Russell Vale

Russell Vale is the pen name used by the Small Business Software Guide research desk, which produces every buying guide on this site.

Our work is research, not press releases. We compare pricing plans line by line, read the fine print vendors hope you skip, and comb through real user reports to find what breaks in practice — then publish the straight answer, good and bad. We don't do sponsored rankings, and vendors can't pay for placement.

We don't claim to have personally bought or hands-on tested every product we write about. What we do claim is the boring work: digging through the pricing pages, forum threads, and user reviews so you don't have to.

How we research

• Priced like you pay. We score pricing on what a 5–20 person business pays in year two, not the teaser first-year rate.
• No pay-to-rank. Affiliate commissions fund the research, but they don't buy placement or inflate recommendations.
• Checked against reality. We never repeat a vendor's claim without checking it against pricing pages and real user reports.

Questions, corrections, or a product you'd like us to look into? Get in touch.