How we test, update, and make money
This page exists so you can judge our recommendations instead of trusting them. It also explains every way we earn, including the ones that work against us.
What a test involves
- We buy or trial the product ourselves. No vendor demo accounts, no press logins. Where a card is required for a trial, we use our own.
- We run the same scripted workload in every tool: a high-ticket insurance job, a small repair, and a recurring maintenance schedule — then quote, invoice, take payment, and sync to accounting software.
- We capture the pricing page on the day of testing and record the date. Screenshots are kept so a claim can be checked later.
- We ask four questions in every sales chat: implementation fee, per-user overage, messaging cost, and data export on cancellation. Vendors are usually happy to answer in writing.
- We read 90 days of user complaints in contractor communities for the things reviews don't mention — billing disputes, app crashes, cancellation friction.
- We score eight criteria (fit for the trade, setup effort, mobile adoption, pricing transparency, reporting, integrations, support responsiveness, cancellation terms) and publish the score, not just the ranking.
How pricing stays current
On the 1st of each month we re-open the pricing page of every vendor we cover. If something changed, we update the table and the “verified” date. If a vendor moves to quote-only, we label the figures as third-party and widen the range rather than guessing a single number.
If you spot a price we've got wrong, tell us and we will change it — usually the same day. Getting a price wrong is the one mistake that makes this site worthless.
How we make money
Affiliate commissions and display advertising. That's it. No vendor pays for placement, no vendor sees an article before publication, and no vendor can pay to change a score.
- Affiliate links. When you start a trial or subscribe through our link, the vendor pays us a commission at no extra cost to you. It never affects the price you pay.
- Some ranked tools pay us nothing. Several products in our top five have no affiliate programme we participate in, and they stay in the top five.
- We publish the negative. Every review includes a “skip this if” line and a list of weaknesses — including for tools that pay us.
Affiliate disclosure (plain language)
Pages that contain affiliate links say so at the top of the article and again in the footer. Links
carry rel="sponsored nofollow". We do not accept payment for a review, a ranking, or a
mention. If we ever publish sponsored content, it will be labelled as advertising in the headline
area and kept out of comparison tables.
Corrections policy
Corrections are public. When we fix a factual error — a price, a feature that shipped, a plan that was retired — we note it at the bottom of the page with the date and what changed. We don't quietly edit numbers.
Contact
Pricing corrections, factual challenges, or a tool you think we've misjudged: corrections@crewstackguide.com (replace with your live address before launch). We answer within one business day, and we'd rather be corrected than be wrong in public.