Rather than go through the competitor’s changelog, I used their product for a month.

I kept an Excel of what the three closest competitors shipped out. It gave me no insights whatsoever. The feature name in the list doesn't say anything about its quality.

In July I tried the closest competitor out by purchasing their product and using it for a month in a serious work context. Three things happened:

Their import flow is better than mine in a way that I could not possibly know from just looking at the screenshot. It tries to figure out your column mapping and gets it about 80% of the time, eliminating the most painful part of the setup.

Their search is weaker than mine and I was assuming otherwise all along.

And their pricing actually makes sense when you see it in context, meaning that the "they are overpriced" positioning was completely unfounded.

I got out of it one thing to copy, one thing to push more and one false belief that was demolished.

Does anybody do it regularly or it's just too scary to pay the enemy?