Editorial Policy

Last updated: 20 August 2026. How we decide what to publish, where our numbers come from, and what we do when we get something wrong.

Our standard

One rule above all others

A small business owner should be able to read one of our guides, close the tab, and know whether the price they were quoted is fair. Everything below exists to serve that. If a change would make a page more profitable but less useful for that purpose, we do not make it.

Who writes this site

Every guide is written and edited in-house by the Compare Small Business Insurance editorial team, led by Chad Penfold (LLB, BCom Accounting), founder of CP Ventures, the company that publishes this Site. We do not use freelance content mills, we do not buy syndicated articles, and we do not publish sponsored posts or paid guest articles under any byline.

Where we use AI tooling, we use it the way a newsroom uses a research assistant — to gather source material, draft structure and check consistency across pages. A human editor verifies every figure and writes or rewrites the analysis before anything publishes. Nothing goes live unread.

Where our cost figures come from

We publish a lot of dollar figures, so it matters how we get them. Three sources, in this order of preference:

Carrier-advertised pricing. The “from” rates insurers publish for their own small business products. These are the most concrete numbers available and we attribute them to the carrier by name every time we use one.
Published industry medians and ranges. Premium data reported by carriers, brokers, marketplaces and industry bodies for typical small business risk profiles.
Our own stated assumptions. Unless a page says otherwise, figures assume a $1 million per-occurrence / $2 million aggregate limit, a low-to-moderate risk trade, modest revenue, no employees beyond the owner, and no prior claims.

We label a figure as an average only when it represents the middle of a distribution, and we publish the surrounding range alongside it — because for insurance the range is more useful than the average. Every table carries a caption stating the assumptions behind it.

What we will never do with a number

Present an advertised “from” price as a typical price. When we quote a “from $22.50/mo” figure, we say in the same breath that it reflects the lowest-risk qualifying profile and that most businesses pay more.
Invent precision we do not have. We would rather publish “$45–$85 a month” than a false $63.47.
Adjust a benchmark to flatter a partner. If our figures say a partner’s advertised rate is above average for a trade, we print that.
Imply a quote. Nothing on this Site is an offer of insurance. Only an insurer, after underwriting you, can tell you your price.

How our calculator works

Our small business insurance cost calculator starts from the national benchmark for the coverage you pick, then applies published multipliers for trade risk class, headcount band, coverage limit and state cost level. It runs entirely in your browser — we never receive or store your selections. The multipliers and the base rates are shown on the page itself, so you can check our working rather than take it on trust. The output is an estimate, not a quote.

How often we update

Insurance pricing moves. Every cost guide carries an “Updated” date in its header, and we review our core cost pages at least quarterly, plus whenever a partner changes an advertised rate or a market shift makes a benchmark stale. When we make a substantive change to a figure we update the date; we do not touch the date for a typo fix, because a fresh date should mean fresh information.

Independence from our advertisers

We are paid by the companies we refer business to — the full arrangement is on the advertiser disclosure page. The editorial firewall we keep around that:

No partner, carrier or affiliate network sees, approves or edits a page before it publishes.
No partner can buy a mention, a ranking, a rating, or a favourable comparison.
Which partner we feature is affected by commercial relationships; what our data tables say is not.
We disclose the relationship above the article body, beside every paid button, and in the footer of every page.

Corrections policy

We get things wrong sometimes, and the useful response is to fix them fast and in the open.

Tell us. Send the page URL and what you believe is wrong via the contact form, choosing “A correction”.
We check it against the sources behind the figure, usually within two business days.
We fix it. A factual error is corrected on the page as soon as it is confirmed. Where a correction materially changes what the page said — a cost benchmark, a statement about what a policy covers — we note the change and the date on the page rather than editing silently.
We tell you what happened if you reported it.

What we do not cover

We write about commercial insurance for US small businesses. We do not cover personal lines (auto, home, life, health), we do not give state-specific legal or regulatory advice, and we do not attempt a complete survey of every carrier in the market. Our guides are general information, not insurance advice — before you buy, drop or change coverage, talk to a licensed insurance professional in your state and read the actual policy wording. That limit is set out in full in our terms of use.

Questions

If you want to know how a specific figure on this Site was produced, ask us — we will tell you. Contact us.