The short version
WMS.info is funded by advertising and by clearly-labelled sponsored placements. That is the whole list. No vendor pays us for a rating, a ranking position, a mention, or an introduction to you.
What changed. We used to run a vendor matching service: you filled in a form describing your requirements, and vendors paid us a referral fee for the resulting lead. We no longer do that. The form is gone, we collect no enquiry details, and no vendor pays us for access to readers. What replaced it is a guide to approaching vendors yourself, which is more useful to you and leaves us with nothing to gain from which vendor you pick.
What advertising buys
Advertising on WMS.info buys placement and visibility. It is sold against inventory, not against outcomes, and it is priced the same regardless of what our editorial team thinks of the advertiser's product.
Specifically, buying advertising does get you:
- Display placements in defined slots, labelled as advertising
- Sponsored articles, labelled as sponsored at the top of the page and in any listing that links to them
- Presence in category pages where all comparable vendors are listed anyway
Buying advertising does not get you:
- A rating, or any change to an existing one
- A higher position in a ranking or comparison table
- A mention in editorial copy, or removal of a criticism
- Sight of a review before it publishes, or the right to approve it
- Any influence over which vendors we choose to cover
These are not aspirations. If an advertiser asks for any of the second list, the answer is no and the conversation ends there.
Why the separation is structural, not just a promise
Every publication in this category says its editorial is independent. The question worth asking is what stops it drifting. Two things do here.
The first is that our scores follow a published weighting. Feature completeness is 25%, ease of use 20%, and so on down the list. A score is the output of that weighting applied to evidence, so moving one requires changing an assessment on a named criterion — which is visible, arguable and correctable — rather than quietly nudging a number.
The second is that we now have no revenue tied to which vendor you choose. When a referral fee is in play, the incentive to steer readers toward the vendors that pay best is structural however honourable the people are. Removing the referral service removed that incentive rather than asking you to trust that we resisted it.
What we hold about you
Nothing you have not chosen to send us. There is no contact form, no newsletter sign-up, no account system and no lead capture anywhere on this site. If you email us, we hold that email. Analytics run only if you accept them on the cookie banner, and are aggregate rather than identifying. Our privacy policy spells that out.
How to check we are keeping to this
Scepticism is the right posture toward any site that reviews products. Some things you can verify without taking our word for anything:
- Look for the labels. Sponsored content is labelled as sponsored. If you find something that reads like advertising and is not labelled, tell us and we will fix it or explain why it is not.
- Check the criticism. Read our reviews of the largest vendors — the ones with the biggest advertising budgets — and see whether they contain real criticism. A review site that never says anything negative about a big vendor is telling you something.
- Check the scores against the method. The weighting is published. If a score does not follow from the analysis on the page, that is a legitimate complaint and we want to hear it.
- Check what we say we do not know. Vendor pricing is rarely public. Where we are describing a range rather than a quoted figure, we say so.
Conflicts we would have to disclose
If any of the following ever became true, it would appear on the relevant page and here: a financial stake in a vendor we cover, a commercial relationship with a vendor beyond arm's-length advertising, or an author with a personal interest in a product under review. None currently apply.
Tell us if we get it wrong
Factual errors get corrected promptly, and material corrections are noted on the page rather than quietly patched. Email [email protected] with the page URL and what the correct information is. If you think a piece reads as though it were bought, say so to [email protected] — that is exactly the feedback worth having.
Related: editorial policy · how we evaluate vendors · who we are · advertise with us