How we make money
Pennybench is free to read. To pay for paid test accounts and the time it takes to check prices, we plan to earn money in three ways. Here is each one, in plain words.
1. Affiliate commissions
Some brands run affiliate programs. If you click one of our links to that brand and then buy, the brand may pay us a commission. You pay the same price either way.
Where we are today (November 8, 2026): no affiliate program has approved us yet. That means no link on this site earns us money right now. Every link is a plain link.
We plan to apply to the programs run by some of the brands we cover. For website builders and hosting, these include Shopify, Namecheap, Cloudways, SiteGround, Wix, Squarespace, Bluehost and Hostinger. Applying does not mean they approve us, and it does not mean they rank higher.
Once a program approves us:
- Only links to that brand become paid links.
- Pages with paid links show a short notice at the top, before any link.
- We keep a list on this page of which brands’ links are paid, with the date each one started.
| Brand | Paid links on this site? | Since |
|---|---|---|
| All brands | No | Not applicable |
In this category, most programs pay once, for a new customer’s first order, and many pay nothing on renewals. Some pay a percentage of that first order, so a longer or pricier plan can earn us more. That is why we show the 3-year total for every plan, and point you to the smallest plan that does the job, not the one that pays us most.
2. Sponsored placements (possible, later)
A brand may one day pay to appear on a page. If we ever accept that:
- It will be labelled “Sponsored” in plain sight.
- It will sit outside any ranked list or comparison table.
- It will never change a score, a rank or a verdict.
3. Ads (possible, later)
We may show display ads. Ads are sold by an ad network, not chosen by us brand by brand, and they have no effect on what we write.
What money never changes
- Rankings. The order comes only from our published rubric. See How we test.
- What we say. A brand that pays us still gets its renewal prices, refund limits and weak spots written down.
- Who stays in. A product with no affiliate program stays in our rankings if it scores well.
Who runs Pennybench
Pennybench is run by a small team based in Valencia, Spain. It is operated through a company registered in Romania. This is the US site, written for buyers in the United States, with US prices.
We will buy test accounts with our own money, without using our own affiliate links. No brand reviews or approves our pages before they go live.
If you think a page breaks any of the rules above, email us at hello@pennybench.com. We will check it and fix it, with a dated note.