Who pays, and how we review
About
Worth the Retainer answers one question about video editors and marketing agencies: was the monthly fee worth it? Every answer is a yes or a no, and the evidence comes after it.
Who runs it, and who pays
Worth the Retainer is published by Szymon Dziak. Szymon Dziak also owns App369, an app development studio. Every case file on this site is a job App369 hired and paid for. If App369 got a discount, the case file says so.
No company pays to be reviewed, and none can pay to change a review. No shop pays us. If that changes, we'll say so next to the link.
Companies App369 hired carry a Hired by App369 label. Companies we only researched from their own public pages carry a Researched, not hired label. Only hired companies get a case file or a score.
How we review
Every case file is scored on the same six criteria with fixed weights, and the total is calculated, never typed in. The verdict at the top of each review, worth the retainer or not, is Szymon Dziak’s, and it is marked as his.
Read the full method: the scorecard, the receipts and the right of reply.
Right of reply
Before a case file or the ranking goes live, the company gets the draft and five business days to reply. Their reply is printed at the bottom of the case file, as they sent it. If they show us a factual error, we fix it before publishing and log the change.
How we use AI
The site is built, and guides are drafted, with help from Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. Claude writes first drafts, collects public pricing with its sources and dates, and builds the pages. It never forms an opinion of a company: scores come from the scorecard applied to the receipts, verdicts are Szymon Dziak’s, and every first-hand fact comes from App369’s own records. A person checks every page before it is published, and Szymon Dziak approves every page that rates or judges a company.
How pages are kept up to date
Public facts such as prices and package details carry the date we read them. Anything older than 30 days is re-checked every month. Every change to a published page is listed, with its date, in that page’s update log.
Corrections
A corrections address goes up here with the first published case file. Until then there are no reviews on the site to correct.