The rules that make a paid membership compatible with an independent directory. These are the terms every member agrees to, published openly so buyers can hold us to them too.
Last updated August 29, 2026
Every vendor we track is listed and scored whether they pay us or not, and whether they want to be listed or not. Membership is optional. Cancelling it returns the profile to a standard listing; it does not remove the vendor from the directory, and it does not change the Trust Score in either direction.
Trust Scores are computed by a published method from prices, published lab documentation, service checks and screened reviews. Membership status is not an input to that calculation, and no member has ever been given a different calculation. Members and non-members are ranked in the same sort, by the same numbers.
A member's profile carries a Member mark and a plain-language line stating that membership is a paid commercial relationship and does not affect the score or the ranking. We would rather a buyer see the arrangement and discount it than discover it later and discount everything else we say.
If a member is flagged, it publishes. Membership does not delay it, soften it, or buy it down, and we will not give advance notice beyond the right of reply that every vendor gets. A member flagged for conduct that would have failed the admissions review may have their membership terminated; fees for the remainder of the paid period are refunded, and the finding stays published.
Applications are reviewed against five published criteria: a documented business, a working customer-contact channel we test, a published refund or returns policy, COAs available on request, and no unresolved Scam Watch flag. Applications that miss them are declined. A declined applicant keeps their free listing and their score, unchanged, and may reapply when something has changed. Being declined is not itself published.
Anything a member writes about themselves — description, product highlights, links, responses to reviews — is presented as vendor-provided and kept visually separate from editorial data. We may decline to publish vendor content that makes medical, dosing, or therapeutic claims, because the entire site operates under a research-use-only framing and one member's copy can put every other listing at risk.
Published COAs, reviews, prices, service-check results and Scam Watch entries stay published after a membership ends. Vendor-supplied presentation — logo, description, coupon — is removed. Nobody can pay to have a finding published and then pay to have it taken down; that would make publication meaningless.
Membership is billed monthly or yearly in advance through our payment processor. Founding rates are locked for the life of a continuous membership; lapsing and rejoining means the rate current at that time. Cancel any time, effective at the end of the paid period. We do not take payment details by email and never ask for them in an application form.
Every vendor, member or not, has a right of reply to anything we publish about them. Send a correction with evidence and we will check it. Where we are wrong we correct the page and note the correction rather than quietly editing it. This right does not depend on paying us, and it never expires.
Why publish all this? A directory that takes money from the businesses it rates has exactly one way to stay worth reading: state the boundary in public, in advance, and hold to it when it costs something. If we ever break one of these rules, this page is the evidence against us — which is the point of it.
Questions before applying? The application page lists what we check, or write to us and ask.