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Pricing pages are designed. Every one of them is the product of someone deciding what you should notice first, and what you should find only later.
None of this is dishonest. It is just that the page is written to sell, and you are reading it to decide. Those are different jobs.
Seven things to check
1. Is the headline price annual, billed monthly? Very common, and easy to misread. The number you see may only apply if you pay twelve months up front.
2. What counts as a "user"? Some tools charge for anyone with a login, including people who only read. Others charge only for people who create things. On a team of twenty this difference can double your bill.
3. Where is the tier wall? Find the one feature you cannot live without and check which tier it sits on. Compare that tier's price, not the entry one.
4. What happens at the usage limit? Look for the word "included". Included storage, included contacts, included API calls. Then find what happens when you exceed it: some tools stop, some charge overage, and the second is worse if nobody is watching.
5. Can you leave with your data? Look for an export function, in a format something else can read. If the only export is a proprietary file, the real cost of the tool includes never being able to switch.
If the tool holds personal data about people in the EU or UK, you have more standing here than you might think. The GDPR's right to data portability says a person can receive their personal data "in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format" and transmit it to another controller without hindrance. That is a right belonging to the individual rather than to your company, but a vendor whose export is deliberately unusable is on weak ground, and it is a fair question to put to them before signing.
6. What does support actually mean? "Priority support" on a paid tier often means a queue rather than a person. If support matters to you, ask what the response time commitment is, in writing.
7. How does the price change at renewal? Introductory pricing is normal and fine. Introductory pricing that quietly becomes something else is also normal. Ask.
The question that settles most of it
Before committing to an annual plan, ask yourself: if this tool disappeared tomorrow, how long would it take to replace it? If the answer is "an afternoon", do not lock in a year. If the answer is "months", then price is not really your main concern — reliability and data export are.
What we do with this
When we publish comparisons here, these are the questions we will answer for each tool, and we will say when we checked. A comparison that lists features but not the tier wall is not comparing the thing you will pay for.
Sources (1) · Provider pages and documents consulted
- Art. 20 GDPR – Right to data portability – 23/09/2026