How we review

This page explains the mechanics behind the ratings published on Database Providers: how a provider earns a place on the list, what gets measured, and how a final score comes together.

How providers are selected

Database Providers began in 2018 as a small editorial effort to keep track of companies selling business and company databases. What started as private notes on pricing and data accuracy grew into a running set of comparisons, and that origin still shapes how new entries make it onto the list. A provider is not added because it submitted a form or paid for placement; it is added because the editorial team noticed it selling business or company data and decided the offer was worth examining.

There is no fixed intake period and no single moment when the list closes. New providers are reviewed as they appear on the market, which is why the archive now holds more than 550 articles covering companies in this space, including 100 in-depth reviews that look at individual providers in detail. A provider stays out of the rating only if there is not yet enough material to assess it fairly, not because of any quota on how many companies can be listed.

What gets evaluated

Every provider is measured against the same set of criteria, regardless of how long it has been on the market or how large its catalog appears to be. The goal is to compare offers on terms that a buyer would actually care about, rather than on marketing language supplied by the vendor.

The criteria used across reviews include the following points, each checked independently rather than taken on the vendor's word:

• Accuracy of the records inside an actual data sample, not a demonstration file prepared for reviewers
• Transparency of pricing, including whether public quotes match what a buyer is actually charged
• Coverage and depth of the database, meaning how many industries, regions, or company sizes it realistically serves
• Usability of the delivery format and how easily the data can be exported or integrated
• Responsiveness of the provider's own support channels when a question or complaint is raised

Where the underlying data comes from

A review is built on an actual sample of the database in question, not on a marketing sheet handed over by the vendor. Editors request or purchase a working sample, examine the records inside it, and note where the data is thin, outdated, or duplicated. This step is what separates a review published here from a simple restatement of a provider's own claims.

Pricing claims go through a similar check. Before an article is published, the stated price is compared against public quotes available at the time, so that a figure printed in a review reflects what a buyer would likely encounter rather than a number pulled from a press release. Editorial opinions are kept separate from any material a vendor sends in during this process; a glowing pitch from a sales team does not shift the score on its own.

How the final score is calculated

Each provider receives marks across the criteria described above, and those marks are combined into a single score that appears at the top of its review. No single criterion is allowed to dominate the outcome; a provider with attractive pricing but a poor data sample will not outrank a competitor whose records are simply more reliable. The exact weighting between criteria is adjusted case by case, since a database aimed at small business leads is judged by somewhat different priorities than one built for enterprise-level company data, but accuracy and pricing transparency remain the two factors that carry the most weight in every calculation.

Is a single number enough to describe a database provider fairly? Not entirely, which is why the score is always presented alongside the written review rather than in place of it. Readers who want the reasoning behind a number are pointed to the article itself, where each criterion is discussed individually rather than folded silently into a total.

How often the rating changes

The rating is not compiled once and left untouched. Older reviews are revised when a provider changes its offer, its pricing, or the structure of its database, instead of being left as an outdated snapshot of how things looked at launch. This means a provider's position on the list can shift without any new competitor being added, simply because its own product changed.

There is no fixed publishing schedule that dictates when a given review must be updated. Instead, the editorial team monitors the providers already covered and revisits an entry whenever there is a concrete reason to do so, whether that is a new pricing tier, a change in data coverage, or feedback suggesting that a sample no longer matches what is actually delivered. Because the project has no office and operates entirely online, this monitoring happens continuously rather than in scheduled rounds, which keeps the archive closer to a living record than a one-time list.