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Business Finances

How to identify legitimate tools online

Aug 15, 2022

How do we know what is a legitimate app, tool, or platform for your business? Here is my take on it, with tips on how you can find out before pressing the buy button.

There are thousands of apps released every single month, we are all constantly surrounded by ads for products, services, and these clever new tools that are being developed all the time.

How do we know what is worth spending money on?

I recommend a quick Google search before you buy the next shiny thing you see. Simply search the name of the tool, if there is no website, retreat straight away.

If the search does bring up a website, you are looking for three key things to tell you if the offer is legitimate:

  1. More than a 1-page website
  2. An official company name, this might need a secondary search
  3. A contact option for support

A single-page website may look like the ad we have seen or similar which just looks like a quickly made landing page. If there is no menu, no other pages to see, this tells me it’s a quickly made site just to show they exist.

No official company name makes us wonder who is behind the tool, who created it, and if they are going to be around in 6 months’ time.

A great company cares about its reputation and will offer contact information for support and questions their customers may have. Without this option, it shows us the business doesn’t care what happens after our purchase.

We also need to be aware of reviews online as sadly these can be falsely populated and misleading.

When purchasing from the mobile app stores, it does pay to check the ratings and know what you will get in the free vs paid version for those that have such offerings.