Cut from the list

Every few months we re-run the bar against the whole list, and every few months something we genuinely loved comes off it. That's not churn — it's the maintenance that keeps the other forty-five recommendations honest.

The three ways tools leave

• The enterprise pivot. The landing page grows a "Book a demo" button, the plan you used gets renamed "Legacy," and the changelog starts talking about SSO. The tool didn't get worse — it stopped being for you. This is the most common exit, and the least bitter one.
• The slow bury. The free tier survives, technically. But it moves two clicks deeper every quarter, the limits quietly tighten, and one day the pricing page needs a table to explain itself. We cut on the trend, not the final state — by the time it's obvious, you've built on it.
• The acquisition freeze. Acquired tools rarely die loudly. They just stop. Same version number for a year, support answered by a different company's signature. We wait two quiet quarters, then cut.

What we don't cut for

Price increases alone don't remove a tool — a fair tool getting more expensive is still a fair tool. Neither does hype moving elsewhere; the list would be empty in a year if it followed the feed. And a tool one of us has rage-quit stays if it still carries real projects for the others.

The list is alive. If something you rely on disappears from it, this post is usually why — and the bar it failed is written up in How we pick tools.