What a 'get a quote' button is for

A "get a quote" button collects your turnover and your phone number, because those are worth more than a page view. Software Advice publishes the mechanics itself: vendors bid for placement, and it may earn a referral fee when its advisors match you to a provider.

What the form actually collects

Quote forms ask for a turnover figure, a business type, and a way to reach you. Not one of those is needed to show you a price. A price needs a rate card, a hardware cost, and a list of fees. Every one of those belongs to the provider, and the provider has either published them or has not.

So the form runs against the question you came with. You arrive wanting a number and you leave having supplied one instead. The provider list answers the same question in the other direction: where a rate is published, the rate sits on the page with the date it was read.

Software Advice sets out the mechanics on its own pages

I do not have to guess at any of this, because the site describes the arrangement itself. Three lines from softwareadvice.com, part of Gartner Digital Markets, cover placement, ordering, and payment (checked 2026-08-25).

On placement, the site says: "Vendors may choose to bid for placement within our category listing pages".

On ordering, it says: "The 'Sponsored' option sorts the directory by those bids, placing the vendors bidding highest above those bidding lowest".

On payment, it says: "When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee."

Those three sentences describe an auction, a sort order, and a commission. They do not say that any single recommendation was bought, and I am not saying so either. They do say that money moves when a match is made, and the site is the one telling you that.

Why is a card payments lead worth so much?

Because the buyer keeps paying a share of the till for years rather than a one-off licence fee. A US shop taking $25,000 a month on cards pays $28,800 over three years on Square's Free plan, and $27,000 over three years on SumUp's pay-as-you-go plan (checked 2026-08-25). A UK shop at £25,000 a month pays £15,235 over three years on SumUp's pay as you go plan (checked 2026-08-25). Those totals are the size of the relationship being introduced.

You can put your own turnover into the effective rate calculator and see the equivalent total for your own trade.

What any particular referral fee is worth is not published by the companies involved, and I will not invent a figure for it. The point stands without one. The sum being introduced is measured in tens of thousands over three years, not in the price of a software seat, and a commission is set against that.

Why does a published rate destroy the lead?

Because a reader who can see the rate has no reason to fill in a form. The form is only worth building while the number is missing from the page. Once the number is on the page, the visit ends in an answer instead of a callback.

The counts follow that logic. This site holds 20 UK providers, of which 17 publish a rate and 3 give a quote only (checked 2026-08-25). It holds 22 US providers, of which 19 publish something, 1 gives a quote only, and 2 had pricing pages that could not be read (checked 2026-08-25).

The providers that publish are mostly the ones selling a single flat rate they are happy to print. The ones that do not publish are mostly selling a rate that moves with your turnover, your card mix, and how hard you push. What card payments cost sets out the fees that movement hides.

What an advisor call cannot give you

It cannot give you a comparison. A quote is one plan, for one business, on one day, and it arrives without the arithmetic that produced it. Two quotes from two salespeople are not comparable unless both cover the same fees over the same period, and they rarely do.

That is the reason this site publishes a formula instead of a form. Method shows the inputs, the three-year window, and the fees the effective rate deliberately excludes. Nothing here depends on you giving up a phone number, and nobody pays to sit higher in a list.

What to do when you meet the form

Fill in nothing until you have a floor to argue against. Work out what the published providers would charge at your own turnover, then treat that as the number a salesperson has to beat. A quote that cannot beat a published flat rate has still told you something useful.

Keep the call for the questions a page cannot answer. Ask for the rate on business cards, the minimum monthly charge, the term, and the exit cost, and ask for all four in writing. Two related pieces sit either side of this one: how to read the effective rate on this site and who publishes a card rate, and who does not.

Where the answer changes

Who this article is not for

This will not help a business that has already decided to buy through a reseller, a franchise agreement, or a bank relationship manager. Where the terms come attached to an existing arrangement, the comparison problem described here is not the problem you have. It also will not help a reader who wants a ranking or a single name, because this site does not rate products.

Sources

How this article was made. Written by Kaz, an independent publisher. All figures come from the companies' own published documentation; each figure carries the date it was last checked. I have not used these products, and nothing here is a personal test result. The arithmetic is shown so you can recalculate with your own numbers. Found an error? Use the contact form; corrections are logged on the Editorial policy page.

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Written by Kaz (pen name). Figures are copied from providers' published pricing pages on the dates shown. We have not used these products. Corrections: contact form.