Every product on the site comes from one record with its role, the sellers it fits, a typical price band per market and an approved fallback. Rankings, setups and guides point to those records, so a change shows up everywhere at once.
The method below covers the kit rankings and the setups. It's the same for every retailer.
Criteria
We start from the job, such as printing 100 × 150 mm labels or protecting a card in the post, then judge each candidate on the things a home seller feels each week:
- Running cost: label, mailer and refill prices over a month, on top of the price on the box.
- Fit: size, weight and the platforms and couriers it works with.
- Space and noise in a small room.
- How easy it is to replace or buy refills in the UK.
Each ranking names one pick, a cheaper option and an option for higher volumes, with a sentence on when to choose each.
Price bands
Prices are typical bands for each market, such as £25 to £40, taken from what the product usually sells for at mainstream UK retailers. They are never live prices. Setup totals add the bands together, so a total is a range too.
Retailer prices move with sales and stock. Check the retailer's page before you buy.
Fit by platform and category
Each product lists the platforms and categories it suits. A thermal printer that prints eBay and Royal Mail labels at 100 × 150 mm fits most sellers. A rigid card mailer fits trading cards, so it never appears in a clothing setup.
The setup builder and the category pages use those tags to show kit for what you sell, on the platforms you use.
Fallbacks
Every product has an approved fallback that does the same job. If a product goes off sale or a retailer link stops working, the site sends you to the fallback instead, both on the page and in the outbound link.
Checks
A script checks every product link once a week. It confirms the retailer page loads, the product name matches ours and any price it finds sits inside our band, and flags anything that fails. We check Amazon listings through Amazon's own product data once we have the product codes, and we never scrape them. A person reviews each flag and, if the product is gone, marks it off sale so the fallback takes over.
A person also checks each product record against the retailer and the maker, and the record keeps the date of that check. We fact-check claims about platforms, postage and the law against the official source before they go live.
Updates
Setups and guides show the date they last changed. We revisit rankings when a product changes, a cheaper option appears or a platform changes its rules. If you spot something out of date, the contact page explains how to tell us.
Independence from commission
Some retailers pay us a commission and some pay nothing. We rank on the criteria above and then add links. If the right product has no affiliate programme, it still gets the pick, and some picks are free tools that earn us nothing.
No brand pays for a place, a review or a better position. Read the affiliate disclosure for the programmes we use.
How we make money
Product buttons go through our own link (/go/...) to the retailer. When you buy after clicking one, the retailer may pay us a commission, at no extra cost to you. Commission is our only income. We sell no paid placements or sponsored rankings.
The affiliate disclosure lists the programmes, and how we pick explains why commission doesn't decide a ranking.