Shortlists of apps for mechanics

How a list gets made

First the question. One list answers one question, and the question is a thing people type rather than a category we invented. "Best invoicing app for mechanics" is a question. "Top solutions for the modern automotive professional" is not.

Then the criteria, written down before any product is looked at. Usually three or four, and always the ones that would change the order if you weighted them differently, so you can see the lever rather than guess at it.

Then the entries, each with what it is genuinely good at, who it is wrong for, and where the claim came from. A claim about a product we do not make is sourced to that company's own pages with the date it was read, the same rule the comparison pages follow.

And then the products that did not make the list, with the reason. A shortlist that never says no is a directory.

Why we rank ourselves honestly

Fixty is one product for one kind of mechanic: a single person working out of a van, running the whole job from a phone. On the questions where that is what the reader wants, we expect to do well and we say why. On the questions where the reader wants stock control, a team, or a front desk, we are not the answer and putting ourselves first would be the fastest way to make every other page here worthless.

This costs us clicks and it is still the right trade. The reader who follows an honest list to somebody else's product is a reader who comes back for the next question, and the reader who follows a dishonest one to ours cancels in week three and tells somebody.

The practical version of that rule: no star ratings we cannot substantiate, no aggregate score with nothing behind it, no rating markup in the structured data, and no ranking that changes because somebody asked.