Affiliate disclosure
Some links here earn this site a commission. This page sets out exactly which ones, what they do and do not influence, and what would have to change for that to stop being true.
SendShelf earns money when a reader signs up to a newsletter platform through one of its partner links. You pay the same price you would pay going direct.
Which links earn a commission
Any link on this site whose address begins with /go/ is a partner link. They are also marked for search engines with the standard sponsored and nofollow attributes.
Every other link is not. Links to other pages on this site, and occasional links to vendor documentation cited as a source, earn nothing.
There is no hidden category. If a link does not start with /go/, no money passes through it.
What commission does not buy
Three rules, and they are the reason this page exists.
It does not buy a score. Ratings come from the same four questions applied to every platform — what the meter counts, where the price steps, what comes out of reader payments, and what you can carry out. A commercial relationship is not one of the four.
It does not buy a position. The platform at the top of the rate card is the one giving away the most capable free tier in the category. A site optimising for payouts would not rank a free plan first.
It does not buy silence. Every review on this site lists what the platform does badly, including the platforms that pay. Where a vendor declines to publish a figure — a tier price, a revenue share — that absence is stated plainly rather than smoothed over.
Platforms linked without a partner relationship
Some platforms are written about here without any commercial arrangement, because the comparison would be dishonest without them. They are assessed on exactly the same terms, and their absence from the partner list has not softened or sharpened a word.
Where a platform appears in a comparison and carries no /go/ link, that is why.
Placeholder links
Partner programmes are applied for and approved individually, and several are outstanding. Until each is issued, the /go/ links here point at the vendor's own homepage rather than a tracking address. If you follow one today, you arrive at the platform exactly as you would by typing its name into a browser.
If this ever stops being true
The commitments above are only worth something if a reader can check them. Every figure on this site is sourced and dated; every criticism is specific enough to argue with. If a page here reads like it was written to sell something, say so, and it will be looked at.