How we compare

The problem with software comparisons is that the reader cannot see where the numbers came from. So we publish the whole method — including what the site does not have.

What the comparison rests on

Every figure on the site is of the same kind: read from the provider’s own public source and dated. Prices and plan limits from the price list, where the data is stored and which processors are used from the privacy policy, the billing calculation rules and whether a feature exists from the provider’s own help and documentation pages. The check date sits next to each figure.

That is a checkable fact, not an opinion: you can open the same price list and see the same number. If the number changed after the check date it is out of date, not wrong — and we correct it in the next round.

How the prices are read

None of the price lists in the comparison is a static page: the price comes from a slider, a dropdown or a tab, and many pages show a different currency depending on the country. So the prices are read in a real browser, the same way you would see them, not with a scraper.

For each tool we record three figures — the monthly price at 500, 2,500 and 10,000 contacts — on the cheapest paid plan that supports that list size, excluding VAT. We also record five things that would otherwise make the comparison unfair:

• Which plan the price is for. The cheapest plan does not always include automation, in which case the real comparison price is the price of a more expensive plan.
• Which billing period. Some providers only show the monthly price on annual billing, which is not comparable with monthly billing.
• The smallest list sold. Some do not sell a 500-contact list at all, so even a small list costs the price of a thousand contacts.
• Promotional price or list price. A first-year discount says nothing about what the service costs in year two.
• How contacts are counted. Does an unsubscribed contact still count towards the limit, is the same address counted several times across lists, and what does exceeding the limit cost. That rule is on the provider’s help page rather than the price list, and it changes the cost of the same list more than some of the differences between price tiers do.

These appear as caveats under every price table, not as hidden footnotes.

When the figures are checked

Prices are checked every 90 days and the check date is shown on the page. The interval is a rule rather than a recommendation, because price lists go stale faster than articles do: in the most recent round the figures had changed for four of seven providers, one free plan had shrunk by half, and one provider had removed its free plan altogether. The changes go into the tool’s changelog.

What we do not claim

We do not give scores. A numeric score would require every tool to have been put into use with real data and measured the same way. We have not done that, so there is no score. We also do not call a tool “the easiest”, “the clearest” or “the fastest” — those are measurement results, not opinions, and we have no measurement.

We do not measure deliverability. A reliable measurement would need dozens of mailboxes across providers and months of tracking. On deliverability we only report which features the provider itself offers: inbox preview, spam testing and a dedicated sending domain.

We do not assess enterprise price lists that are only given in a sales call, and we do not promise discount codes or promotional prices: they change weekly, and an article built on an offer is out of date before it is read.

These absences are deliberate. A comparison that says what it does not know is more useful than a comparison that invents the missing part.

Independence

The site is funded by ad links, which earn us a commission. The commission does not affect the ordering, and the comparisons also include tools that pay us nothing — they are marked by the absence of an asterisk on their links. If a tool pays us nothing but is the best choice for the need described, it stays the recommendation. There are no ad links on the English pages yet, because the comparisons are published in Finnish first.