About RunSolo
We built this because we needed it to exist.
Most writing about AI tools for one-person businesses is a list of the same tools with the same praise, written from the vendor's own marketing page. The prices are often wrong. The plan limits — the part that decides whether a tool works for you — are usually missing.
RunSolo exists to do the boring part instead: open the vendor's pricing page, find the limit that bites, and say which plan you actually need. When we run a hands-on test, we publish the method and what it does not cover. When we have only checked a fact at source, we say that rather than dressing it up as a test.
This page used to open with an origin story and a figure for what we supposedly spent on tools. Neither was something we could show you, so both are gone.
What We Do
We cover AI tools and SaaS for one-person businesses. Some of that is hands-on testing, and those articles carry a "How We Tested" block setting out the plan, the duration and the limits. Most of it is verification: prices, plan limits and vendor terms read at the source and dated. Both are useful. Only one is a test, and the counter above shows how many articles are which.
If a tool wins, we say so. If it's overpriced, overhyped, or quietly broken, we say that too. If a free alternative is genuinely better, we recommend the free one even when there's a paid affiliate commission on the table.
By the Numbers
Counted from the articles themselves each time this page is built, so they cannot go stale. Including the one we would rather was lower.
39
Articles published
7
Carry a documented hands-on test
26
Carry a correction we published
6
Categories covered
How We Work
This is the part most "review sites" skip — usually because writing it down invites someone to check. Here is ours.
We separate what we tested from what we checked
Two different things get called "reviewing" in this industry, and conflating them is how review sites end up untrustworthy. Some of our articles report hands-on testing we ran ourselves. Most report facts we verified at the source. Both are useful. Only one is a test, and we never let the second borrow the authority of the first.
Where we did test, the method is on the page
Articles with hands-on testing carry a "How We Tested" block stating the plan tier, the duration, the workload and what was measured — plus an explicit list of what the test does not cover. The limits matter as much as the findings. A test with no stated boundaries is indistinguishable from an invented one, which is precisely why we now publish the boundaries.
Everything else is verified at the primary source, and dated
Prices, plan limits, billing units and legal claims are checked against the vendor's own page or the actual statute, and we say when we checked. If a figure can only be found on aggregator sites, we leave it out. If a vendor makes a claim without evidence, we report that they claim it — and if we cannot find them claiming it at all, we say that too.
We publish our corrections in the text
When we get something wrong we state it where the error was, rather than quietly editing it out. That is why our own articles contain sentences like "we previously claimed X, we never measured it, and it has been deleted rather than reworded". It reads worse and it is worth more. The counter above is derived from the articles themselves, so it goes up when we are wrong.
Affiliate links change nothing about the ranking
No vendor pays for placement, and no ranking is set by commission rate. We recommend free alternatives over paid ones routinely, including over tools we earn from, and we have published pieces concluding that a partner's product is the wrong shape for a one-person business. Every link that pays us is labelled "Paid link" right next to it, and links that don't pay us carry no label.
What Makes RunSolo Different
Independent Reviews
No vendor pays for placement. Nothing is ranked by commission rate, and we recommend free alternatives over paid ones — including over tools we earn from.
Real-World Testing
We say which articles report our own hands-on testing and which report facts verified at the source. The two are not the same and we do not blur them.
Solopreneur Focus
Built for one-person businesses. If a tool is optimized for 100-person companies, we say so and recommend alternatives.
Full Transparency
Affiliate relationships are always disclosed. Free alternatives are recommended when they're better.
How We Make Money
A few of our links pay us. Each one is marked "Paid link", and if you sign up through it we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. A link without that label pays us nothing. We don't sell sponsored placements, we don't take payment for reviews, and we don't gate content behind paywalls.
- We never rank tools based on commission rates. The best tool wins, even when the cheapest tool pays us nothing.
- We recommend free alternatives when they're genuinely better.
- Every link that pays us is labelled "Paid link" right next to the link, not only in a footer — the FTC's guidance is that a disclosure at the bottom of a page is easy to miss.
- If a tool we have an affiliate relationship with stops being good, we say so publicly and remove the recommendation.
Who We Help
If you're a solopreneur, freelancer, indie consultant, or running a one-person business — this site is for you.
If you have a 10-person team and a venture-funded budget, you'll find more useful resources elsewhere. We're not trying to be everything to everyone.
Get in Touch
Have a tool we should review? Spotted something we got wrong? Want to suggest a topic? We read every email.
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