Our methodology
DecisionWire is only as useful as it is trustworthy. This page explains exactly where our facts come from, how we verify and re-verify them, how we rank and pick, and how we stay independent of the vendors we cover.
Our principles
Primary sources only
Every fact traces back to a vendor's own material or an authoritative filing — never scraped review sites or hearsay.
Always current
Records carry a last-verified date and are re-checked on a schedule, so what you read reflects what's true today.
Independent of vendors
Affiliate commissions fund the research, but they never influence our facts, scores, or rankings.
Where our facts come from
We start from primary material — the place where a fact is authoritative. For most data points that means the vendor's own pages: pricing, security and trust centers, product documentation and changelogs. For company facts like funding and valuation, we rely on filings and official announcements rather than secondhand reporting.
We deliberately do not source facts from user-review aggregators. Reviews are useful for sentiment, but they're inconsistent, easily gamed, and frequently out of date — the opposite of what a facts database should be built on.
How we verify & re-verify
Every fact moves through the same pipeline before it reaches you, and stays in it for as long as we track the vendor:
Discover
Map software categories and the vendors in each across the open web.
Extract
Pull structured facts from primary pages, docs and filings.
Verify
Cross-check each value against its source and stamp a verified date.
Monitor
Re-check on a schedule; flag and update anything that changes.
We run this pipeline with AI, always with a human in the loop: AI maps categories, extracts each value from its primary source, and re-checks it on a schedule, while a person reviews and approves what ships. It's how we keep a large, growing database current — and we still only publish what's traceable to a source you could check yourself.
When a source and a value disagree, the value is held back rather than published — we'd rather show nothing than show something wrong. Where a figure is inherently approximate (employee counts, exact qualification thresholds), we mark it as such instead of implying false precision.
What a verified fact contains
DecisionWire is a structured database, not a pile of articles. Each fact is a record tied to a subject, an attribute and a value — plus the metadata that makes it trustworthy:
Because facts are structured this way, the same record can power a profile, a comparison cell, a category table and a search result — all showing the same source and the same verified date. There's one source of truth, surfaced everywhere.
How we rank and pick
We separate two things that other sites often blur. Facts are neutral — they're sourced and verified, with no opinion attached. Picks are editorial — when we name a "top pick" or a "best for", that's DecisionWire's assessment of fit, clearly labelled as a judgement. Our editorial is generated from, and limited to, the verified facts on the page: AI-drafted from the same sourced data you can see, then reviewed before it ships — never free-form opinion.
Crucially, no vendor can buy a ranking, a score, or placement. Picks are based on the verified data and our read of who each option suits — never on commercial relationships.
Independence & how we make money
DecisionWire is funded primarily by affiliate commissions — when you sign up for a product through some of our links, we may earn a fee at no cost to you. We think that's a fair model, but only with a hard wall between revenue and research. Our full affiliate disclosure spells it out.
We always
- Cite a primary source for every fact
- Show a last-verified date
- Disclose affiliate relationships
- Correct mistakes quickly and openly
We never
- Accept payment for scores or placement
- Publish a fact we can't source
- Let vendors edit their own data
- Hide how we make money
Coverage & limitations
We're honest about the edges. Our coverage is deepest in the categories most-evaluated by founders and operators, and thinner among long-tail or very new vendors we haven't mapped yet. Some facts are inherently imprecise — exact qualification thresholds, headcounts and private financials change and aren't always disclosed — and we label those rather than guess.
If a vendor hasn't published something, we say it's unconfirmed rather than inferring it. A missing fact is a known gap, not a silent assumption.
Corrections
Even with verification, things change and mistakes happen. If you spot a fact that's out of date or wrong, tell us — corrections are triaged against the primary source and, when confirmed, the record is updated with a fresh verified date.
Spot something off?
Flag any fact and we'll re-check it against the source. Accuracy is the product.
Affiliate disclosure. DecisionWire may earn a commission when you sign up through some links on the site, at no extra cost to you. Commissions never influence our data, scores, or rankings. Full disclosure.