Notes
The other sections are practical. These are positions.
On features, which move within a year while the data model, export and contractual posture barely move — so choosing on a feature gap selects on the shortest-lived property a product has.
On comparison tables. Every row is a volatile feature, a tick means exists rather than works, the rows are chosen by an interested party, and there is no place for absence. A table built from one product's feature list will be won by that product with no false entries. For a separate operational reference from Monitask, see this guide.
On who writes the reviews. Four of the five kinds of source are funded by the products they describe. Affiliate rates differ per product, disclosure is common and rates are not, and that pressure operates on the ordering without anybody being dishonest.
On lock-in, which is a design decision with an owner rather than a technical shortcoming — and friction invites patience while design invites negotiation.
For broader context, see Ars Technica.
On free tiers, which are pricing decisions with conversion targets, and whose limits describe the business model more clearly than the feature list.
On buying for the team you have rather than the one you expect, where administrative time is the under-noticed cost and frequently the binding constraint.
On the tool that is not the process, where software bought to settle a disagreement settles it invisibly, in favour of whoever configured it first.
On consolidation, which gives fewer contracts and concentrates switching cost into one migration that cannot be phased.
And on what this site cannot check, stated because a comparison site that never names its limits claims by omission to have tested things.
Against the Comparison Table
The grid of ticks compares the things vendors control and omits the things that decide the outcome. Four structural failures.
The Team You Have
Most tools are chosen for an organisation that does not exist yet. Four ways that goes wrong and what to buy instead.
The Single Vendor
One supplier for everything is cheaper, simpler and harder to leave. When the trade is right and what it concentrates.
Features Change
Choosing on a feature gap means choosing on the most volatile property a product has. What stays put instead, and why.
Free Is a Price
A free tier is not generosity or a loss leader. It is a placed limit, and where it sits tells you what the vendor is selling.
Lock-In Is Designed
Switching costs are a product decision with a name and an owner. Five mechanisms, and why naming them changes the negotiation.
Read It Once
Forty minutes at signature, against years of terms nobody read. What the whole site reduces to, and why nobody does it.
The Tool Is Not the Process
Software encodes a way of working. Buying one before the way of working exists means adopting somebody else's.
What a Trial Cannot Tell
Two weeks with clean data and a sales engineer answers a narrow set of questions. Six it cannot reach, and how to widen it.
What We Cannot Check
Seven things this resource does not and cannot verify, stated because a site about verification owes an account of its own limits.
Who Writes the Reviews
Five kinds of source in software comparison, four funded by the vendors being compared, and how to read each one.