Editorial Independence and Affiliate Disclosure
By Alaa, Founder of SMTPedia.
This page documents how SMTPedia handles affiliate relationships, editorial decisions, factual sourcing, and corrections. It is designed to be transparent and testable : if we breach any of the commitments below in a review, please email us and we will fix it publicly.
Our business model
SMTPedia generates revenue from three sources :
- Affiliate commissions : we participate in the affiliate programs of some (not all) email service providers we review. When you click an affiliate link on our site and complete a paid signup, we earn a one-time or recurring commission.
- Consulting services : SMTPedia’s founder offers hands-on email infrastructure consulting to businesses that need direct help with deliverability audits, SMTP migrations, sender authentication rollouts (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI), IP warming strategy, and ESP selection or migration planning. Consulting is contracted directly with the founder and is fully separate from our editorial work : no review outcome, rating, or ranking is influenced by consulting relationships. If we ever review a platform used by a current consulting client, we disclose the relationship in the review body.
Affiliate disclosure
Full disclosure : SMTPedia participates in affiliate programs from ESPs including (but not limited to) Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, GetResponse, Brevo, ConvertKit, GoHighLevel, HubSpot, and others. Where we use affiliate links, we mark the review with a visible footer disclosure. We do not disclose per-link on legibility grounds, but you should assume that any outbound link to a commercial ESP is an affiliate link unless we say otherwise.
Concrete commitments :
- We rate before we affiliate. Ratings are set during the testing session based on the six-category scale documented in our testing methodology. Affiliate commission tiers do not influence these scores.
- We publish critical reviews of affiliate partners. If a platform we affiliate with underperforms our tests, the review reflects that. We will not suppress a low score to protect a commission.
- We review non-affiliate platforms. Our review coverage includes Amazon SES (no affiliate program), Mautic (self-hosted, no commercial relationship), Postmark (limited affiliate), and several enterprise platforms where affiliate is unavailable. These reviews use the same 6-category scale.
- We do not run “top pick” reviews driven by commission size. Our “Best of” hubs rank platforms by the same testing framework, not by commission rate. When commission influences ordering, we say so explicitly.
- Affiliate footer disclosure : every review page that contains affiliate links carries this notice in the footer :
This review contains affiliate links. If you sign up for a platform through one of our links, SMTPedia may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
smtping.com relationship
The founder of SMTPedia also operates smtping.com, an email verification service. This is a potential conflict of interest that we address with a strict rule :
smtping.com is never used as an arbiter, testing tool, or measurement source in SMTPedia reviews. All deliverability measurements in our reviews come from third-party tools (GlockApps, Mail-tester, Postmark spam check, MXToolbox). All email verification comparisons on SMTPedia use third-party benchmarks, not smtping data. If we ever mention smtping.com in a SMTPedia review, it will be clearly labeled as a sister product with a disclosure banner, and it will not be used to score competitors.
This separation is enforced across our content : SMTPedia’s /platforms/ directory and /best-* comparison hubs contain zero smtping-derived data. smtping’s own site remains positioned as a neutral email verification tool and does not surface SMTPedia rankings.
Editorial independence
Beyond affiliate management, we operate the following editorial rules :
- No vendor pre-review. We do not send draft reviews to vendors for approval, correction, or pre-publication feedback. Vendors see our reviews at the same time as the public.
- No paid rating changes. We will not modify a rating or suppress a critical section in exchange for money, advertising, or affiliate deals. Full stop.
- No vendor-orchestrated user reviews. We do not run user-submitted star ratings on our reviews because these are easily gamed by vendor employee campaigns. All scores are set by our testing team.
- No hidden sponsorships. If we ever accept a paid placement, it will be labeled “Sponsored” in the URL, title, and visible content.
- Corrections are public. If we make a factual error and correct it, the changelog entry on the review will document what changed and when.
Sourcing policy
Every factual claim in a SMTPedia review is sourced from one of the following :
- Our own testing session : hands-on account creation, real campaigns, screenshots, GlockApps reports. This is the primary source for every review.
- Vendor official documentation : pricing pages, feature docs, API references. Linked and dated. If a vendor doc changes after publication, our next refresh cycle will update the review.
- Third-party verified data : G2, Capterra, TrustPilot ratings (with source, score, count, and fetch date). GlockApps deliverability reports.
- Public financial and product news : press releases, SEC filings for public companies, VC funding announcements. Linked and dated.
We do not source facts from :
- Vendor sales pitches or webinars (not verifiable independently)
- Anonymous forum posts or unverified Reddit/Twitter claims
- Competitor’s marketing pages (their claims about others)
- AI-generated summaries of vendor pages (we test, we do not paraphrase)
Authorship and byline
Every review is authored by Alaa Touil (Founder, SMTPedia) based on a testing session Alaa conducted personally. Every review is reviewed for factual accuracy and tone by Rabeb Guitni (Editorial reviewer) before publication.
Both bylines appear on every review with photos and links to their author pages :
We do not use AI-generated bylines, fake author personas, or pseudonyms. Every name that appears on a byline corresponds to a real person on our team.
AI use policy
We use AI tools (including large language models) as writing assistants for :
- Drafting outlines from our testing notes
- Rephrasing sections for clarity
- Generating FAQ variations from our own answers
- Producing schema markup boilerplate
We do NOT use AI to :
- Fabricate testing data, screenshots, or deliverability scores
- Invent pricing information not verified from vendor docs
- Write reviews of platforms we have not personally tested
- Generate fake user reviews or third-party ratings
Every review passes through human editorial review (Rabeb) before publication, regardless of AI involvement in drafting.
Corrections and disputes
If you find a factual error, please email corrections@smtpedia.com with :
- URL of the review
- The specific claim you dispute
- The correct information (with source if possible)
We aim to acknowledge within 48 hours and correct within 5 business days if the claim is substantiated. Corrections are logged in the review’s changelog with the date and nature of the change.
Vendors who disagree with our assessments are welcome to contact us via the same address. We will not remove a review or change a rating in exchange for advertising or affiliate deals, but we will publish factual corrections and re-test if new information warrants it.
Data privacy
We do not sell reader data. We use standard analytics (Google Analytics 4) and Search Console for aggregate traffic measurement. Our email opt-in (newsletter) uses our own ESP with double opt-in and one-click unsubscribe. Full privacy policy : Privacy Policy.
Contact
For any question about our editorial process, affiliate handling, or sourcing :
- General editorial :
contact@smtpedia.com
Contact page : Contact SMTPedia
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