Last updated: 10 July 2026.

The short version

Some links on stackharden.com are affiliate links. If you click one and sign up, buy a plan, or subscribe on the destination site, we receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. That commission helps offset the time cost of writing, testing and maintaining the guides on this site.

We only affiliate with systems and services the author or a contributing writer actively uses in their own production infrastructure. That is the single rule. Everything below explains what that means and what it doesn’t.

What we recommend

If you see a specific product, VPS provider, database extension, backup service, monitoring tool, or SaaS mentioned by name on this site as something worth using — the author (or a named guest writer) is using it on a real box, right now, in a way that puts real consequences on the line if it fails. Recommendations follow use, not the other way around.

We will not:

  • Add a system to a guide because the vendor has an affiliate programme. Affiliation follows editorial decisions; it never triggers them.
  • Take vendor-supplied “sponsored content”, ghostwritten reviews, paid placement in tables, or “vendor briefings” that produce favourable copy. There is a clean line: we write about what we operate; vendors do not write for us.
  • Recommend one product over another because the affiliate rate is higher. Where a comparison is made, it reflects the operational reality; the affiliate rate has no influence on which one leads.
  • Hide an affiliate relationship or dress an affiliate link as an editorial reference. The link identification below is explicit.

Where a piece includes a guest writer’s recommendation, the same rule applies: the guest writer uses the system in production, and they say so in their author bio. See contribute for the editorial standard guest writers agree to.

Where a link is an affiliate link, it will be flagged inline in the article — either directly next to the link with an (affiliate) note, or grouped together at the foot of the piece under an “Affiliate links used in this guide” section. Both patterns are honest; which one appears depends on how many links a given piece contains.

There is no hidden tracking, no click-throughs routed via a third-party tracker on our side, and no per-page affiliate widget. Every link is the affiliate’s own URL with the referral parameter attached.

What “no extra cost to you” means

You pay the same price for the product or service you would have paid if you had reached the vendor without an affiliate link. The vendor pays the commission out of their marketing budget, not out of your pocket. If a vendor ever charges a higher price via an affiliate link, we will stop using them.

The reader-side cost is your data with the affiliate vendor — see privacy and cookies for how that works in practice. We do not set our own tracking cookie when you click an affiliate link.

What we’re required to say

Under EU / Irish consumer-protection law (Consumer Protection Act 2007 and the EU’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive), and under the US Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) when readers reach us from the US, we are required to disclose material connections between the writer and any product mentioned. This page is that disclosure. Individual pieces that contain affiliate links also carry an inline notice.

What to do if the disclosure feels unclear

If you read a guide and cannot tell whether a specific link is an affiliate link — or you feel a recommendation reads as if the affiliate relationship is influencing the editorial call — email [email protected] with the URL and the specific link. We will either clarify the flag on the page or, if the concern is fair, revise the wording. Trust in the recommendations is the point of the site; if we lose it, the affiliate income doesn’t matter.

  • Disclaimer — what the content on this site is and is not.
  • Privacy notice — what data we collect and how affiliate links interact with that.
  • Cookies — cookie behaviour, including cookies set by affiliate destinations.
  • About — who runs the site.