How we research
Every page here answers one question: what will I actually pay for a defined site? This page explains how we get to the number, and how you can check it yourself.
Researched, not tested
We read; we do not buy. We do not buy paid plans and we do not build sites to test a builder. Our sources are:
- the vendors’ public pricing pages, read in both yearly and monthly billing, with the date we read them;
- plan-limit tables, help documentation and changelogs;
- earlier versions of pricing pages from public archives, with their dates, for price history;
- free plans and free trials that need no payment details;
- user reports from forums and communities, cited and dated, and never treated as proof on their own.
We never write “we tested”, “hands-on” or “we built a site with”. Every page carries the Researched label. If that ever changes for a page, the page will say so plainly.
The footnote on every figure
Each price, total, seat or add-on cost and plan limit carries a numbered note. A note has exactly one tag:
- SOURCE the page a figure was read from and the day we read it. Prices move; the date tells you how fresh ours is.
- ASSUMES who is on the team, how many pages and languages, how you are billed. Change the assumption and the bill changes, so we say it out loud.
- CAVEAT what we could not confirm, or a condition that changes the number. We print the gap rather than guess around it. When a price is missing, the page says “price check pending” and gives the reason.
On a wide screen the notes sit in the margin next to the figure. On a phone, tap the number to read its note. Without JavaScript the notes are a plain list that the numbers link to.
The same scenarios on every page
Bills are priced for a few fixed scenarios, defined once and never changed from page to page, so a total on one page can be compared with a total on another:
- S1, solo portfolio: one site on a custom domain, the owner only, up to 30 pages, a blog, no extra languages, up to 1,000 CMS items.
- S3, startup of three: the owner, one designer with full editing rights and one writer who edits content only; up to 150 pages, one extra language, up to 2,500 CMS items.
- S5, team of five: the owner, two designers and two writers; up to 150 pages, two extra languages, 5,000 CMS items.
Every scenario assumes less than 50 GB of bandwidth a month and no overage, priced in US dollars before tax. Taxes, VAT and regional prices differ by country; the vendor’s checkout shows the final figure.
The real bill
A bill is a list of real line items for a stated scenario, and the total is their sum. We show it billed yearly and billed monthly. Derived figures (sums, percentages, monthly rates multiplied by twelve) are marked as our arithmetic, so you can redo them.
Freshness
Every price carries the date it was read. We re-read prices every month. A page whose prices were read more than 30 days ago is not published or republished until they have been read again: our site build refuses to publish it.
Rankings and money
We rank by fit for the reader’s job, never by commission. A tool without an affiliate programme stays in a list if it fits better. See the disclosure.
Corrections
If a number is wrong or out of date, write to contact@builtandbilled.com with the page and where you saw a different figure. If we got it wrong, we fix the page and update its date.