How we research software markets

The research process

seed → expand → verify → expand again → saturation and gap search

1. 1. Seed

   We start from the products a UK buyer in that trade would plausibly encounter first: market leaders, trade-specific tools and products the industry itself talks about.

2. 2. Expand

   Discovery then extends to products absent from mainstream comparison sites: small UK specialists, single-workflow utilities and vendors with little marketing reach.

3. 3. Verify

   Every factual claim is checked against the vendor's own primary sources. Comparison pages, listicles and directories are used for discovery only.

4. 4. Expand again

   Verification usually reveals subsegments we had not named. We re-run discovery against those, which surfaces products the first pass could not have known to look for.

5. 5. Saturation and gap search

   We keep running targeted searches until new passes mostly rediscover products we already hold. Repeated near-empty passes are how we estimate whether coverage is becoming useful.

Principles

Primary sources establish facts

Prices, UK applicability, workflows and product status are taken from the vendor's own pages. A third-party comparison table is a lead, not evidence.

Unknown values

If a price or company location cannot be verified, the record says unknown.

Assessment is separated from facts

Verified facts and editorial assessment are stored and displayed separately.

No scores

The index publishes no ratings out of ten or star ratings. Fit is explained for each buyer situation.

Inclusion cannot be bought

No vendor pays to appear, to rank, or to change how a product is classified. There are no sponsored placements and no vendor submissions.

Exclusions are retained

When a product turns out not to fit the market being researched, the record is kept with the reason. A product can be adjacent to a market overall and still be the right answer for one specific buyer situation, so we record those two judgements separately.

Dates

Facts show the date on which the product record was checked against its cited sources.

Where the research currently stands

• Plumbing

  4 research rounds · 26 product records checked against primary sources · 25 in the main plumbing market · 1 adjacent · last researched 6 Sep 2026

  New searches are still finding plumbing products, so the catalogue is not exhaustive. They increasingly fit buyer situations we have already identified, which is why we think the structure of this market is now stable enough to make useful comparisons.

• Dog walking

  4 research rounds · 16 product records checked against primary sources · 11 in the main dog walking market · 1 adjacent · 4 explicitly excluded · last researched 6 Sep 2026

  Dog walking appears close to useful UK-first discovery saturation. The latest targeted gap search found one meaningful new UK product, TailPro; other searches mostly rediscovered known products or surfaced broad facility software that failed first-party relevance checks.

• Commercial cleaning

  1 research rounds · 10 product records checked against primary sources · 10 in the main commercial cleaning market · last researched 7 Sep 2026

  UK cleaning-specific software covering domestic, commercial and mixed cleaning businesses, with different pricing models including whole-team, per-employee, staff-band and modular pricing.

• Bakery

  1 research rounds · 7 product records checked against primary sources · 6 in the main bakery market · 1 adjacent · last researched 7 Sep 2026

  Bakery-specific software covering direct orders, custom cakes, production planning, wholesale ordering and larger bakery operations.

• Dog grooming

  1 research rounds · 9 product records checked against primary sources · 8 in the main dog grooming market · 1 adjacent · last researched 7 Sep 2026

  Dog-grooming-specific software covering solo salons, mobile groomers, small teams and multi-location businesses, with international alternatives identified separately.

• Window cleaning

  3 research rounds · 8 product records checked against primary sources · 7 in the main window cleaning market · 1 adjacent · last researched 1 Oct 2026

  An initial verified slice of a crowded UK market, covering established and newer round-management tools from simple solo apps to multi-user and fleet-oriented systems.

• Tree surgery

  3 research rounds · 9 product records checked against primary sources · 6 in the main tree surgery market · 3 adjacent · last researched 1 Oct 2026

  Three research passes converged on a compact specialist core: Arb Pro, ArbScribe and Treetask for UK contractor operations; ArboStar as the strongest UK-supported international specialist; and ClearCut/ArbHub for compliance-first arborist workflows. Broader trade and compliance platforms are retained as adjacent alternatives.

• Pest control

  3 research rounds · 9 product records checked against primary sources · 6 in the main pest control market · 3 adjacent · last researched 8 Oct 2026

  Three discovery passes and a targeted 2026-10-08 primary-source refresh support the stable UK-active specialist core, international enterprise comparison and bounded adjacent layer. Finite domestic treatment programmes remain distinct from persistent commercial site contracts and food/audit evidence workflows.

The records behind these pages

• Only primary-verified products are included as publishable product records.
• Unknown values remain explicit unknowns rather than inferred facts.
• Editorial assessment is separate from verified factual claims.
• Products rejected as core fits are retained where exclusion itself is useful evidence.
• The site is generated from the underlying research records rather than written page by page.

Records last generated 7 Sep 2026