How the Index works

What the Index is

A record of the software being sold to residential and light commercial contractors, and a count of what contractors did after they bought it.

What it is not

We do not rate software.

There are no stars, no scores, no rankings, no editor's picks, and no recommendations. We do not think anyone can tell you from the outside whether a product is good, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

What we do is record what a product is, what it costs, who owns it, and what its terms permit. Then we ask contractors who use it whether they still are.

We report. Contractors judge.

Where the facts come from

Every field on a tool page is in one of three states, and the state is always shown next to the field.

Not yet researched. Nobody has filled it in. We have not looked, or we looked and could not find a source. An empty field is not a claim about the company.

Reported by the vendor. The company told us, through the correction form on their page. We check that it is plausible and consistent with their public materials. We do not independently confirm it. It is labelled on every field so you can weigh it yourself.

Verified by DIALED. We checked it ourselves, against a public source, on a date we publish. The source is linked.

A page where the vendor answered everything and we verified nothing reads differently from one where both agree. That difference is information, which is why we show it rather than flattening everything into one number.

What verified actually means

For each verified field, we looked at a specific public page on a specific date and recorded what was there. Not what we believe, not what we remember, not what the company is generally understood to do.

Things we check directly:

• Whether a price is published on the site at all
• Whether a security or trust page exists
• Whether a status page exists
• Whether a support phone number is published
• Whether documentation and a public API exist
• When the mobile apps last shipped
• When the privacy policy and terms were last updated
• When the site first appeared in the Internet Archive
• Whether the company is currently advertising to contractors

Absence is recorded, not skipped. No published phone number, checked August 4, is a fact, and it is one of the more useful ones.

What we do not verify

Some things cannot be confirmed from outside without doing the work by hand. We do that work over time, in the order contractors ask for it.

Until we have, those fields sit as not yet researched or as vendor-reported. We would rather show you an empty field than a confident guess.

We never publish a number we could not source. A missing field means we do not know.

Data export

We test this one rather than asking.

When we say a tool offers a full export, it means we requested one and recorded what arrived and how long it took. When a vendor tells us they offer an export and we have not tested it, the field says vendor-reported.

This is the single field vendors most often overstate, which is why it gets treated differently from the rest.

Integrations

Integrates with means very little on its own, so we record it in four tiers.

Verified native. We confirmed it works, on a date we publish.

Advertised by vendor. The vendor's site, documentation, or marketplace lists it. We have not confirmed it.

Middleware. It works through Zapier, Make, or similar. That usually costs extra and it usually breaks quietly.

None. Not supported, or export and re-import only.

Where documentation states it, we also record the direction of the sync, which records actually move, and whether it is included in the base price or costs extra. Where the documentation is silent, we leave those blank rather than assuming.

The numbers

The retention figures come from the panel, not from reviews.

How it works

Contractors register the software they run and when they started with each tool. Every ninety days we send one email asking a single question per tool: still using it?

Retention is computed from those confirmations. It is not a survey, a satisfaction score, or a recollection.

What still using at twelve months means

Of members who started with a tool at least twelve months ago and have confirmed their status in the last six months, the share still using it.

Two exclusions matter:

Anyone who has not reached twelve months is not in the sample. They are not counted as retained and not counted as lost.

Anyone who has stopped responding drops out. If we have not been able to confirm someone's status in six months, they leave the denominator. We do not keep counting someone as a user of something we can no longer confirm.

The rules we hold

We never publish a percentage below five responses. Below that, the page says there is not enough data.

We always publish the count alongside the figure. Twenty-eight of forty-one, not sixty-eight percent.

We publish the date the figure was last computed.

Segments

A tool that works for a four million dollar painting company may not work for a thirty million dollar general contractor. An overall average hides that, so we break the numbers out by trade first and revenue band second.

When your exact segment does not have enough responses, we widen it and say so on the page. You will always see which group a number came from. We would rather tell you we are showing all painters instead of painters your size than quietly average them together.

Revenue bands are broad on purpose: under $1M, $1M to $5M, $5M to $15M, $15M to $50M, and above $50M. We never ask for or publish an exact revenue figure.

Switching

When someone registers a tool we ask what they were using before it. When someone drops a tool we ask what they moved to.

That produces the came from and went to counts on tool pages. Both need at least five responses before anything renders, and destinations with fewer than two responses roll into an and others line.

These are counts of what people did. We do not characterize the direction or draw conclusions from it.

Spreadsheets, paper, and something built in-house are valid answers and are counted like any other destination. A tool people leave to go back to a spreadsheet is telling you something.

Privacy findings

We read each company's privacy policy and terms of service and answer the same eleven questions about all of them.

Every answer carries a direct quote from the document, a link to it, and the date we read it.

If we could not find a clause that answers a question, the answer is not addressed, which is itself a finding.

We do not summarize from what policies usually say. We quote what this one says. If a policy changes, we note the date and what changed.

Question ten matters more than the others: does the policy address your customers' data, or only yours? Most of them are silent on the homeowner whose address, contract, and interior photos are in the system.

Corrections

Any company can correct factual information on their page.

Price, plans, ownership, funding, team size, integrations, security posture, support hours, data export. The form is on every tool page.

Accepted corrections publish as vendor-reported with the date and appear in a public log on the page, showing what changed and when.

Corrections cannot touch what contractors reported. Not retention figures, not switching counts, not published comments, not Field Test results. Those are the record of what people did, and no company gets to edit that.

We do not remove a tool from the Index on request. A company that does not want to be listed can leave their fields unresearched, but the page stays.

If we got something wrong, tell us at corrections@dialedcontractor.com. We correct errors of fact on the page with a dated note. We do not edit silently.

Money

Nobody pays to be in the Index, to change a listing, or to change a number.

There is no paid placement, no sponsored listing, no affiliate revenue, and no advertising on tool pages.

Companies can pay to be Field Tested. That fee covers production, and it has never bought a result. Field Tests publish regardless of outcome and no company sees an episode before you do.

What we get wrong

We will get things wrong. Prices change, companies get acquired, policies get rewritten, and a page we verified in March may be stale in September.

Every fact on this site carries the date we checked it. If a date looks old to you, treat it as old. We re-check the things contractors ask about most, in that order.

If you find an error, email corrections@dialedcontractor.com. It gets fixed on the page with a note, and the note stays.