Who we are, why we started buying AI tools with our own money, and how Tested AI stays independent of the vendors it covers.
In 2023 our founder spent roughly $6,400 on AI subscriptions for a six-person marketing agency. Eleven of the nineteen tools were cancelled inside a month. Every one of them had a polished demo video, a wall of five-star testimonials, and a review page written by somebody who had clearly never opened the product.
That gap is the entire reason Tested AI exists. A small business owner choosing software is making a real financial decision with real switching costs, and the information available to them is mostly marketing copy with an affiliate link attached.
We buy every tool at full retail price on a normal account. We use it on live client work or on our own business for at least two weeks, usually longer. We keep notes as we go, including the parts that are boring: the failed imports, the support ticket that took nine days, the invoice that did not reconcile.
Then we score it against the same nine criteria used for every other tool in the same category, so a 4.2 in one review means the same thing as a 4.2 in another. The full rubric is public on the methodology page.
No vendor has ever paid for a review, a score, a badge, or a position on a list, and no vendor ever will. We do not accept free accounts, sponsored posts, or “review in exchange for a licence” arrangements. We do not send drafts to vendors before publication.
We do earn affiliate commission on some outbound links, and we run display advertising. Neither one is connected to how anything scores. The people writing reviews do not see affiliate performance data, and the ad slots on this site are filled programmatically by a network with no say in our editorial. Full detail is on the affiliate disclosure page.
Software changes. A tool we panned in March may have fixed the thing we panned it for by September. We re-test every review at least twice a year and stamp the date at the top of the page. If you think a review is out of date or plain wrong, tell us on the contact page and we will look again. Corrections get noted in the article.
Founder and lead reviewer
Dana spent nine years running a six-person marketing agency in Austin, where payroll depended on picking software that actually shipped work. She started Tested AI after buying one too many tools on the strength of a demo video. She has personally paid for and run every tool reviewed on this site for at least two weeks of real client work before scoring it.
Automation and operations reviewer
Marcus led operations at a 40-person direct-to-consumer brand where a broken automation meant unshipped orders. He builds every workflow tested on this site against a live sandbox with real order and invoice data, then deliberately breaks it to see how the tool recovers. He covers automation, agents, and integrations.
Tested AI Media LLC is based in Austin, TX, and has been publishing since 2024. Editorial questions go to hello@testedai.com.