How we rate software
SortMyStack exists to answer one question: given what you are trying to do, your budget and your team, which tool should you pick? Everything on the site is built to make that answer explainable.
Where the data comes from
- Pricing is read from the vendor's own pricing page and recorded with the date and the URL. Monthly-billed prices are shown as the headline; annual-billed equivalents are shown alongside. If a vendor only publishes annual pricing we say so instead of guessing a monthly figure.
- Features, pros and cons are written by us in plain language. We do not paste vendor descriptions and we do not display reviews or star ratings from other sites.
- Affiliate terms are recorded separately from product data, with their own source and verification date. They never feed into a rating.
The rating
Each tool gets a score from 1 to 5 on five equally weighted criteria, then rounded to one decimal:
- Fit for its core job. How well it does the one thing people buy it for.
- Value at the tier most buyers need. Not the entry price: the price of the plan that unlocks the features in the marketing.
- Ease of getting to value. How long before a non-technical owner gets a result.
- Pricing honesty. Clear tiers, no surprise cliffs, published limits.
- Exit cost. Export, integrations and how painful it is to leave.
The finder
The Tool Finder and Stack Builder use a rules file that scores each tool on category fit, audience fit, budget fit, ease of use against your experience, team size and any must-have features you type in. Every point added or removed produces a sentence you can read in the result. The same inputs always produce the same output.
What we get wrong
Prices change without notice, and vendors change plan names. If a verification date is more than 90 days old, check the vendor page before deciding. If you find an error, tell us and we will fix the record and republish.