About this directory
What this site is
Actually Good Tools is a community-ranked tools directory. Anyone with a free account can submit a tool (the account requirement keeps spam bots out), and anyone can upvote the tools they actually use — no account needed, just a one-time email confirmation — because the ranking is nothing more than the wisdom of the crowd. Voters can leave a short note saying why they recommend a tool, and those notes appear on the listing.
How a vote is counted
A ranking is only worth reading if the votes are real, so every vote is tied to one verified identity. If you are signed in, your vote counts the moment you click — your address was verified when you made the account. If you are not, we park the vote, email you a 6-digit code, and count it when you enter the code. Until then the score does not move.
Once confirmed, the vote is stored against a one-way hash of your address, never the address itself. That is what makes one email one vote per tool, permanently: clearing your cookies means confirming by email again, it never buys a second vote. Confirming also sets a cookie so you are not asked again for two years, and taking a vote back never needs re-confirming.
Votes cast before this existed are still counted. They are pseudonymous in an older way — a random token rather than an email hash — and we left them alone rather than quietly deleting other people’s opinions.
The weekly rundown
Once a week we email a rundown of the ranking: the top ten by votes, the biggest movers up and down since the last one, tools added that week, and any new comparison pages. It is generated from the same numbers you can see on this site — there is no editorial thumb on the scale, and no sponsor can buy a mention in it.
When you confirm, we send you the rundown as it stands that day as your first issue rather than making you wait for the next Monday; after that it is once a week like everyone else. If nothing is ranked yet, we say so and send the first real one when there is something to rank.
You only get it if you ticked the box for it — the box is offered when you confirm a vote and on the submission form, and either way you are not on the list until you open the confirmation link we email you. Confirming a vote does not subscribe you, and there is no box ticked in advance anywhere on this site. Every issue carries a one-click unsubscribe, and you can unsubscribe here at any time. What we hold and how to get rid of it is set out in the privacy policy; you can download or delete your data yourself, without emailing anybody.
Moderation
Submissions are reviewed only to remove spam. Anyone can post any website; nothing about a listing is bought. Votes are the only thing that moves a tool up or down.
Affiliate links
Some outbound links on this site are affiliate links: if you sign up through one, we may earn a commission from that company at no cost to you. Every one of them is labelled affiliate link on the tool’s page, right next to the link, and the link text is always the tool’s real domain so you can see where you are going before you click.
An affiliate link never buys placement. It is attached to a tool that was submitted and reviewed like any other — swapping the link in is the last thing that happens, and it changes nothing about how the tool is ordered. No amount of commission can move a tool up the list: the ranking is votes and nothing else. If a tool with an affiliate link is above one without, it is because more people voted for it.
We do not accept payment to add a tool, to keep one listed, or to mention one in the weekly rundown. If a listing were ever sponsored it would carry its own sponsored label, and that would not move it either.
Comparison pages
The comparison pages are AI-assisted: generated from each tool’s own listing data plus the notes the community leaves with their votes. We have not hands-on tested the tools, and every comparison page says so on the page itself.
The security letter
When a tool is listed we run one automated check of the security headers its website sends (things like HTTPS enforcement and content-security policy) and show the resulting letter grade on its page. It says nothing about the product’s overall security — it is a single, narrow, automated signal.
Ownership
Actually Good Tools is owned and operated by DevOpser LLC (devopser.io).