What we evaluate

Every tool we cover is assessed against the same seven criteria.

1. Ease of use

How long it takes to get from signup to a working result, how much of the interface you have to understand first, and how much of the setup is reversible if you get it wrong.

2. Features

What the product actually does on each plan — not the marketing page's feature list, but which capabilities are available at which price, and which are gated behind an upgrade.

3. Creator fit

Whether the product is designed around how independent creators work, or adapted from something built for marketing teams. Both can be the right answer; they are rarely the right answer for the same person.

4. Value for money

Cost at realistic list and usage sizes, including how the price behaves as you grow. An entry price is not a price.

5. Scalability

What happens at 10x your current size — in cost, in limits, and in whether you would have to migrate.

6. Integrations

Whether the tool connects to the rest of a normal creator stack, and whether those connections need a paid plan or a third-party bridge.

7. Support

Support channels by plan, published response expectations, and the quality of the self-service documentation.

Where our information comes from

Pricing, plan limits and feature availability come from the vendor's own pricing page, product pages and documentation. Every tool page lists the exact sources we used and the month we checked them. Where we could not verify a number from an official source, we say so rather than printing a figure from someone else's article.

What we will not claim

  • We do not say we tested a tool unless we did. Where a page is based on documentation and product research rather than hands-on use, that is what it says. There is no phrase on this site claiming testing that did not happen.
  • We do not publish star ratings or numeric scores. A single number implies a precision we do not have, and it collapses the very thing that matters — that the right answer depends on who is asking.
  • We do not rank by commission. See the editorial policy.
  • We do not turn a plausible assumption into a stated fact. Plenty of advice in this space sounds right and has nothing behind it. If a claim is not supported by our own testing, by official documentation, or by a source we cite, we either leave it out or write it as what it is — our judgment, labelled as such.

How to read our judgments

Where we have measured something, we say what we measured and when. Where we are reading a vendor's documented behaviour rather than our own experience of it, we say that too — you will see phrasing like on paper or we have not timed this. That distinction is not hedging; it is the difference between a review and a guess, and we would rather be visibly uncertain than confidently wrong.

Our hands-on test, and what it is worth

In September and October 2026 we signed up to beehiiv, Kit and MailerLite on their free plans and ran the same task in each: add a subscriber, build one issue with a heading, two paragraphs, an image and a link, and send it for real. We recorded handling time, the number of screens that required an entry or a choice, and what each platform asked for along the way. Waiting — confirmation emails, account review — was recorded separately rather than folded into the times.

The limits of that test are worth stating plainly, because they decide what the numbers can support. One person ran it once per platform, in the order MailerLite, beehiiv, Kit, so the first platform carried the learning curve for all three and the later ones benefited from it. The person running it does not have English as a first language, and worked in each product's English interface. Where our own setup notes were out of date, the time lost to that is in the numbers too. We publish the figures with the order attached, and we do not rank the products on them.

One send is not a deliverability test. We report which tab a single email landed in as an observation, never as a comparison of inbox placement.

How a tool gets added

We add a tool when creators are genuinely choosing between it and something we already cover, and when we can research it properly. We do not list tools to make a directory look full, and we do not add a tool because it has an affiliate programme.

Keeping it current

Pricing is re-checked on a schedule and the check date is printed next to it. If you find something out of date, tell us — contact page.