Head-to-head, with us left out

The same weights, every time

Every product in a category is scored on the same six criteria with the same weights, and the weights are fixed and published before any scoring begins. That ordering matters: weights chosen after the scores are weights chosen to produce a conclusion.

Functional fit carries the most weight because a product that does not do the job is not made adequate by being cheap. Total cost sits second and includes implementation and internal time, which is the line most vendor comparisons omit and which is frequently the largest.

What we deliberately exclude

No paid placement, no referral fees, and no vendor review before publication. We take no money from any vendor scored on this site, including in the comparisons where we recommend one over another.

We also exclude two things that commonly appear in comparison content and should not. Analyst ratings, because the funding relationships behind them are rarely disclosed clearly enough to weight. And customer review aggregates, because incentivised reviews are widespread enough in this category that the averages do not mean what they appear to mean.

How to use these

Read the pairing closest to your shortlist, then read the two individual product pages behind it. The pairing tells you which trade you are making; the individual pages tell you where each product is weak, which is the part that determines whether an implementation goes well.

If your shortlist has more than three products on it, the shortlist is the problem rather than the choice. Three is the number at which scenario demos are affordable and references can actually be called, and evaluating ten produces a decision made on demo quality rather than fit.