We test website builders, ecommerce platforms, and SaaS business tools, then tell you who each one is actually right for.
Most small business owners we know have at least one horror story. Six months into building on the wrong platform, realising it can't do the one thing their business actually needs. Switching costs money, wastes time, and is demoralising. The internet is full of top-ten lists written by people who read the marketing pages. We got tired of that.
Tool Foundry covers website builders, ecommerce platforms, and SaaS business tools: CRMs, email marketing, booking systems, and more. The scope is expanding over time, but the approach stays the same regardless of category: we test it, we tell you what we found, and we tell you who it is and is not right for.
Tool Foundry earns a commission when you click through to a tool and sign up or make a purchase. This is standard practice for review and comparison sites, and the commission comes from the tool provider and does not affect what you pay.
We want to be clear about what this means and, more importantly, what it does not mean. Commission does not determine our rankings. Tools we earn from can and do appear lower in our lists when a better option exists for your situation. We will always tell you when a tool is the wrong fit for a specific use case, even if it is one we earn from.
Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle data on the site.
Every tool we cover starts with hands-on testing. We sign up for an account, go through the setup process a new user would experience, and build something real on it. For website builders, that means constructing a representative site. For ecommerce platforms, that means setting up products, running through checkout flows, and testing integrations. We do not write from documentation alone.
We assess tools across five core dimensions. The weighting shifts depending on what the tool is for, but these are the things we consistently come back to:
How long does it take someone with no technical background to get something live? Where does the interface get confusing? What does onboarding actually look like?
Marketing pages make every tool sound complete. We check what is genuinely in the plan you would realistically buy, and what requires an upgrade or a paid add-on.
Page speed, uptime, and how the platform behaves under normal usage. For ecommerce tools, checkout reliability matters especially.
Can you control what you need to control? This covers URL structure, meta data, structured data support, canonical tags, and how well the platform's output is handled by search engines. Peter leads this part of every review.
Not just the headline price. The real monthly cost once you add the apps, themes, and integrations a typical business would actually need.
Each review produces a score out of ten across those five dimensions. We then weight the dimensions based on the context of the review. A guide aimed at a local service business will weight ease of use more heavily than raw SEO capability. A guide aimed at an ecommerce seller will weight features and performance more heavily.
Rankings in our comparison guides reflect the weighted scores relevant to the use case described in that guide. That is why a tool might rank differently across different comparison pages. The tool has not changed, but the question being answered has.
No. We do not accept payment for placement, sponsored reviews, or editorial coverage. Tool providers occasionally offer extended trial access or demos, which we use to test features we might not otherwise reach on a standard plan. This does not affect the outcome of a review.
Tools change. Pricing changes. We update our content when we become aware of significant changes to a tool we cover. Major reviews are re-tested at least annually. We mark the date of the most recent update on every review page.
Jack and Peter write under their contributor names on Tool Foundry. Both have professional commitments elsewhere and have chosen not to publicly tie this project to their primary careers at this stage. The experience and expertise described on this page is genuine. We stand behind everything we publish here.
Tool Foundry is based in the UK. All prices shown on the site are in GBP unless otherwise stated.
Hands-on guides, comparisons, and updates from the people who test every tool on Tool Foundry.
Visit the blogTool Foundry is run by two people who have spent their careers in digital, working with the exact tools they write about. Between them they cover the full picture: the technical side of how a platform actually works, and the commercial side of whether it will perform for your business. Every review reflects both perspectives.
