Where things stand, plainly
The pages on automascope rest on documentary analysis. I read the pricing pages, documentation, help centers and terms of service that vendors publish, and I record what they say. Unless a page states otherwise, I have not used the tools it describes.
That is a deliberate choice: better to say clearly what a documentary comparison can offer than to imply experience that does not exist. So you will find no score out of ten, no stars and no declared “best tool” here.
Where the information comes from
Every fact comes from one of these sources:
- the vendor’s official pricing page;
- its documentation and help center;
- its terms of service and legal notices;
- its affiliate program page, when it has one.
Each fact is stored with the exact address of the page where it was read. In tables, every cell carries a “source” link. When a piece of information was not found on an official page, the cell reads “not recorded”: nothing is estimated, and nothing is taken from a directory, a forum or another comparison site.
Dated records
These tools change their price lists often. Each tool therefore carries a recorded-on date, shown wherever a price appears. Prices are given in the currency the vendor publishes, with no conversion. If a price has changed since it was recorded, the vendor’s page is the one that counts.
How a page comes together
- Recording. Plans, quotas, volume tiers and features go into a database shared by both language editions, along with their source and date.
- Tables. Plan tables, head-to-heads and comparisons are generated from that database. No price is copied by hand into a text: a correction shows up on every page at once.
- Reading. The text explains what the figures imply: what is actually billed, the volume at which a plan stops being enough, and what the vendor does not document.
What documentary analysis cannot tell you
A vendor’s documentation says nothing about day-to-day reliability, the quality of support or how comfortable a visual editor feels. You will not read claims of that kind here, unless they rest on a real trial that is flagged as such.
When a real trial takes place
Some pages may draw on a real trial: an account opened, a workflow built, dated screenshots. Those pages say so in a “Real trial” box, with the date and the tools involved. Without that box, a page makes no claim of use.
No numeric scores
A score out of ten suggests a measurement. We give none. Pages say who a tool suits, and why, based on what its vendor publishes. The only visual highlight in tables marks the lowest entry price, which is a verifiable fact.
Spotted a mistake?
However careful the work, a piece of information can go out of date as soon as a vendor changes its price list. Email me at contact@automascope.com: corrections are dated.
Funding
The site may earn a commission on some links to vendors. How those links work, and why they influence neither the records nor the rankings, is set out in the affiliate disclosure.
Updated