How Sortlist Matches Brands With Agencies, and How to Read a Profile

Sortlist is less a directory than a matchmaker. A brand describes its project, Sortlist matches the brief to agencies, and up to four of them apply, each paying a fee to do so. So how does Sortlist work for the brand on the other side? The agencies pay and you choose, and both halves of that shape what you see, from the applications in your inbox to the order of a directory page.

What follows comes from Sortlist's help centre, its pages for agencies, and its directory and profile pages, all read on 14 November 2026, for a brand choosing who should run its Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Shop or Shopify operation.

Sortlist gives clients two routes: post a project and let it suggest providers, or search the directory yourself. The brief form asks for the expertise needed, your role, budget, location, company size, the size of provider you want and the scope of the work, and Sortlist says "Our AI analyses and structures what you write, so the more context you give, the better your match."

Matching compares the brief with agency profiles: "their expertise, the languages they work in, where they are based, your budget range, and the work they have delivered." The closest fits are contacted first, in waves, more are invited if the project needs them, and each agency decides for itself whether to apply. You receive up to four applications, each with a link to the agency's profile, examples of its past work and its client reviews.

Sortlist is direct about what sending a brief means: "Sending a brief is a real request, not a test." The agencies that apply receive your contact details. Dismissing one "frees their seat so another provider can apply, and it also removes their access to your contact details", so do it promptly, with a reason, when an agency is clearly wrong for the job.

The four are not a ranking of the best agencies for your project. They are the agencies Sortlist invited that chose to pay to apply. Sortlist presents the fee as the filter: "providers tend to apply only where they believe they can win the work." That works as a filter for relevance and poorly as one for quality, because an agency's confidence and its record are different things.

Two more conditions narrow the field. Applying to projects is part of Sortlist's paid membership, Sortlist+, with a charge for each project an agency applies to, so agencies on the free plan never appear among your applicants however good their reviews. And the cap is deliberate: Sortlist tells agencies they will "Never face more than 3 competitors", and sells them an add-on that shows which other agencies applied.

Sortlist does hold applicants to a code of conduct. An agency that applies must turn up to the first meeting, describe its capabilities, location and expertise accurately, keep what you share confidential and return your materials if the work ends; lateness without notice and broken commitments lead to warnings, then suspension. That protects the process, not the outcome. So treat the applications as half a shortlist: read them, then add one or two agencies you found in the directory yourself, and compare all of them on the same terms.

Sortlist is free for clients: it says it never charges you or asks for payment details, and that the price of the project is between you and the agency. It earns from agencies in three ways: "paid placement on our directory pages, charged per click", a fee to apply to a project, and Radar, a paid tool showing agencies which companies have shown interest in them. Its page for agencies adds that there is "No commission or hidden fees" on the work they win.

None of this is unusual for a marketplace, and Sortlist publishes it plainly. It does mean that money sits behind both the order of a directory page and the set of applicants, and that an agency has spent something on your project before the first call. Neither is a reason to distrust an applicant. Both are reasons to judge it on its evidence rather than on how it reached you.

If you search instead of posting, the default order is not a rating. Sortlist's directory pages sort by relevancy, which the page defines as "a unique score combining their relevance to the page, their activity on the platform and their membership." Its pages for agencies name three areas behind the score: relevance (validated offices, the services listed and the reviews and works behind each), behaviour (a claimed profile, an active paid visibility campaign, regular activity on the platform), and "ROI: The budget allocated on the visibility module".

Paid placement is charged per click from a budget the agency sets, and Sortlist's help centre says reaching the budget limit "will result in a lower ranking for the rest of the month". Its pricing page tells agencies that paid members "get 10 to 20 times more exposure on the platform than agencies on our free plan". On the US eCommerce directory, which listed 1,649 agencies when we read it, a block headed Top Featured sat above the full list. It held five agencies, and one had no reviews at all.

Sortlist says paid listings are shown as paid, and agencies that do not pay still appear in the organic listings below. The way to use that is simple: sort by rating, or read well past the first rows, before deciding who deserves a closer look.

Sortlist's help centre lists the categories an agency must fit, across advertising and marketing, creative work, and development and product, and adds "We therefore do not exhibit other service providers". Its eCommerce category sits among the development services. There is no category for marketplace management, Amazon, Walmart or TikTok Shop.

So an agency that runs Seller Central accounts lists itself under eCommerce, online advertising or marketing, and a directory search for eCommerce mixes it with store builders and software houses. The same article says Sortlist's marketing is "currently focused on Benelux, French and Spanish markets", and directory listings quote budgets in euros, which tells a US brand where much of the network's demand sits.

Write the brief with that in mind. Name the marketplaces, the work (catalogue, advertising, account health, fulfilment settings) and the size of the account, because the match only has the words you give it.

A Sortlist profile opens with a line of counters: team size, languages, projects in the portfolio, collaborations started on Sortlist, the year the agency joined and the year it was founded, awards and the average rating. Below that, each service has a row with the works and reviews behind it and the smallest budget the agency takes, then come the clients by sector, the team and the reviews.

Three parts reward a slow read. The count of collaborations started on Sortlist tells you how many engagements the platform itself produced: on two profiles we read, eleven and nineteen reviews sat beside one such collaboration each, so most of those reviewers became clients some other way. The service rows show where the evidence actually is, since an agency can list six services and have reviews in two. And the labels have definitions: Recommended means "Several past clients have recommended this provider", Highly recommended means past clients "very regularly recommend" it, and Top awarded means it "has won awards for several of their projects".

Two further things are worth knowing. Some profiles carry a review summary marked AI Generated, which is no substitute for the reviews themselves. And Sortlist's pricing page sells paying members a place on "competitor's profiles" and the removal of competitors from their own, so the other agencies suggested on a profile may be there because they pay.

Sortlist describes three routes for an agency's reviews: sharing its review link, sending Sortlist's email invitation to clients, or adding a review a client already left elsewhere, entering "the review source such as Trustpilot, Google Business or Facebook". In each case the client confirms through a link in an email from Sortlist, and the review then goes through what the site calls "our verification process to see if it fits our policy". Anyone who worked with an agency can also write a review from its profile.

On removal, Sortlist's position is that clients decide what to review and it hosts the result, taking reviews down only when they "breach the law or are fake and/or spammy". Agencies have a right to reply to every review.

Read a Sortlist review for what that process establishes: a real person with a working email confirmed it. The agency chose whom to invite, and a review may be a copy of one left on another site. Each review names the reviewer, their role and company, the service and sector, and gives answers on the objective, what went well and what could improve, with ratings for budget, quality, schedule and collaboration. The improvement answer is often the most candid line. On the profiles we read, no review carried a date, so ask the agency when each was written.

Sortlist's badge for buyers is the Trusted Partner badge, and Sortlist says it "cannot be purchased nor manually assigned". An agency keeps it only while five things hold: an average rating of 4.0 or higher, at least 10 validated client reviews, a verified phone number, a company registration or VAT number on file, and an active Sortlist+ membership.

The last condition matters. The badge cannot be bought on its own, but only paying members can hold it, so an agency on the free plan cannot have it whatever its reviews say. Sortlist says as much from the other side: an agency without the badge "is not necessarily a weaker choice", because it may be new to the platform or short of ten reviews.

Below the badge sits a lower bar. A profile appears in directories only once it is live, which takes a logo, a cover image, a description, at least one published project, connected social profiles and a verified phone number. Live means complete and reachable, not good. When we set up our own profile, the dashboard scored its completeness and listed what was missing, and none of those items said anything about how an account is run.

Radar shows paying agencies the companies that viewed their profile "or browsed agencies and services like yours on Sortlist", matched to a company by the visitor's network and completed with decision makers' contact details where those are verified. Visits from home or mobile networks cannot be matched. Sortlist says Radar plays no part in how providers are matched to a project.

So browsing from an office network can bring outreach from agencies you looked at, and from some whose services you only browsed. Posting a brief hands your details to up to four. If you would rather research quietly, read profiles first and post when you are ready to talk.

One: write the brief in marketplace terms, naming the channels, the work and the size of the account, and say what you do not want. Two: treat the four applications as half a shortlist and add one or two agencies found by sorting the directory by rating. Three: read each profile's counters, the collaborations started on Sortlist against the reviews and the service rows against your channel. Four: read every review's role, service and improvement answer, and ask when each was written. Five: on the call, ask who will run your account day to day and what happened on an account the agency lost.

Before any of that, decide what you are handing over. What to outsource first, and what to keep is the brief behind the brief, and the full guide to choosing an agency covers the call itself.

Sortlist does the first sort quickly and says plainly who pays for it. What it cannot do is tell you whether an agency can run your account, and four applications from agencies that paid to apply are a start, not a verdict. Other platforms need their own reading: a Clutch profile is built from structured client interviews, and an Agency Spotter listing mixes reviews with paid placement much as Sortlist's directory does.

When the brief is someone to run the marketplace operation itself, across Amazon, Walmart, eBay, TikTok Shop and Shopify, that is the work of our marketplace management team, and the useful first conversation is about an account like yours.