Three parts, one score out of 5 stars
Customer reviews carry the most weight, because what customers say across the web is the strongest evidence we have about a B2B company. The other two parts catch what reviews can miss.
Each part is worked out from 0 to 100. Dividing the total by 20 turns it into a score out of 5.
How we research a company
Research starts before a company appears on our platform, and it happens in two steps.
Verification decides whether it's listed
To earn the Verified badge, every company passes our automatic verification system and a basic manual review. Companies that apply for Verified Plus go through a deeper manual review by our research team. See our verification process.
Research decides where it ranks
Once a company is verified, we research its reputation, record and terms from public sources, then score it on the three parts of the BizMonda Score.
Where our data comes from
Review platforms
Google, Trustpilot, Yelp and Clutch for service firms. G2, Capterra, Trustpilot and Google for software.
BBB profiles
Complaints, whether they were resolved, and the BBB grade.
Regulators and the news
News searches for lawsuits and regulator actions, plus the CFPB complaint database for financial categories.
The company's own website
Services, pricing, terms of service, contracts where they're published, address, leadership, certifications and service area.
Issuers and associations
Certifications and memberships, checked in the issuer's or association's own directory where one is public.
Review and complaint texts
The written complaints on the BBB and the text of recent low-star reviews, read for problems that keep coming back.
How our research team works
Our research team collects and scores every company's data, and every result is reviewed before it's used in a ranking. Before a category's rankings go live, we check a sample again, always including the top companies and any company with a red flag. We record where each figure came from and the date we checked it, so any ranking can be traced back to its evidence. Every company in a category is measured against the same sources, so no company is scored on a platform its competitors weren't.
Customer Reputation
We don't rely on Google alone. We collect ratings from every platform where the company has reviews, and combine them into one rating in three steps.
- BBB ratings are left out of the average.People mostly go to the BBB to complain, so its star ratings don't reflect customer satisfaction the way other review sites do. We use the BBB where it's strongest instead: the complaint record in Part 2.
- Platforms are combined by how many reviews each holds.A 5.0 from 3 Trustpilot reviews barely moves the result, while a rating built on 300 Clutch reviews counts properly. A company with reviews only on Google is scored on Google alone.
- The rating is adjusted for how many reviews it rests on.A 4.9 from 12 reviews shouldn't beat a 4.6 from 340. So every rating is blended with a starting rating of 4.3, and the company's own rating takes over as its reviews add up.
The 50 means a company needs 50 reviews before its own rating counts as much as the starting rating. After that, volume matters less and less, because a 4.6 from 200 customers tells a buyer almost exactly what a 4.6 from 1,000 does.
| Company | Adjusted rating | Rating score (× 20) |
|---|---|---|
| 5.0 from 3 reviews | 4.34 | 86.8 |
| 4.9 from 12 reviews | 4.42 | 88.3 |
| 4.6 from 100 reviews | 4.50 | 90.0 |
| 4.6 from 200 reviews | 4.54 | 90.8 |
| 4.9 from 50 reviews | 4.60 | 92.0 |
| 4.6 from 1,000 reviews | 4.59 | 91.7 |
A strong rating still wins once it has the volume behind it: a 4.9 from 50 reviews beats a 4.6 from 1,000.
Platform breadth
Reviews spread across several sites are harder to fake than reviews on one, and they show a company is known beyond its own Google profile. So a small share of the part goes to the number of review platforms above where the company has at least 5 reviews.
Reputation = 0.90 × rating score + 0.10 × breadth score
Minimum reviews
A company needs at least 10 reviews, counted across all platforms, to be scored. Verified companies with fewer are still listed. They appear below the ranked companies, marked "Not enough reviews yet."
Companies with several locations
Google reviews belong to individual locations. On a city page we use that location's ratings and review count. On a nationwide or brand page we combine all of the company's locations.
Review integrity
Reviews can be bought, so we look for signs of it. A company is flagged for review by our research team when any platform where it has 20 or more reviews differs from its other platforms by more than 1.0 star, or when a platform shows a consumer warning about suspicious reviews. If we confirm manipulation, that platform's reviews are removed from the company's score.
Trust and Track Record
This part catches what reviews can miss. A 4.9 on Google next to unresolved complaints and a regulator action is a warning sign, and it's scored as one. Each signal is scored from 0 to 100 by a fixed rule, so two companies with the same record always get the same result.
| Signal | How it's scored | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Complaint record | Starts at 100. Minus 10 for each unresolved BBB complaint in the last 3 years, scaled to the company's size, and minus a grade penalty: B = 10, C = 25, D or F = 40 | 35% |
| Legal and regulatory | Starts at 100. Minus 40 for each regulator action and 20 for each serious lawsuit in the last 3 years. CFPB complaints count in financial categories | 25% |
| Years in business | Under 2 years = 40, 2 to 5 = 60, 5 to 10 = 80, 10 or more = 100 | 20% |
| Credentials | 40, plus 20 for each certification or membership we can confirm, up to 100 | 10% |
| Transparency | 25 each for published pricing, published contract terms, a physical address, and named leadership | 10% |
Larger firms serve more clients, so the same number of complaints means less. We scale the complaint penalty by review count: a firm with 400 reviews and 2 unresolved complaints loses 5 points, while a firm with 40 reviews and the same 2 complaints loses 20.
Trust = 0.35 × complaints + 0.25 × legal + 0.20 × years + 0.10 × credentials + 0.10 × transparency
No signal goes below 0.
BizMonda Assessment
Our research team reads what most buyers don't have time to read, and scores it. Each signal answers a question a buyer has before signing.
| Signal | The buyer's question | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Contract fairness | Will I get stuck, or hit with fees I didn't expect? | 35% |
| Complaint patterns | What goes wrong with this company, and does it get fixed? | 25% |
| Claim check | Is what the company says about itself true? | 20% |
| Service depth | Does it cover everything I'll need? | 20% |
Contract fairness (35%)
We read the terms of service, the pricing page and the service agreement where one is published. Each of these earns 20 points:
- Month-to-month service, or a term of 12 months or less
- No early termination fee, or one that's stated up front
- Cancellation notice of 30 days or less
- All fees, such as setup, per-employee or per-account charges, shown before a sales call
- At least 30 days' notice before a price increase
A company that only shares its contract after a sales call earns no points for terms it hasn't published. Transparency in Part 2 checks whether pricing and terms are published at all. This checks whether they're fair.
Complaint patterns (25%)
We read the written BBB complaints and recent low-star reviews across platforms, looking for problems that keep coming back.
| What we find | Score |
|---|---|
| No recurring problems | 100 |
| Minor recurring issues that the company responds to and resolves | 70 |
| A recurring serious problem, such as billing errors, tax filing mistakes or missed deadlines | 40 |
| A pattern of serious problems left unresolved | 10 |
Claim check (20%)
Starts at 100. We subtract 25 for each claim on the company's website that doesn't hold up, such as a license number that isn't in the state's records, "20 years in business" for a company founded in 2019, or a certification missing from the issuer's directory.
Service depth (20%)
The share of the category's core services the company offers, times 100. For payroll, the core list is payroll processing, tax filing, direct deposit, W-2s and 1099s, time tracking, benefits administration and HR support. A firm offering 6 of those 7 scores 86.
Two rules keep it fair
Never tied to payment
We assess every company in a category, or none of them. If only paying companies were assessed, paying would move a fifth of their score.
No penalty for waiting
Until a category has been assessed, its companies are scored on the other two parts, scaled up to the full 5 stars: (0.60 × Reputation + 0.20 × Trust) ÷ 16.
A worked example
Here's how the parts combine for three example payroll firms. The companies are made up, and the numbers are chosen to show the arithmetic.
| Part | Score | Weight | Adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer ReputationAdjusted rating 4.74 × 20 = 94.9, three platforms = 100 | 95.4 | 60% | 57.2 |
| Trust and Track RecordComplaints 97.5, legal 100, years 100, credentials 80, transparency 75 | 94.6 | 20% | 18.9 |
| BizMonda AssessmentContract 80, complaint patterns 100, claims 100, service depth 86 | 90.2 | 20% | 18.0 |
| Total out of 100 | 94.2 | ||
| BizMonda Score94.2 ÷ 20 | 4.7 ★ |
| Company | Reputation | Trust | Assessment | Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A: 4.8 from 400 reviews, 3 platformsLong record, one unresolved complaint | 95.4 | 94.6 | 90.2 | 4.7 |
| B: 4.6 from 340 reviews, Google onlyClean record, no pricing published | 88.1 | 91.0 | 79.7 | 4.4 |
| C: 4.9 from 12 reviews, Google only3 years in business, fair contract | 85.5 | 81.0 | 91.4 | 4.3 |
Company C has the highest Google rating of the three and ranks last, mainly because 12 reviews aren't enough to prove it. We rank by the unrounded score and show it to one decimal place.
How software is scored
Software companies get the same three parts, weights and formulas. What changes is where the reviews come from and what we check, because a buyer choosing payroll software needs to know different things from a buyer choosing a payroll firm.
| Part | What changes for software |
|---|---|
| Customer Reputation | Ratings from G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and Google where the company has a profile |
| Trust and Track Record | Security and compliance (a security page, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA or GDPR where relevant) replaces credentials, and data breaches count alongside lawsuits and FTC actions |
| BizMonda Assessment | Contract fairness also covers auto-renewal, a monthly plan option and whether you can export your data when you leave. Service depth becomes feature depth |
Many companies are both, and payroll companies are the obvious example. We score each company with the set that matches the category page it appears on.
What never affects the score
Our category lists are ranked by the BizMonda Score, not by what a company pays us.
- Payment of any kindBuying Verified, Verified Plus + Review or a Sponsored placement doesn't change a company's score or its position in the ranked list.
- Sponsored listingsThey sit above the ranked list, are clearly labeled Sponsored, and are only open to companies that meet a minimum score. They are never mixed into the ranking.
- Verification levelA Verified Plus company is ranked by its score, exactly like a Verified one. The deeper manual review doesn't add points.
- Recommendation levelsRecommended, Highly Recommended and BizMonda Shortlisted appear on review pages and reflect our editors' judgment after a full review. They're kept separate from the score.
How we make money
BizMonda is free for buyers. Companies pay for verification and for optional packages, all listed on our Get Listed page. To fill categories at launch, we also listed some top-rated companies from Google Business Profiles for free, after they passed the same verification checks as everyone else.
None of this touches the score. The full details are in our Advertiser Disclosure.
Updates and corrections
We refresh each company's research at least once a year, when we re-verify it. If you think we've got a fact wrong about your company, contact us with the source and we'll check it again.