PowerAudit Methodology — How We Assess Public Documentation

PowerAudit is an independent software directory covering 275 tools. We organize public vendor documentation so buyers can compare pricing, security, data rights, and company and product information using the same framework. We do not accept paid placements.

Free listings and commissioned reports

Our free listings help buyers compare what vendors publicly document about their products. Listing corrections and factual verification remain free, whether or not a vendor works with us commercially.

A commissioned Buyer Readiness Report gives your team a focused review of agreed buyer questions across selected public pages. It brings together clear answers, unresolved questions, supporting sources and priorities, with practical recommendations and ways to check the changes.

The additional work is the agreed research, recommendations and follow-up. Payment is not required to correct our mistakes or resolve a finding already published in our free research. We do not promise a minimum number of issues or an improvement in sales or AI citations.

See the report scope, sample and price.

Research Process

1. Product identity: We confirm the product, vendor, and directory category before assessing the listing.
2. Vendor sources: We examine public vendor-owned product, pricing, security, help-center, privacy, and terms pages.
3. Structured extraction: Automated tools, including language models, may assist with page discovery and extraction. We record supporting sources and review dates during research; the source detail available on older listings may vary.
4. Evidence and scoring: We apply the same CTI rubric to the recorded evidence. Conflicting public statements are preserved or marked unclear rather than resolved without support.
5. Publication and refresh: Every review is a point-in-time assessment. We revisit listings on a rolling basis and prioritize documented corrections and material changes.

What CTI Measures

The Compliance Transparency Index (CTI) is a 0-100 public-documentation completeness score. It records whether selected information was documented in qualifying public sources at the time of review.

CTI is not a rating of product quality, security, legal compliance, customer satisfaction, or suitability for a particular buyer. It is not a certification or product recommendation.

Scoring Rubric

Security Documentation — 40 points

• SOC 2 documentation — 10 points
• GDPR documentation — 10 points
• SSO/SAML availability — 10 points
• Published data-retention policy — 10 points

Pricing Documentation — 25 points

• Public pricing information — 15 points
• Free trial or free tier — 10 points

Quote-only or “Contact Sales” pricing does not receive public-pricing points.

Public pricing can receive credit when the core offer has a calculable price, even if optional modules or fees still need clarification. Those gaps are described separately. A money-back guarantee alone does not count as a free trial.

Data-Rights Documentation — 20 points

• Output ownership documented — 5 points
• Training opt-out documented — 5 points
• Data export documented — 5 points
• Data deletion documented — 5 points

Company and Product Information — 15 points

• Founded year documented — 5 points
• Headquarters location documented — 5 points
• Integrations documented — 5 points

The four components total 100 points. When qualifying public evidence is not found for a scored field, that field receives no points. This does not prove that the capability, policy, or information does not exist.

Grades

• A: 85-100 — very high documentation coverage
• B: 70-84 — high documentation coverage
• C: 50-69 — moderate documentation coverage
• D: below 50 — limited documentation coverage

A lower CTI score means fewer assessed items were documented publicly when reviewed. It does not mean the tool is bad.

Source and Evidence Rules

• Search engines and third-party pages may help locate vendor documentation or identify questions. CTI credit is based on qualifying public vendor-owned documentation.
• Public documentation establishes what a vendor states publicly; it does not establish that every statement is complete, current, or implemented as described.
• Absence of public evidence is a documentation gap, not proof that a feature, control, or right is absent from the product.
• Public pages can change after review. Source links and dates allow readers to check the evidence and its timing.

Corrections and Vendor Verified

Vendors may review a listing and submit factual corrections. When a correction would affect CTI, we look for a qualifying public vendor-owned source before changing the score.

Vendor Verified means the vendor has reviewed and confirmed the listing’s factual details. Listings without the badge are researched using the same process, but haven’t completed vendor confirmation.

Vendor Verified indicates participation in factual verification. It is not an endorsement, certification, or independent validation of every vendor claim. The badge cannot be purchased and does not affect CTI, rankings, or editorial treatment.

Scope and Limitations

• We do not test products hands-on unless a review explicitly states otherwise.
• We do not perform formal security, compliance, financial, or legal audits, and we do not independently certify vendor credentials.
• We do not provide continuous uptime, latency, or product performance monitoring.
• Findings are limited by the public sources available at the time of review and may contain omissions or extraction errors.
• Readers should verify material purchasing, legal, security, and compliance requirements directly with the vendor.

Editorial Independence

PowerAudit is operated by Emerging S.R.O., a two-person company based in Brno, Czech Republic. Editorial decisions are made independently of commercial relationships.

We do not accept paid placements. Vendors cannot purchase CTI points, grades, rankings, favorable coverage, corrections, or the Vendor Verified badge. Any material conflict of interest relating to a specific review will be disclosed on that review page.

Emerging S.R.O. also offers a separate Buyer Readiness Report: a private review of a product’s public documentation. Buying a report does not purchase a listing, score, ranking, factual correction, or Vendor Verified badge.

Further information is available in the Disclosure.

Why We Built This

Information needed to evaluate software is often spread across pricing pages, help centers, security pages, privacy policies, and terms. We built this directory to make that public information easier to find and compare.

The same framework gives vendors a concrete view of documentation gaps they can address. Vendors and readers can contact us with a supporting public link if we misunderstood a source or missed a relevant page.