How we review
The short version: we recommend what we'd use ourselves, we say who each tool is wrong for, and "you don't need this yet" is always an acceptable conclusion.
Who we review for
Every recommendation on this site is judged against one reader: a person running a business largely alone, spending their own money, without an IT department to rescue them. A tool that's brilliant for a 50-seat team and mediocre for a company of one loses to the tool that's the reverse. That lens explains most of our verdicts.
How comparisons are built
- We start from the job, not the category. Nobody wants "a CRM"; they want to stop losing follow-ups. Our guides open with what the tool actually needs to do for a solo operator, and we judge candidates against that — which is why "a spreadsheet is honestly fine" appears in our reviews more than the industry would like.
- We use pricing as published and features as documented, verified against the vendor's current materials at the time of writing, and we describe costs in ranges because vendors change them. Where we haven't personally run a tool at length, we say so by writing about what's knowable — pricing structure, business model, who it's designed for — rather than inventing hands-on anecdotes.
- We name the catch. Every tool has one — upsell-heavy checkouts, costs that scale badly, lock-in, features that need a bigger team to matter. If a review of ours doesn't tell you who should not buy, we've failed at the job.
- Guides get revisited. Dated guides carry their publication month, and substantive updates change the date. If you spot something stale, tell us — corrections make the site better and we make them without drama.
Where the money comes from
Modern Business Daily is reader-supported: some links are affiliate links, which may pay us a commission at no cost to you. Two commitments keep that honest. First, recommendations are decided before monetisation is considered — several of our most-recommended options (DIY LLC filing, the IRS's free EIN process, spreadsheets, free tiers) pay us nothing, and they stay our recommendations. Second, articles containing affiliate links are flagged with a disclosure box at the top, and our full disclosure policy is public.
What we won't do
No pay-for-placement, no vendor-supplied "reviews," no reordering a comparison because of commission rates, and no pretending certainty we don't have. Nothing on this site is legal, tax or financial advice — where a question genuinely needs a professional, our guides say exactly that.
Who writes this
Guides are written by our small editorial team — Daniel Mercer on tools, building and launching; Priya Shah on money and admin — and edited against the standards on this page.