Affiliate disclosure
The one-sentence version, up top where the FTC and common decency both want it: some links on this site are affiliate links, and if you buy after clicking one, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
Which links, exactly
Any link whose address starts with /pick/ is ours — it is a redirect through our affiliate relationship, and it is how the buttons labelled “Check current … price” work. Every such link carries rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" in the page code, which is the machine-readable version of this page: search engines and anyone who views source can see exactly which links are commercial. Ordinary blue links to sources — USGS, utility reports, retailer listings we cite for prices, county permit pages — are not affiliate links and earn us nothing.
Who pays us
Our primary affiliate relationship is with SpringWell Water, a manufacturer that publishes its equipment prices online — which is not incidental: publishing prices is the single industry behaviour this site exists to reward, and it is why SpringWell is the default comparison point rather than a quote-only dealer brand. Commissions are paid by the merchant out of its marketing budget; the price you pay is the same whether you arrive through our link or type the address yourself.
What the commission does not buy
It does not buy the recommendation. The proof is behavioural, not rhetorical: our RO tool refuses to sell the softener below a published hardness threshold, the combo router has “skip half” and “buy nothing” verdicts, the state study tells fifteen states’ worth of readers they may not need a softener at all, and our CTA boxes have told readers in print that the page will not be offended if they close the tab. No brand pays for placement, no post is sponsored, no review copy is accepted, and no partner sees, approves, or previews a word before it publishes. We also never print the partner’s dollar price — partly so promotions cannot silently date our pages, and partly because making you check the current price yourself is the habit this whole site teaches.
The test any page must pass
Remove every affiliate link from any article here and the article must still answer its question completely — the sourced ranges, the quote sheets, the calculators, all of it. If you ever find a page that fails that test, it is a bug in the site’s core promise: report it and it gets fixed like any other wrong number.
Effective July 2026 · SoftWaterSystemCost, 1635 S Ridgewood Ave 2nd Floor, Ste 201, Daytona Beach, FL 32119 · This page is referenced by our terms, our privacy policy, and the About page.