Affiliate disclosure

The short version

What an affiliate link is

An affiliate link is a normal link to a vendor’s website that carries a tracking identifier for us. When you follow one, the vendor typically stores a cookie in your browser. If you later buy a subscription within that vendor’s tracking window, the vendor attributes the sale to us and pays a commission, usually a percentage of your subscription fee and sometimes recurring for as long as you remain a customer.

Two consequences worth stating plainly. We have a financial interest in you choosing some products over others, and we earn more from a reader who buys an expensive plan than a cheap one. Both of those are real pressures on a publication like this, and you should read our recommendations with them in mind.

Which relationships we hold

We disclose our commercial position on each page where it is relevant, and we keep the current list here.

Affiliate relationship: GetResponse.
No affiliate relationship: MailerLite.

Keep this list current Update this section whenever an affiliate arrangement starts or ends. A disclosure page that describes relationships you no longer hold, or omits ones you do, is worse than no page at all.

How we label affiliate links

Every affiliate link on this site is marked at the point of use, not only on this page. In practice that means a short note directly beneath the button or link saying that it is an affiliate link, a disclosure near the top of any article containing them, and the rel attributes sponsored and nofollow applied in the markup so search engines can identify them as paid links.

Where a link is not an affiliate link, we say that too. On our MailerLite review, for instance, the MailerLite buttons are labelled as not affiliate links, because we hold no arrangement with them and it would be misleading to let you assume otherwise.

What we do not do

• We do not accept payment in exchange for a favourable review, a ranking position, or a place in a comparison table.
• We do not let vendors read or approve articles before publication.
• We do not hide affiliate links, cloak destinations, or redirect you somewhere other than the link you clicked.
• We do not invent discounts, limited time offers, exclusive deals or countdowns to create urgency. If we mention a trial or a discount, it is one the vendor currently publishes.
• We do not publish fabricated user reviews, testimonials, ratings or test results.

The honest limit of this disclosure

Many affiliate sites state that commercial relationships have no influence whatsoever on their editorial decisions. We will not make that claim, because we cannot prove it and you cannot check it. Revenue shapes which products a publication covers at all, which is itself a form of influence even when individual sentences are written honestly.

What we can offer instead is verifiability. Our recommendations are conditional and tied to specific requirements rather than offered as general verdicts, so you can judge whether the condition applies to you. Our factual claims are cited to vendor documentation, so you can check them. And where the product we are paid to refer is the wrong choice for a reader, we say so: our MailerLite review recommends against GetResponse for beginners, newsletter creators and lower volume stores.

Your choices

If you would prefer not to use our affiliate links, you are welcome to visit any vendor by typing their address into your browser directly. You will pay the same price and we will earn nothing, and the reviews on this site remain free to read either way. Information about cookies and tracking is in our privacy policy.

Questions about any of this can go to the addresses on our contact page.

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