How PracticeVerdict makes recommendations
We're a synthesis publication, not a testing lab. We don't run first-party trials on every EHR, telehealth platform, or billing system we cover. What we have is a methodology for systematically reading what the people who DO have those things have published, weighting their findings through a transparent framework, and presenting the synthesis with the limits explicitly stated.
We don't run a lab
PracticeVerdict is a synthesis publication. We don't have a clinical practice, a clearinghouse contract, or 100+ active clients across two test practices running every platform in parallel. What we have is a methodology for systematically reading what the clinicians who DO have those things have published (G2 and Capterra peer reviews at scale, clinician community sources, trade press coverage, vendor documentation), weighting those findings through a transparent framework, and presenting the synthesis with the limits stated.
What we do verify directly: vendor product documentation, HIPAA compliance documentation (BAA availability, encryption at rest and in transit, audit logging, role-based access controls), current pricing pages, payer integration documentation, and convergent owner-report patterns from accounts with established posting history. What we don't claim: that we have run two parallel solo practices for 90 days, billed 162 insurance claims, conducted 41 telehealth sessions per platform, or interviewed anonymized practitioners whose credentials we verified through state licensure lookup.
Our source stack
For each platform we cover, we draw on:
- G2 and Capterra peer reviews from clinicians with 6+ months of platform ownership, filtered for accounts with established posting history (not single-review accounts)
- HIPAA compliance documentation: signed Business Associate Agreement (BAA) availability, encryption standards, audit logging behavior, role-based access controls as published by each vendor
- Vendor product documentation and pricing pages (current as of the "Last updated" date on the article)
- Clinician community sources: r/therapists, r/socialwork, r/psychotherapy (combined ~340k subscribers), private clinician Facebook groups (read-only, ~22k combined members), Psychotherapy.net
- Trade press coverage: Behavioral Health Business, Mental Health Tech News, the Health IT News mental-health beat
- TrustPilot and aggregated owner-report distributions with sample size and distribution shape reported, not just averages
- Independent third-party reviews from clinical-software-focused publications and clinician peer reviews
Where vendor claims and clinician experience diverge, we report both and explain how we weighted the divergence in the final scoring.
Our 5-criteria weighted framework
Every platform is scored across five weighted criteria:
For PracticeVerdict specifically, we apply a HIPAA compliance gate: any product failing baseline HIPAA technical safeguards (signed Business Associate Agreement available, encryption at rest and in transit, audit logging, role-based access controls) is not reviewed. We list it in the methodology appendix with the failure reason and move on. The remaining criteria only apply to products that clear the gate.
What we won't claim
- We won't claim first-party hands-on testing we haven't done.
- We won't claim clinical practices or test caseloads we don't operate.
- We won't quote retail prices we can't verify against the vendor's current published pricing page.
- We won't recommend a product with an affiliate program over an equivalent product without one, when the evaluation criteria are equal. Ties are broken on the lower commission.
- We won't omit eliminations from our shortlist; if a product was considered and rejected on substance, we name it and explain why.
- We won't allow vendors to review articles before publication.
- We won't invent anonymized clinician quotes. Where we attribute a perspective, it traces to a real verifiable source.
- We won't make clinical claims. This is consumer-tech editorial for practitioners, not clinical guidance.
How affiliate revenue works at PracticeVerdict
PracticeVerdict earns commission when readers click affiliate links and complete a purchase. Affiliate relationships do not influence our rankings. We score the job, not the payout. When a vendor's product is the wrong recommendation for a practice profile, we say so even if we have an affiliate relationship with that vendor.
Independence policy:
- Affiliate commission rates have no bearing on scoring or ranking.
- Where two products would otherwise rank identically, ties are broken on the lower commission, explicitly to bias against pay-to-play.
- We do not accept paid sponsorships, vendor-paid placements, or "sponsored content."
- We do not allow vendors to review articles before publication.
Update cadence
- Pricing changes monitored monthly; articles updated within 30 days of detected change.
- Major feature changes trigger a quarterly review of the top 50 articles.
- Industry shifts (acquisitions, deprecations, new entrants, HIPAA enforcement actions) prompt article updates within two weeks of public news.
- The "Last updated" date is visible at the top of every article.
Editorial corrections and feedback
Errors are corrected in-line with a visible (Updated: YYYY-MM-DD) note. Substantive corrections are logged on our corrections page. We do not silently rewrite published claims.
Found an error or want to flag a missing consideration? Email corrections@practiceverdict.com with the article URL and a brief description.