Editorial policy

Who publishes this site

Tooldossier is published by Tooldossier. Notes carry the byline Tooldossier Desk, which is the site's editorial desk: a byline for the publication, not for a named person. Price files carry no byline at all, because the source of every figure on them is the vendor's own page, linked beside the figure. The fuller story of why the site exists is on the About page.

Editorial contact: [email protected], or the contact form.

Sourcing

A price on this site comes from one place: the vendor's own published pricing page. Where that page leaves out a fee or a limit, the vendor's own help centre or documentation may fill the gap, and is linked where it is used.

Never used as a source: review sites, comparison sites, other directories, press coverage, forums, social posts, a figure remembered from an earlier visit, or an "industry estimate".

• The figures are US prices in US dollars. A vendor page that shows another currency is not filed.
• Where a vendor publishes no price, the file says "not published" and records what the page offers instead, such as a quote form or a sales call. A gap is printed as a gap. No figure is worked backwards from a percentage or estimated to fill it.
• Arithmetic is allowed, with the inputs shown: "10 users x $5 x 12 months" is a published figure multiplied out, not a new claim.

Evidence and dates

Every price file keeps a receipt.

1. The vendor's pricing page is captured on the day it is read: a screenshot, shown on the file with its capture date, and the full visible text of the page.
2. Both billing states are read where a page has a monthly and annual switch, because a headline "$19" behind a toggle is one of two different numbers.
3. Every plan row carries its own checked date and a link to the page it was read from. The file shows the date it was last checked at the top.
4. A publish gate checks the file before it can go live. Every number in every plan price must appear in the captured text of the vendor's page, the capture must be within a day of the check, and the file must say what the check confirmed and what it could not. A file that fails stays a draft.

A figure is never re-dated without being read again. An old date on a file means exactly that: the figure was correct on that date and has not been checked since.

Notes

Notes are short dated reports built from the price files: what a category costs this month, which tools still have a free plan, what a price works out to per unit. They follow the same rules plus three of their own:

• A note reports only figures already on a live price file, and links to that file, where the date and source of each figure sit.
• Sums are shown with their inputs. A separate check re-works every sum in a note before it can be published, so a total that does not follow from its inputs cannot go live.
• Each note shows when it was published and when it was last updated. A note is not quietly rewritten: a material change gets a dated correction line at the end.

How the work is produced

Files and notes are drafted with the help of software, including AI writing tools, working to a written rulebook. What decides whether anything is published is not the drafting tool but the checks described above: the captured page, the price-in-page-text gate and the sum check for notes, plus an automated review of every live page each time the site's code is released. The rules on this page apply in full whoever or whatever produced the draft.

Corrections

Mistakes are fixed in public, not edited out.

To report a wrong or outdated price, use the Price changed? Say so form at the foot of the file. No account is needed. Quote the figure that is wrong and, if possible, a link to the vendor's current page: a report with that link can be checked in about a minute, which makes it the fastest route to a fix. Reports also reach the desk through the contact form or by email to [email protected].

What happens next. The vendor's page is read again. If the report is right, the file is corrected and re-dated, and the correction is listed on the file under Corrections with the date it was accepted. If the report is not borne out by the vendor's page, the figure stays and the report is closed. A reader's own wording is never published, since it may carry a name or an address.

Notes are corrected in place, with a dated line at the end saying what changed.

Vendors can claim their tool's file from an address at the vendor's own domain, using the Claim this listing link on the file, and send corrections from that address. A vendor cannot edit a file, and a vendor's correction is checked against the vendor's own public page like any other report.

Independence

• No vendor pays for a file, for a figure, for a place in a list or for the wording of a verdict. Asking for a tool to be filed through the submission form is free and buys nothing: submitted prices are treated as a tip, not a source.
• Paid placements, if sold, are labelled as paid and sit in their own block beside a list, never inside it. The page templates make that structural: a placement cannot be rendered among ranked results.
• Comparisons store no prices of their own. A comparison reads both tools' figures from their files when the page loads, so it cannot disagree with them or go stale on its own.

Affiliate links

An affiliate link is kept in its own field, separate from the source links, so it can never be rendered as a citation. Where a file carries one, a disclosure sits near the top of that file, before the figures, the link is labelled affiliate link, and it is marked as sponsored for search engines. It changes no figure, no order and no verdict. As of 7 October 2026, no file on this site carries an affiliate link.

Changes to this policy

A change to this page is noted on it with a date.