SoftwarePundit's Review Methodology
SoftwarePundit analysts do months of first-hand research in each software category that they cover. This includes interviewing customers of each product, speaking with software company leaders, monitoring industry trends, and most importantly, personally testing the major workflows of each software tool.
SoftwarePundit Research is Conducted by In-House Experts
The team at SoftwarePundit has helped over 25,000 businesses find the right software. We are the only company with a team of full-time analysts who research small business software, publish insights online, and answer questions through live chat.
That means no freelancers or ghost writers. Every insight and recommendation that you read on SoftwarePundit was written by a real person who believes that buying the right software for your business shouldn’t be so difficult.
The team at SoftwarePundit has been testing software since 2017, and has hand-tested over 300 software products in that time. We applied the same rigorous process to each piece of software that we analyzed. The specifics of our research process are outlined below.
Each category that we research is led by a SoftwarePundit analyst. Our team has a diverse background in fields such as software development, design, user experience, content production, and online marketing.
In addition, all research and content is overseen by Bruce Hogan, SoftwarePundit’s Co-founder & CEO. Bruce has more than a decade of experience researching, building, and reviewing the world’s best software products. His technology advice has been featured on a wide range of media sites such as AngelList, CMSWire, Dental Economics, iPhone Life, Reader’s Digest, Thrive Global, U.S. News, and the Zapier Blog.
How Our Analysts Rate Software
Each product on SoftwarePundit is given a rating out of 100. The most important criteria we use to calculate this score are each software tool’s features, usability, pricing, and customer support.
- A SoftwarePundit Analyst rating over 90 indicates that the software product is highly recommended to a large percentage of the target audience
- A SoftwarePundit Analyst rating of 85 is considered average
- A SoftwarePundit Analyst rating below 80 indicates that the software product is not recommended for most small businesses in the target audience
The details of our analyses are captured in the in-depth reviews we publish about each software tool. We also publish the specific process that we use to test individual categories on our software category pages.
Product Features
We develop a detailed feature chart for each software category that we cover. This rubric is used to evaluate the features of all software products in the category. Feature charts are internal documents that can get quite messy – but we want to show you an example for you to understand the depth of our analysis.
Usability
To measure each software product's usability, we spend hours registering, implementing, and using each solution. We have test websites that we use to install products so that we can test them on different browsers and devices. While producing our in-depth reviews, we go through key user flows step-by-step. The insights from this process are captured in our product reviews. This is also how we capture the images of the products that we publish.
Examples of questions that we ask ourselves while reviewing software for usability are:
- Is accomplishing tasks in the software intuitive?
- Does the software require you to take unnecessary steps to complete an action? Would this become annoying if you had to complete this action 30 times a week?
- Did you hit dead ends while accomplishing tasks in the software?
- Is it easy to find and navigate to different parts of the application?
- Is the software visually appealing or agitating to look at?
- How does usability change across devices?
Pricing
We research the pricing of all software products that we analyze. Much of this information is available on software company websites. When it's not, we take the time to get pricing details from the team. We also interview actual customers of each product to validate pricing details and make sure that there are no hidden fees.
Customer Support
We pay close attention to the customer support that we receive when we register, implement, and test software products. We hand-test multiple customer support channels and pay attention to the time it takes to hear back from the team. In addition, we explore each company's community resources, knowledge portal, and FAQs. We also ask customers about their experiences dealing with account managers and customer support teams.