Affiliate disclosure & editorial policy
The Rundown Today participates in affiliate programs. When you click certain links on this site and make a purchase, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
We only recommend products we’ve personally tested or reviewed in depth. Our editorial judgment is not for sale, and affiliate relationships do not influence our rankings, ratings, or recommendations. If we think a paid partner’s product is the wrong choice for your situation, we will say so.
Affiliate links are marked on individual posts where applicable — usually with a small “Affiliate” label near the link itself, plus FTC-compliant rel attributes (nofollow sponsored) on the link.
How we decide what to recommend
Three things weigh heavily in any product recommendation, in roughly this order:
- Does it actually work?We use the products we recommend on our own family’s devices. If a tool over-promises and under-delivers, we say so — even when there’s an affiliate relationship.
- Is it the right tool for the situation?A $15/mo monitoring app is not always the right answer. Sometimes the right answer is a free OS-level setting, a network-layer fix, or just a conversation. We try to point at the actual fix even when the actual fix doesn’t pay us.
- Is the affiliate program reasonable?We don’t join programs that require us to misrepresent the product, hide downsides, or recommend things we wouldn’t ourselves. Most consumer-software programs are fine; some are not, and we skip those.
When we don’t use affiliate links
Some recommendations on this site have no affiliate program at all. NextDNS, for example, doesn’t pay us — we still recommend it because it’s the best in its class for the money. The lack of a financial relationship there is itself a credibility check.
We’re also intentionally cautious about adding new affiliate relationships. The goal is for readers to trust that any recommendation here is real, not just the highest-paying sponsorship of the month.
Questions or corrections
If a recommendation here reads off, or you think we’ve missed a conflict of interest, send a note via the submit form. We’ll respond and update if warranted.
Last updated · April 2026