Simple Germany’s Scoring System

At Simple Germany, our goal is to create the best content in English for international skilled workers to empower you to settle into life in Germany more smoothly. We take our mission very seriously.

Next to detailed how-to content, we also focus on finding the best service providers in Germany that cater to the international community. We scout the market and favor the companies that fulfill the following criteria:

• English friendliness in their communication
• Good product quality
• Friendly product design and usability
• Digital-first
• Customer service channels

Language is an important aspect we consider; however, it is not the only one. We also aim to find companies that are committed to providing excellent products with stellar customer service. If they’re 100% digital, that’s the cherry on top!

It’s important to highlight that we don’t provide a market overview of all the providers in Germany.

We focus on the providers that we know are foreign-friendly, treat their customers right, and have an excellent offer.

We don’t always succeed in our mission. There are some industries in Germany where English service providers are not available … yet. We hope our content contributes to industries like telecommunications to expand their products to support the English-speaking community in Germany.

To make it easier for you to identify relevant offers, we developed our Simple Germany Scoring System.

We want to empower you with knowledge so you can make decisions confidently.

We do our very best to keep all information up-to-date, useful, and neutral. We use as many of the services we research and write about as possible. Others are highly recommended by friends and our Smoothler community (our loyal readers and viewers). We don’t always get the opportunity to try all the services ourselves. In those cases, we rely on extensive online research and real customer feedback from these products.

We want Simple Germany to be a place you can trust. Rest assured that our content and recommendations are genuine and not rigged by brand sponsorships. With some of the providers we mention we have an ongoing affiliate partnership. This means that we receive a small commission at no extra cost to you should you click on our link and decide to sign up with the provider. Active affiliate partnerships do not have any impact on our scoring system. Additionally, we do not allow any ads on our website.

Our Scoring Factors

Our total score comes from combining 5 different factors, each with its own level of importance:

English-Friendly – 20%

We research whether the product offers its sales page, sign-up process, terms and conditions, customer area, and customer service in English. Understanding the offer you are signing up for is important.

Product Quality – 45%

We believe that just because a product offering is in English, it does not mean it should be inferior when compared to the German market. It needs to meet the minimum standards set in the industry.

The criteria for what makes a good product will highly depend on the product type. We will determine the relevant criteria as we do the research. You will be able to find these criteria in our comparison tables in our guides.

User-Friendly – 10%

We research whether the product has an easy sign-up process, an easy-to-understand offer, a modern user interface, and if it’s easy to find more details on their offer without getting lost on their website.

Digital First – 5%

We evaluate if no unnecessary snail mail is needed (paperwork), the product provides digital access to your account, and the customer area is accessible through a web browser and a mobile application.

Customer Service Channels – 20%

We look at whether the company has physical locations, visible customer service phone numbers, online chat, and is reachable through email. What good is it to have a great product but not be able to contact them if you ever have any questions, issues, or requests?

Understanding Our Score

We use a 1-10 point grading scale. The more points a product has, the better we think it is.

We round up the final score to the first decimal.

Here is an overview of what each number represents in our scoring system:

• 10: Exceptional – Exceeds expectations in all areas.
• 9: Excellent – with minor areas for improvement.
• 8: Very good performance overall – with some notable strengths.
• 7: Good performance – with several areas that could be better.
• 6: Satisfactory performance – meets basic standards but nothing more.
• 5: Average performance – meets some but not all standards.
• 4: Below average – a number of significant issues noted.
• 3: Poor performance – fails to meet standards in most areas.
• 2: Very poor performance – with almost all areas needing improvement.
• 1: Unacceptable performance – fails to meet the basic criteria.

Suggestions

Do you have a suggestion for how we could make our scoring system better? Please send us your feedback here.