How Sidebar makes money, in full.
Sidebar is free to read and funded, in part, by affiliate relationships with some of the vendors we review. Here is exactly how that works, so you can weigh our verdicts accordingly.
What an affiliate link means here
When a Docket entry's "Get [Tool]" button leads to a paid partner, we may earn a commission if you subscribe — at no extra cost to you. That relationship never determines a verdict: a "Do not retain" holding stays a "Do not retain" holding whether or not the vendor is a partner, and several tools we've reviewed pay us nothing.
Current partners
| Vendor | Relationship |
|---|---|
| 1Password | Affiliate partner |
| Bitdefender | Affiliate partner |
| NordLayer | Affiliate partner |
| Malwarebytes | Affiliate partner |
| Guardio | Affiliate partner |
| Virtru | No commercial relationship |
| Egnyte | No commercial relationship |
What we don't do
We don't accept payment in exchange for a specific verdict, don't let a vendor preview or edit a Docket entry before publication, and don't remove a "Do not retain" holding because a vendor asks. If a vendor's product changes enough to warrant a new look, we say so in the entry itself, with the date.