How we review, and how we make money

Where our reviews come from

Every review and comparison is built from three inputs, in this order:

Real owner reviews. We read what shop owners and technicians say about these tools in their own words, in the places they actually talk shop. When we quote an owner, the quote is a real, unedited passage from a real person, and we link the source. We use one quote per person per article, and we do not quote vendor accounts, employees, or anyone selling a competing tool.

Dated, real pricing. We check each tool's current price on the vendor's own page and write it with the date we checked. When a vendor hides its price behind a sales call, we say so and label the figures as owner-reported rather than pretend we found a list price.

Fit, not feature counts. We do the arithmetic vendors bury: what a tool actually costs at your crew size, what is bundled versus billed on top, and which shop each tool suits. Then we lead with our call and let the pricing and owner quotes back it up.

How our rankings are built

Our category rankings do not crown a single winner, because the cheapest tool in a category is almost never the most capable one, and the most capable is usually overkill for one truck. So we rank each category five ways and let you pick the one that matches your shop.

Does the mostcounts how many of that category's jobs a tool does out of the box. Things sold as an add-on count for less than things that are included, so a long feature list does not win if half of it costs extra. Cheapest to run is what one person actually pays to get working, the base fee plus the first seat. A real free plan wins outright, and tools that publish no price at all sit at the end of the list rather than being guessed at. Try before you buy ranks on whether you can get in without a salesperson. No lock-in ranks on contract length, month to month first. Fewest add-ons counts how little of the core work sits behind an extra charge.

Every position comes from the same researched facts we publish on each tool's own page. Nobody pays to appear or to rank. Whichever ranking you are looking at, each tool also shows how much of the category it actually covers, so a cheap tool that does very little can never read as the best one.

What we do not rank on. How easy a tool is to learn, and how good its support is. We keep notes on both for most tools, but not the kind of comparable evidence a ranking needs, and we would rather leave a column out than invent one. We also do not publish a ranking for a category with fewer than four tools in it.

How we make money

TradePicked is reader-supported. Some of the software companies we cover run affiliate programs, and if you sign up through a link on our site we may earn a commission. It never costs you anything extra, and it never changes what we recommend.

We rank on fit, not on payout. In several of our guides the tool that pays us the most is not our top pick, and we point that out on the page. Some of the tools we recommend, including the largest enterprise platforms, pay us nothing at all, and we still recommend them when they are the right fit. If a recommendation and a commission ever pull in different directions, the recommendation wins.

Keeping it current

Software pricing and features move, so we date every price and re-check the tools we cover. If you spot a figure that has gone stale or a detail that has changed, tell us on our contact page and we will fix it.