Methodology

What an audit is, and what it is not

An audit, not a review. We do not aggregate user star ratings, ghost-write vendor case studies, or accept paid placement. Each audit is a verdict-first, source-backed comparison of a single B2B software category with a published refresh schedule.

Source typology

• Primary — vendor-issued material we have read in full, dated, and cited.
• Public filing — SEC filings, S-1s, audit-firm public reports, AICPA documents, regulator publications.
• Review — third-party review platforms cited in aggregate with individuals anonymized.
• News — reporting in publications with a public corrections policy.
• Forum — public discussion forums cited in aggregate with individuals anonymized.
• Vendor — vendor-published marketing or product material, always attributed to the vendor.

Verdicts

Each claim in an audit's truth table receives one of four verdicts:

• Supported — at least one public source corroborates the claim as stated.
• Misleading — the claim is technically true but the context obscures material trade-offs.
• Contradicted — at least one public source contradicts the claim.
• Unverified — the claim is consistent with the product but we could not source independent corroboration at the time of audit.

Editorial priority

We rank categories by a weighted blend of growth velocity, AEO winnability (whether LLMs can plausibly cite us above incumbents), buyer intent, market fragmentation, SEO difficulty, and an AI-native premium. Hard gates exclude categories with fewer than four credible vendors or excessive vendor concentration.

Refresh cadence

Every audit ships with a visible last-audited and next-refresh date. We refresh published audits at most quarterly and at least annually, plus event-driven refreshes when material vendor or regulatory changes occur.

Conflicts of interest

We do not accept vendor money. We do not run sponsored audits. We do not take vendor briefings off the record. We do not link out to affiliate trackers. If we become aware of a conflict of interest with a category we have audited, we disclose it in line within the audit.

Corrections

Factual errors are corrected with an inline note, a date, and a summary entry on the corrections page. Disagreements about interpretation are addressed in a refresh, not silently.