Editorial Guidelines & Integrity Commitment

At SoftwareHow, we are on a mission to make the world’s best small but powerful software tools available in their own niches. In the meantime, we are also committed to providing our readers with helpful and trustworthy software guides and tips. We have a team of expert writers who are required to adhere to multiple levels of editorial review.

The “SoftwareHow Friends & Family” Test

First off, we have this guiding principle called the “Friends & Family Test.” In other words, we only publish software guides, tutorials, and how-to tips that we feel comfortable giving to our friends and family to read (in fact, we often do exactly that to get feedback).

In our opinion, if a piece of content or recommendation is not good enough for our personal friends or family, it’s probably not good enough for our readers either.

We Only Publish Human Writings

Here at SoftwareHow.com, we believe in human creativity and critical thinking – meaning that our writings are that automated content can not match.

We are aware of and do respect the power of AI writing tools, however, we value more the human touches of the content we create and the audience (you) who read.

Therefore, we do not use or publish any form of AI-generated content. Rest assured that all the content you read on our website is written and edited by humans.

We Conduct Objective Testings

Our Resources hub has several types of content:

Many of the articles are based on objective hands-on tests conducted by our expert writers who have years (even decades) of experience in their respective fields.

We don’t just list the best software products or services – our experts actually test each product carefully before making the most accurate and up-to-date recommendations.

For example, when it comes to photo editing software, we have a dedicated writer Thomas Boldt who is an experienced photographer. He’s personally tested every popular image editing program in depth, so he could understand the ins and outs of each program. Then he was able to produce high-quality single-product reviews, product comparisons, roundup reviews, alternatives, and related tutorials.

A side note: previously, Thomas was mainly working on a Windows PC, we facilitated his tests by offering him a brand new iMac so he could try many Mac photo editing apps as well.

Our Editorial Process

Even though we are not a media company that has a huge publishing team with plenty of resources, we believe in our editorial integrity and ethics. For each article published, it typically goes through this process:

  1. A senior content strategist researches relevant topics to cover, along with the order (e.g. test x number of products and write single reviews first, then comparisons, roundup reviews, etc.)
  2. A writer is assigned to this specific project (usually contains 30-50 pieces of content), with detailed writing guidelines for each content type.
  3. The writer works on the project and starts to deliver article drafts.
  4. An editor who understands the niche is assigned to check the drafts to ensure there are no factual errors, and then he edits them for better readability.
  5. A content assistant will upload the edited drafts to our website dashboard, waiting to be published.
  6. Our editor-in-chief will do a final check and hit the “publish” button.
  7. Once an article is published, we also check and update it periodically and ensure the content is up to date. In some cases, the article needs to be rewritten because some software UI/UX has changed.

If you believe we have made a factual assertion that requires a correction, please contact us.

Stay Unbiased Because Readers Come First

We receive many pitches from software vendors trying to incentivize us to manipulate our recommendations, but we always politely say no. As you can see from our editorial process above, the writer who is assigned to a project has no financial or editorial interference in their opinions.

Oftentimes, their favorite software doesn’t even have an affiliate program, meaning that we don’t make any money by listing this software in the top place. You can read our Disclaimer & Disclosure for more information.

Staying unbiased and objective is an attitude and responsibility, as an ethical digital publishing company. We at SoftwareHow aim to save our readers time and money in finding the best software and advice that fits their needs. We are proud of creating helpful content to make their work or life easier.