ProCompare

ProCompare (ProCompare.com) is a review site that aims to help small businesses evaluate various technology products (software, hardware and webware). It also has a searchable directory of profiles of IT professionals who have registered on the site for review or promotion purposes. The products are reviewed by the registered users and aggregated for providing recommendations.

Users have the option of personalizing the product ranking based on preferences (weightings for different criteria for a given product/service) and can also view product specifications, read reviews of the products and compare selected products.

Product Categories

At the moment, the site covers the following product categories:
- Accounting Software
- Anti-Virus
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Firewalls
- IP-PBX Systems
- Multimedia Projectors
- Laptops / Notebook Computers
- SMB Servers
- Web Hosting

Other features

Vendors can register on the site and can add products themselves through a vendor interface.

Differentiation

ProCompare is different from other review sites by the following characteristics:
- Solely focused on small business technology (while other review sites are typically consumer oriented).
- Relying on a community of IT professionals to rate and review the products (not CASUAL users).
- Patent-pending product ranking method that reflects the shopper's personal preferences and the reviewers' relative trust level.

References

  • 2 Article in Smallbiztechnology.com
  • 3 Article in Phone Plus magazine
  • 4 Canadian IT Professional Peer Blog
  • 5 PC Magazine June 2008