How BylineBase is paid for
Some links on this site earn the desk a commission. Here is exactly which ones, how much it changes what you pay, and what it does not buy.
BylineBase earns money through affiliate partnerships. This page explains the arrangement in plain terms, because a disclosure buried in a footer is not really a disclosure.
What an affiliate link is
Some of the outbound links on this site — the ones that send you to a platform’s own website — are partner links. If you follow one and later subscribe, the platform pays this desk a commission.
You pay exactly what you would have paid otherwise. An affiliate link is not a discount code in reverse; it does not add anything to your bill. The commission comes out of the platform’s marketing budget, not your subscription.
How to tell which links are which
Every partner link on this site points to a /go/ address before redirecting onwards, and every one of them is marked in the page source as a sponsored link so that search engines and browsers can see it too. Links to a platform’s documentation, support pages or pricing pages as a source are ordinary links and earn nothing.
Not every platform reviewed here has a partner programme, and several of the ones we rate most highly do not pay us anything at all. That includes the free and open-source option that sits at the top of the field guide.
What commission does not buy
It does not buy a score. It does not buy a ranking position. It does not buy a mention, the removal of a criticism, or advance sight of a review.
The clearest proof available is the ranking itself: the highest-rated platform on this site is software you can download and run for nothing, and several well-paying programmes are either ranked below platforms that pay us less or left unlinked entirely because the desk did not think the product justified sending readers there.
Where the money goes
Commission covers the running costs of this site and the time spent reading pricing documentation, support pages and platform terms — which is most of the work. There is no venture funding behind BylineBase and no advertising on it.
Regulatory note
This disclosure exists to comply with the United States Federal Trade Commission’s endorsement guidelines and equivalent rules elsewhere, which require a clear statement of material connections between a reviewer and the products reviewed. It is also, simply, how we would want it explained to us.
Questions about any of this are welcome at the contact page, and they get answered.