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Guides

Tutorials, buying guides and explainers for choosing and using developer and AI software.

6 guides

Buying guide

How to Choose an AI Coding Assistant for Your Team

Choose an AI coding assistant by first deciding the form your team needs (plugin, AI-native editor, agent or pull-request reviewer), then comparing pricing models (allowances, credits or activity caps), documented privacy and admin controls, and team versus individual tiers, before running a short measured pilot. This research-based guide applies that method to Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf (now Devin Desktop) and CodeRabbit using official pages as listed on 24 October 2026, with a scoring template and recommendations by team type rather than a single winner.

· SIDAN Editorial
Tutorial

How to Evaluate a Software Free Plan Before You Depend on It

To evaluate a software free plan, first decide whether it is a permanent plan, a time-limited trial or a credit grant; then convert its caps into your expected usage, check seat limits, find out what happens when you exceed a limit, review history retention and export, read the terms of use, map security features to tiers and price the first paid tier. This guide applies those steps to free plans recorded from official pages on 24 October 2026, including Firecrawl, Apify, Zapier, Supabase, Vercel, Notion, GitHub Copilot and Cursor.

· SIDAN Editorial
Tutorial

How to Compare AI API Pricing: Tokens, Units and Hidden Costs

To compare AI API pricing, estimate input, output and cached-input tokens per request, copy each model's per-million-token rates with their tier and context band, multiply by monthly volume, apply only documented batch and caching discounts, and check the result against the provider's rate limits and spend caps. This tutorial walks through the method with verified OpenAI and Anthropic rates as listed on 24 October 2026 and an illustrative worked example.

· SIDAN Editorial
Comparison

n8n vs Make: Comparing Workflow Automation Platforms

n8n and Make both connect apps through automated workflows, but n8n charges per workflow execution and can be self-hosted, while Make charges in credits (most actions use one) as a hosted service. This research-based comparison covers pricing models, documented features, security claims, scaling and when to choose neither. No hands-on testing was done.

· SIDAN Editorial
Tutorial

How to Evaluate AI Automation Tools for a Small Business

To evaluate an AI automation tool, define one process and a baseline, decide whether AI is needed at all, list non-negotiable data and security requirements, model costs at low and high volumes, check AI-specific risks, score two or three candidates and run a bounded pilot. This guide gives the steps, a scorecard and a clearly hypothetical worked example.

· SIDAN Editorial
Explainer

What Is Workflow Automation?

Workflow automation uses software to carry out repeatable steps of a process, such as moving form entries into a CRM or sending approval requests, so people do not repeat them by hand. It can use simple rules, bots or AI. This guide explains how it works, where it helps, how tools charge for it and what can go wrong.

· SIDAN Editorial