How it works
The suppliers you see are the ones that fit — not the ones that paid.
Two questions decide whether a shortlist is worth acting on: why these suppliers, and who paid to be there. Here are both answers.
No supplier pays to appear
There is no paid placement, no promoted tier and no sponsored position — not priced differently, not available. Nothing a supplier can buy changes where they sit in your results.
Every position carries its reason
Scoring runs are deterministic and keep their own notes, so a shortlist can be opened and read: what was compared, on what evidence, and why one supplier placed above another.
Unrated is not ranked highly by accident
A supplier we know little about is filtered out of a shortlist rather than sorted to the top of it. Missing evidence never reads as a good score.
Anyone can join. Not everyone reaches your shortlist
Registration is open to every supplier without an introduction. Appearing in a buyer's results is separate, and it is earned through qualification — which is what keeps an open platform from filling your screen with companies that cannot serve you.
Why we are telling you this
A shortlist is only useful if you trust how it was built. If position could be bought, the list would be advertising and you would have to verify every name yourself — which is the work the platform is supposed to do for you. So the rule is a product decision, not a policy page: there is nowhere in the system for a supplier to pay for position, and the scoring is inspectable so you do not have to take that on faith.