The rankings
Password managers
Bitwarden leads, on 131 recommendations
Bitwarden is the default answer and the self-hosted options are the ones with no complaints at all.
619 comments · 516 people · 48 threads · 14 tools ranked
Network security
Fortinet leads, on 73 recommendations
Fortinet leads on volume. The complaints are about support and licensing, not the hardware.
757 comments · 588 people · 98 threads · 16 tools ranked
Backup and recovery
Veeam leads, on 122 recommendations
Veeam is the default and also carries the most complaints. The cheap and self-hosted tier is the clean one.
710 comments · 543 people · 74 threads · 13 tools ranked
Endpoint security
Huntress leads, on 41 recommendations
Huntress beats CrowdStrike on recommendations, and CrowdStrike's complaints are about price, not the outage.
397 comments · 326 people · 61 threads · 14 tools ranked
Cloud security
Orca Security leads, on 35 recommendations
Wiz nearly cancels itself out. Two brands are excluded from the count and the page explains why.
278 comments · 215 people · 71 threads · 13 tools ranked
Email security
Check Point Harmony Email (Avanan) leads, on 61 recommendations
What MSPs and sysadmins actually put in front of Microsoft 365.
233 comments · 183 people · 28 threads · 9 tools ranked
B2B contact data
Apollo leads, on 58 recommendations
Apollo leads on volume in the most promotion-heavy corner of Reddit we have measured.
865 comments · 543 people · 95 threads · 13 tools ranked
Cold email tools
Instantly leads, on 88 recommendations
Instantly is both the most recommended and the most complained about. Two tools are excluded from the count.
650 comments · 433 people · 168 threads · 12 tools ranked
Customer support
Help Scout leads, on 25 recommendations
Zendesk was named in more threads than anything else and recommended by one person.
262 comments · 206 people · 57 threads · 13 tools ranked
Product and web analytics
PostHog leads, on 54 recommendations
Google Analytics draws more complaints than recommendations, and the complaints all name GA4.
526 comments · 441 people · 139 threads · 14 tools ranked
HR and payroll
Gusto leads, on 35 recommendations
The most negative category we have measured. Four of the biggest names are net negative.
433 comments · 341 people · 76 threads · 11 tools ranked
Monitoring and observability
Zabbix leads, on 39 recommendations
The highest-voted recommendation in any of our data is someone telling a person not to leave Zabbix.
288 comments · 238 people · 30 threads · 14 tools ranked
How we build these
We pull every Reddit thread from the past 12 months in the subreddits where a category's buyers talk, then keep the threads where somebody asked what to use. An AI model reads each comment that names a tool and labels it as a recommendation, a complaint or a neutral mention, and we check that every quote appears word for word in the original comment before it goes on a page.
Three things are removed before anything is counted. Vendors posting about their own products. The same person counted twice for one tool, so a prolific commenter cannot move a ranking. And opinions copy-pasted across different accounts.
That last filter catches word-for-word duplication, not paraphrase, so we also check whether a brand's recommendations trace back to a small number of accounts with almost no other activity, repeating one claim in different words, with no complaints anywhere. Five brands have failed that check so far. Each one is named on its category's page, along with what we saw and the fact that we cannot prove what sits behind it.
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