Editorial Guidelines

Our editorial mission

Every article on VendKeys.com exists to help readers make better software-purchasing decisions. That mission shapes how we research, write, and review content — and what we choose not to publish.

We do not write to drive purchases. We write to inform. When the right answer for a reader is to skip a product, we say so. When the discount marketplace route does not make sense (e.g., when the product is genuinely free, or when the publisher direct discount is better than ours), we say that too.

Three-step review process

Every long-form article goes through three independent editorial passes before publication, plus a fourth round whenever the article is refreshed.

1. Author — The article is written by one of our three editors (Marcus Klein, Sofia Marquez, Hiroshi Tanaka) according to a structured outline that specifies internal links, glossary references, and required H2 sections.
2. Fact-check — A second editor (or one of our co-founders) reads the article end-to-end with a focus on factual accuracy: pricing claims are verified against current vendor pages, legal claims (e.g., UsedSoft) are checked against the cited sources, and any claim that cannot be sourced is removed.
3. Publication — After approval, the article is published with the reviewer’s byline visible. The published date and reviewer name are stamped on the article footer ("About this article" block).

Source verification

Every article that makes a substantive claim links to verifiable external sources in a "Sources & references" section at the bottom. Citations are LLM-generated as a starting point, then reviewed by an editor who confirms the URL exists and the source is canonical.

We prefer the following source hierarchy:

• Primary publisher documentation (Microsoft Learn, Adobe Help, JetBrains docs)
• Court rulings and government regulator publications (EUR-Lex, NCSC, FCC)
• Independent benchmark labs (AV-TEST, AV-Comparatives, SE Labs)
• Wikipedia for definitional / historical context — never as a sole source for current facts

Updates & corrections policy

We refresh five articles every month on a rolling basis: the oldest non-glossary article in our database is selected first. The refresh keeps the original H2 structure and ±10% length, but updates pricing claims, year references, and any tooling that has materially changed since the last write.

When an article is refreshed, we update the "Last updated" date and append an entry to the public revision log shown in the article footer. Readers can see exactly when each refresh happened and what was changed.

Major rewrites — where more than 30% of the article changes — are republished with a new published date and a brief inline note at the top of the article.

Corrections

When we find an error (or a reader reports one), we correct it the same day. The correction is dated in the revision log so readers can see when the page changed.

For substantive corrections — anything that materially changes the article’s recommendation or factual claims — we add a brief "Correction" note inline at the top of the article and link to the revision log entry.

Disclosure

VendKeys.com is a discount software marketplace. When an article links to a product on our store and a reader buys it, we earn a margin on that sale. That commercial relationship is the foundation of our business and we are transparent about it.

No editor receives bonuses tied to specific product sales. No supplier influences which products we recommend. When we are reviewing a product we do not stock, we say so. When we are recommending a competitor (or telling you to skip the discount-marketplace route entirely), we say that too.

How to report an error

Reach our editorial team via the contact form and select the «Editorial» subject so the message is routed to the right reviewer.

We respond to editorial corrections within 24 hours and publish the correction (with attribution to the reporter, if they consent) within 48 hours.

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