What a Softmarque review is
A review here is a written assessment of a commercially available software product, based on the vendor's own product and pricing documentation, the free or trial tier where one exists, and the public record of how the product has changed. It is written for somebody deciding whether to spend money, not for somebody who has already bought.
We do not run synthetic benchmarks, and we do not pretend to have used every feature of a platform that takes a quarter to deploy. Where our view of a product is based on documentation rather than hands-on use, the review says so in the relevant section.
The four questions
The score is a judgement, not an arithmetic average, but it is anchored to four questions asked of every product:
- What does the cheapest usable plan actually include, and what is gated behind the next tier up?
- How does the bill grow — per seat, per contact, per resolution, per task — and at what size does that become the dominant cost?
- Where does administration start costing somebody real time: permissions, search quality, data hygiene, integration maintenance?
- What does leaving look like? Export formats, contract terms, data retention, and how much of the workflow is unportable.
How the score works
Scores run from 0 to 10 with one decimal place. A score above 8.5 means we would recommend the product without hedging for the audience named in the review. Between 7 and 8.5 means it is a reasonable choice with a named reservation. Below 7 means there is a specific, identified reason to look elsewhere first, which the review states plainly.
Scores are comparable across categories because the questions are the same. They are not comparable to any other publication's scores, and they are not a ranking of popularity, market share or revenue.
Pricing
Every price we publish is taken from the vendor's own public pricing page and carries the date we read it. Prices in this niche change frequently, promotional rates are common, and the rate you see may depend on your billing country, currency and contract length. Always confirm on the vendor's site before you buy.
Where a vendor shows a discounted introductory price alongside a standard price, we quote both and rank on the standard one. An eight-week discount is not a reason to score a product higher.
What we do not do
We do not accept payment, equity, affiliate commission, sponsorship or free enterprise licences in exchange for coverage or placement. No vendor sees a review before publication, and no vendor has the right to approve, delay or remove one.
We do not publish a review of a product we cannot sign up for or read complete public pricing about, because a review without a price is a brochure.
Updates and corrections
When a vendor changes pricing or plan structure materially, we update the review and change the date on it. When we get something wrong, we correct it in place with a visible note. The corrections policy explains how to tell us.