Vendor Shortlist Decision

Small businesses and solo operators often have to choose between a few vendors, apps, or service providers, such as an email platform, a fulfilment partner, a reviews app, or a print supplier, without time to read every pricing page. Share your shortlist, your must-haves, your budget, and your real numbers, and this skill checks each vendor's own current pages, notes the date each source was read, and writes a decision report with a first choice, a runner-up, and a trial plan. Some vendors don't publish every price, so anything it can't confirm is marked as not confirmed instead of estimated. Prices and plans change, so confirm the final price with the vendor before you pay.

What it covers

• A shortlist of two to five vendors, apps, or service providers you are choosing between

• Your must-haves turned into pass, fail, or unclear gates, and your nice-to-haves turned into preference weights you can change

• Your real numbers, such as orders, contacts, seats, or parcels per month and how fast they are growing

• The vendors’ own pricing and plan pages first, each with the date it was checked, with outside reviews labelled as patterns rather than proof

• A month-by-month 12-month cost estimate at your volume, with every assumption listed and each price tier jump marked

• Risk notes on lock-in, data export, contracts and cancellation, support on the priced plan, and billing surprises, with gaps flagged

• A recommendation, a runner-up, and the situation in which the runner-up would be the better pick

• A trial checklist with a pass condition for each check, plus written questions to send each vendor

Try asking

• “I run a small online pet-treat shop with about 300 orders a month and 2,400 email subscribers growing about 150 a month. Compare the three email marketing platforms I’m considering for abandoned-cart and post-purchase flows, under $120 a month for the next 12 months. Give me sources with dates, a 12-month cost, a recommendation, and a trial checklist. Don’t guess prices you can’t confirm.”

• “Help me choose between three fulfilment partners for about 800 parcels a month, mostly domestic, with returns handling as a must-have.”

• “We’re a five-person studio choosing a project management tool. Compare four options on yearly cost per seat, client access, and how easy it is to export everything if we leave.”

What you get

A short answer in chat with the pick, the runner-up, and the biggest risk, plus a full decision report with the gate table, month-by-month cost tables and their arithmetic, risk notes, the trial checklist, questions for each vendor, and every source with the date it was checked. The preference weights are starting defaults, so you can change them and ask for a re-score.