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Editorial policy
Most sites in this category disclose their funding model in small italic text near the top and move on. We'd rather give it a page.
How we're funded, right now
As of this writing, this site has no paid rankings and no advertiser relationships of any kind. Nothing on this site earns us money yet. That's not a permanent promise — a site needs a sustainable model to keep operating and keep researching — but it means every finding published so far was reached with zero financial relationship to any company being evaluated.
See our methodology for exactly how a pass/fail verdict is reached, evidence source by evidence source, and why nothing below this line can change it.
What we would disclose, if that changes
If we ever introduce a revenue channel, our commitment is:
- No company can pay to change a finding. A failing verdict against our published standard stays a failing verdict regardless of any commercial relationship. This applies even to a channel like a disclosed placement fee: eligibility requires already passing every point on the standard first, and payment never substitutes for a check we'd otherwise perform.
- Any compensated relationship is disclosed on the specific page it affects — not only in a footer link or a separate policy page nobody reads, the way most of this industry's comparison sites currently do it.
- The Register's anonymous-aggregate policy for failing companies doesn't change for money. We will not accept payment to name a specific failing competitor, and we will not accept payment to suppress an already-public enforcement action from our named-enforcement index (once that's built).
Why this page exists
Our own research into this industry's existing comparison sites found a real, third-party-adjudicated example of the gap this page is meant to close: the National Advertising Division reviewed one major aggregator's "independent ranking" marketing claim and found it wasn't supported — its own scoring algorithm favored companies with a paid partnership, despite the site's public claim of impartiality. We'd rather over-disclose now than end up as a similar example later.
Corrections
If we get a fact wrong, we correct it and say so plainly on the page it appeared on, with the date and what changed — not a silent edit. See About for how to reach us if you've spotted something.