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We were reviewing small network and SOHO network hardware. I had been familiar with larger enterprise solutions but wanted to leverage the extensive reviews of the smaller network/SOHO segment. We eventually went with a Cisco/Meraki product after looking at Aruba, Aerohive and Extreme. Two other internal resources were involved in the research.

I haven't encountered any vendors that didn't have some level of pricing information available up front. I generally could always google and find some page revealing additional information about product pricing, freemiums or such.

I only have experience with Capterra and G2 and I found them to be fairly similar.

I've become less reliant on analyst reports in part because I've been in organizations where an analyst would jump on a call with us and have little insight into the product or trend. I began to wonder how much value they really brought to the table, so I would want to talk to existing customers anyway.

The scorecards somewhat will influence the buying decision, but since there are many scores involved I'd tend to be selective about which ones I really value. For example, if I know the product really well I might not value a high customer support score as much as other 'feature' scores.

Comparing apples to apples could sometimes be tricky if there are multiple versions of products released in a short time-span. The second most common challenge is finding a consistent theme reported on a product the really emphasizes the significance of it.