Ad links and how the site is funded
The site is funded by ad links. Here is exactly what that means, where the money comes from and what it does not affect.
What an ad link is
An ad link, or affiliate link, is an address from which the provider recognises that you came through us. If you sign up for the service, we receive a commission — either one-off or for as long as you remain a customer. You pay the same price as if you went to the service’s site directly; in some cases the link gives a longer trial period.
How the links are marked
- At the start of every article, right after the heading and before the body text, there is an Ad notice. It is not hidden behind a click and not shrunk.
- Every ad link is followed by the word (ad), as the UK Advertising Standards Authority’s guidance on affiliate marketing asks: affiliate content should be obviously identifiable as advertising up front, and in mixed content it needs to be obvious which links are advertising. The link text is the tool’s name, i.e. who the ad is for.
- The links carry
rel="sponsored", which marks them for search engines too.
What the commission does not affect
The ordering. In practice this means three things you can check yourself:
- The comparisons include tools from which we get nothing — if they are the best, they are at the top. For example, Mailchimp is in the comparison without us being members of any Mailchimp programme: the link goes straight to the service and pays us nothing.
- For every tool we name at least one concrete weakness, including the ones that pay us a commission.
- If a tool earns us well but, by the figures we have read, is the wrong choice for the need described, it does not become the recommendation.
The method is public: how we compare →
Which programmes pay us a commission
We update this list as programmes are approved. At the moment we are in two:
- Systeme.io — joined 4 September 2026. The commission is recurring for as long as the customer relationship lasts. This service’s links on the site are ad links and are marked “(ad)”.
- EmailOctopus — joined 13 September 2026. The commission is recurring for 12 months from the start of the customer relationship. Links marked the same way.
The links of the other tools compared go straight to the service without an ad mark and without a commission, because we are not in their programmes. A missing mark is therefore information, not an oversight: an unmarked link earns us nothing.
Cookies and tracking
Ad link tracking relies on a cookie that the provider sets only once you move to its site. We ask for your consent: if you do not give it, the links take you to the same service without tracking and you lose nothing. Our own visitor measurement uses no cookies. Privacy policy →