is the first paragraph. Nothing important has been moved further down.
Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you follow one and sign up with that vendor, they may pay us a commission. It costs you nothing extra, and it never decides which tool we recommend or what order the picks appear in.
No vendor can pay to be on a shortlist here, pay to rank higher on one, or pay to change a word of what an entry says.
What an affiliate link is
An affiliate link is an ordinary link with a tag on it that tells the vendor we sent you. If you then sign up for a paid plan, the vendor pays us a share of that — either once, or as a percentage of what you pay them for a set period. It is the standard way software directories and comparison sites make money, including the very large ones.
We use it because the alternative is worse. A site funded by vendors paying for placement has to rank its advertisers well; a site funded by commission after you choose does not, as long as it refuses the first arrangement outright. We refuse it.
What it costs you
Nothing. You pay the vendor’s normal price, on the vendor’s normal terms, exactly as if you had typed their address into your browser. An affiliate link does not add a fee, remove a discount, or change which plans you are offered. If a vendor ever gives us a genuine reader discount, the page will say so plainly next to the link.
What it does not change
- Which tools make a shortlist. Two to four per category, chosen on the rules set out in how we pick.
- The order they appear in. Ordering is editorial. It is not sold, and it is not sorted by what pays best.
- What an entry says. Every pick on this site carries a written reason to skip it. Vendors do not see entries before publication and cannot request changes to them.
- Whether a tool with no programme can be recommended. It can, and where that is the case it stays on the list on its merits.
Where this site stands right now
Being exact about this matters more than looking established. OSI Affiliate is new, and affiliate programmes are joined one vendor at a time as each category goes up. So today some outbound links here carry an affiliate tag and some are plain links that earn us nothing at all.
We are not yet labelling individual links one by one. Instead, every page that carries outbound vendor links shows this disclosure near the top, before the picks, so you can assume any vendor link on this site may pay us and read the page in that light. That is the more conservative assumption, and it is the one we would rather you make.
What we do not take money for
- Sponsored entries, promoted listings or paid inclusion on any shortlist.
- Paid reviews, paid rewrites, or vendor approval of copy before it is published.
- Selling your email address or contact details to a vendor.
- Advertising placed inside a shortlist so that it reads as a pick.
If any of that ever changes, it will be written on this page before it happens anywhere else on the site, and it will be labelled where it appears.
Why this page exists
Partly because it is required: the US Federal Trade Commission’s endorsement guidance expects a clear, conspicuous disclosure of a material connection between a publisher and the products it recommends, and affiliate commission is exactly that kind of connection. Similar rules apply in the UK, the EU and elsewhere.
Mostly, though, because the disclosure is the argument. Every directory you have used makes money in a way that could bend its recommendations. Stating ours in full, on its own page, in ordinary words, is the thing that makes the shortlists worth reading.
Questions about any of this
If something on this page is unclear, or you want to know whether a specific link pays us, ask and we will tell you straight.