Software advice

On five things: how much setup the first ninety days take, what the price becomes once the modules a normal buyer needs are added, how your data comes back out if you leave, whether you can buy and leave the product on your own — a published price, no mandatory partner, an export that works — and who it is genuinely for. That fifth test is why the large platform suites tend to sit in the lower half of our lists: they are often excellent, and they are rarely something a reader of this site can buy, run and walk away from unaided. One rule sits on top of those tests: Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. We do not publish a score out of ten, because a number like 8.4 is a judgement dressed as a measurement and nobody outside this office could check it.

2635 across 185 categories, of which 1539 publish a price. The vendors are established in 65 countries across 7 regions (North America 1292, Europe 1094, Asia-Pacific 152, Elsewhere 68, Middle East 25, Latin America 3, Africa 1). Every guide states the country of establishment, the pricing model and the drawbacks for each product.

Some links are commercial and commercial relationships can affect which products we cover and where they appear. They never change what an entry says, including the criticism. Every ranked list carries a notice above it saying so.

Each guide shows when it was published and when it was last reviewed, and those dates are real. A review means someone went back to the vendor documentation, not that a date was bumped.

Yes, and a factual correction is applied whoever asks for it, vendor or reader. Send the page and the evidence to hello@theknowledgeengineers.com.