How we're paid

We are paid by the companies we write about. Every story on this site was commissioned and funded by the company it concerns.

We put that in the navigation, not the footer. The alternative, letting a reader discover it later, would cost us more than the admission does.

This is the normal arrangement

Analyst firms are paid by the vendors they cover. Ratings agencies are paid by the issuers they rate. Auditors are paid by the companies they audit. Certification bodies are paid by the organizations they certify. In each case the question that matters is not whether money changed hands, but whether the arrangement is disclosed and whether the method is public.

Ours are both. The method is published in full, including the parts that limit what we can claim.

What the fee buys

The work: scoping, the customer interview, evidence collection, analyst assessment, writing, editing, publication, and the permanent hosting of the story and the company entity page.

What the fee does not buy

• The evidence tier. A story is published at the tier its evidence supports. Tiers are not for sale, and we will tell you during scoping if the tier you want looks unreachable.
• Removal of qualifications. A client may correct a factual error, remove confidential detail, or withdraw a story before publication. A client may not keep a story published while removing the provenance block, the tier, or a stated limitation.
• A favorable conclusion. We do not write a story we cannot source. If the evidence does not survive the interview, we say so, and the engagement ends without publication.
• Coverage of competitors. We do not accept engagements to write negatively about a third party, and we do not compare a client against named competitors.

What else we disclose

If we hold any other relationship with a company we write about, it is stated on the story page itself, not here in the abstract. That covers an advisory arrangement, an equity interest, or a personal connection between an analyst and the subject.

We run no advertising and use no affiliate links, and no story placement is available for purchase separately from the verification work that produces it.

Research we are not paid for

Some of what we publish is not commissioned by anyone. That work is funded by us, carries no client relationship, and says so. We do it because a publication earns the right to be cited by publishing things worth citing, and because our paid work is worth more to our clients when the surrounding publication has standing of its own.

Questions

If something here is unclear, or you think a specific story falls short of it, write to us. Corrections are covered in the Standard and we apply them in public.