A competitor’s price can look simple until you try to compare it with another offer. One number is per user, another covers a team, and a third only applies when someone pays for a year upfront.
Shane’s Competitor Finder gives you a place to record those observations alongside positioning, strengths and possible gaps. A useful price comparison starts with a little structure in the Price / tier and Notes fields, plus a source you can revisit.
The tool is a manually maintained research workspace. It does not retrieve current prices, calculate a cheapest option or verify the claims you enter. This workflow helps you keep those judgments separate from the evidence.
Define the comparison before collecting prices
Write down the customer scenario you want to understand. For a software comparison, that might be five users who need one shared workspace and a particular reporting feature. For a service comparison, it might be a specific deliverable, location and turnaround time.
Use the same scenario for each competitor. Otherwise, the lowest entry in your list may describe a smaller package or a different type of customer.
Choose a consistent Category label for the comparison set. The tool’s category filter matches the labels you enter, so small variations can split records into separate groups. Keep the detailed inclusion rule in Notes rather than creating a slightly different category for every company.
Give the Price / tier field enough context
Record the plan name, currency, billing unit and billing basis in the price field. “USD 18 per user/month, billed annually, minimum three users” tells you much more than “18.”
Use Notes for details that need more space:
- The number of users, locations or units included.
- Usage limits and any required add-ons you could verify.
- Whether the displayed rate is introductory or applies only under stated conditions.
- Whether tax and setup charges are included, excluded or unclear.
- Features essential to your comparison that still need confirmation.
If the site says “contact sales,” record that wording and the scope you could establish. An unavailable price should remain unknown rather than becoming zero in your comparison.
Work through one fictional comparison
Suppose two imaginary offers cover the same five-user scenario:
- Alpha lists USD 18 per user per month, billed annually, with a three-user minimum.
- Beta lists USD 95 per month for up to five users, billed monthly.
For five users, Alpha’s quoted base subscription works out to USD 90 per month equivalent and USD 1080 for twelve months. Beta’s quoted base subscription works out to USD 1140 over twelve monthly payments, assuming its rate stays unchanged.
The USD 60 difference does not settle the comparison. Alpha’s annual billing changes the payment timing. The plans may have different limits, support, cancellation terms or required extras. These figures are deliberately fictional and exclude any charges not specified in the example.
Keep the original quoted rate in Price / tier. Put your arithmetic and assumptions in Notes, labelled as your calculation. This preserves the distinction between what the competitor published and what you worked out for a particular scenario.
The tool stores those notes as text; it does not perform the calculation or update it when a price changes.
Attach the evidence to the right claim
Use Source URL for the page that supports the price or plan detail, rather than linking only to a homepage. Set Last reviewed to the date you actually checked the information. It records your review, not an automatic freshness check.
If the pricing page and feature documentation support different parts of the record, use Notes to identify the additional source and the claim it supports. The form has one dedicated Source URL field, so make the main link useful and keep the rest of the evidence trail explicit.
Separate observation from interpretation. “The pricing page lists email support” is an observation. “This may suit buyers who do not need live assistance” is a possible interpretation. “They have no phone support” would need further evidence if the page simply does not mention it.
Apply the same care to Gap / opportunity. An unclear published limit may suggest a research question or an opportunity to explain your own offer better. It does not establish a competitor’s inability to meet a customer’s needs.
Keep important terms visible when reviewing
The current table shows company, category, positioning, price, strength, gap and reviewed date, with a Source link when supplied. It does not display Notes as a table column.
Put essential qualifiers such as annual billing or a per-user basis in the visible price field. Keep supporting detail in Notes. A teammate looking only at a table screenshot should still be able to understand the basic price basis.
The text search also checks Notes, even though the placeholder names company, category and positioning. A consistent phrase such as “needs verification” can help you find records with unresolved questions. This is a naming convention you choose, not a built-in review status or reminder system.
Prepare a careful handoff
Export CSV includes the source, reviewed date and notes along with the other record fields. It exports the complete stored list, regardless of the current search or category filter. Check the file before treating it as a selected shortlist.
For a focused handoff, make a separate spreadsheet copy containing the intended records, while retaining the original export. Include the comparison scenario and the assumptions behind any totals. Revisit the source pages before using a price comparison in customer-facing material.
The current interface supports adding and removing records, but does not provide an edit control or CSV import control. Keep your evidence and exports separately so a later review does not depend on recovering an older entry from the table. Browser storage is a working copy, not a shared research archive.
A good competitor price record lets another person see the offer, understand its conditions and reproduce your reasoning. Clear fields and a short evidence trail are more useful than a confident ranking built from numbers that mean different things.