Review websites are essential for your business to drive conversions and present your solution to potential clients. Reviews play a crucial role in buyer perception, social proof, and ultimately the final decision to purchase.
Review platforms are a significant factor in getting more eyes on your product. That’s why it’s important to effectively manage and collect reviews for your business on all relevant platforms.
Choosing the Best Review Platform
Ideally, you want to be listed on all review platforms, but it makes sense to target your efforts on the best websites for your business. Different platforms cater to different audiences, so choosing the right site is crucial.
The right platform will differ for each business based on the target audience and use case, but the following factors are important for everyone to consider.
Volume of Traffic
The review website should have a respectable amount of traffic. Some may think directing customers to a more niche or obscure review site will help them rank, but we don’t recommend this.
It won’t generate many leads if your business is rated highly on a low-traffic review site—instead, direct reviews to websites where potential customers will actually see you.
Select a Platform That Caters to Your Business
Different review platforms focus on different niches, so you must choose the one most relevant to your business. Do some research on where your competitors are listed and where they extract the most value.
- Brick and mortar stores: Facebook and Google My Business are the most important.
- B2B & SaaS companies: Capterra, G2, and TrustRadius have the most value.
- Restaurants: Yelp and TripAdvisor are the best.
Focusing on the right platform will positively impact your reviews, generate new leads, and improve the reputation of your business.
Review Verification Mechanism and Quality of Reviews
Any solid software review website will have a good moderation mechanism that filters out fraudulent reviews. It’s important to ensure the reviews you’re getting are from actual, verified users. Otherwise, you risk losing consumer trust and social reputation.
Sites like Capterra, G2, and TrustRadius have very high review standards. TrustRadius averages more than 400 words per review. These long-form reviews provide great insight into what a product does well and can improve. Longer reviews are a constructive way to improve your product and increase conversion.
Avoid review platforms that concentrate on getting as many reviews as possible. Instead, focus on quality over quantity and build a catalog of legitimate reviews.
Open vs. Closed Review Platforms
There are two basic types of review platforms: open and closed. Both have pros and cons that are important to consider when deciding which platforms are most relevant to you.
Closed Review Platforms
On closed review platforms, only verified customers can post reviews.
Some advantages of closed review platforms are:
- Authenticity: When you get reviews on a closed platform, you know that the person is a legitimate customer and not a bot or competitor leaving a negative review.
- Low volume of fake reviews: The amount of fake reviews is generally very low on a closed platform. Users leaving a review for your business have been verified and have actually purchased your product. Review vetting reassures both you and your potential customers.
Open Review Platforms
On open review platforms, anyone can post a review without being verified.
Some advantages of open review platforms are:
- High volume of reviews: Since reviews are not verified on an open platform, the pool of potential reviewers is much larger. Also, reviews post very quickly.
- Customers can easily post: It’s much easier and faster for customers to leave reviews on an open platform. Many people are unwilling to put in the time and effort to meet the high standards of closed platforms. Asking customers for a review on an open platform makes it much more manageable.
#1 Capterra: Best review platform for B2B Software Companies Looking for Leads
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 2.9M (Source)
Capterra is the must-have platform for B2B software companies. It’s free to appear on the platform, and any user can leave a review.
While Capterra offers a free plan, the platform is primarily pay-to-play. It uses a bidding system similar to Google Ads. The more you pay, the higher you rank, resulting in more leads and clicks. Ranking organically takes a lot of time and positive reviews.
Capterra is part of the Gartner network, which includes Software Advice and GetApp. All three platforms have similar content but differ in UI/UX. Your customer reviews may appear on these platforms, though Capterra is the largest of the three.
Read more: How to make the most of Gartner’s review platforms
Get your Capterra reviews to Slack with Reviewflowz.
#2 G2: Best software review platform in the US
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 5.3M (Source)
G2 is very similar to Capterra but offers a better user experience.
The key to success on G2 is to get reviews regularly. The recency of reviews has a significant impact on your ranking, so it’s essential to consistently generate positive reviews over time.
You can’t run ad campaigns on G2. Instead, the platform offers an expensive subscription model, which allows your profile button to link to a form hosted on G2 instead of your own site.
Get your G2 reviews to Slack with Reviewflowz.
#3 TrustRadius: Best review website for Enterprise-grade software
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 1.0M (Source)
TrustRadius is similar to Capterra and G2 but with much lower traffic. The platform doesn’t rely on subscriptions or paid ads, which means all reviews are organic.
TrustRadius verifies each user through their LinkedIn account, allowing people to see what software and services their connections are reviewing. This ensures quality and legitimacy in the reviews posted.
TrustRadius also offers buying guides for various categories, such as A/B testing tools and data integration. Being featured on these guides can significantly boost your product’s exposure and organic traffic.
Generally speaking, Trustradius caters more to bigger companies. Reviews have a lot more content, and context, and validation processes are much more strict. Gartner Peer Insights would be the main alternative platform.
Depending on how they rank on your categories, I'd consider focusing on one of the two.
#4 Glassdoor: Best review site for employer branding
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 51.0M (Source)
Glassdoor focuses on company reviews from employees, contractors, and other stakeholders. Reviews on Glassdoor are often more qualitative than quantitative, highlighting employee opinions on a company’s internal culture, job interview processes, and work environment.
Glassdoor is invaluable for employer branding as it showcases highly-rated companies to site visitors. Employers can also use the platform to gather feedback from current and former employees to identify areas for improvement.
Recently, Glassdoor has been gating access to employee reviews more and more, and Indeed has been gaining ground with their own reviews.
Whether to focus on Glassdoor or Indeed is clearly not an exact science at this point, but the momentum clearly seems to be on Indeed's side.
#5 Google My Business: Best review platform for Local Brick & Mortar Businesses
Google My Business is a crucial tool for local brick-and-mortar businesses looking to generate leads and collect reviews. Business profiles on Google often appear in the knowledge panel on the right side of Google search results, showcasing important details like business hours, location, and reviews.
If your business appears in the knowledge panel, it can dominate search results for relevant keywords, even if you’re not local to the searcher. This enhances brand recognition and can significantly boost your SERP rankings.
Use our Google review bot to get notified for every new Google review your business receives.
#6 Trustpilot: Best review site for Companies Running Google Ads
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 48.8M (Source)
Trustpilot is one of the top review aggregators on the market. It’s straightforward for customers to leave reviews on Trustpilot, which increases the pool of potential reviewers compared to platforms like Capterra or G2.
Trustpilot offers a free plan that gives you a profile page to collect reviews. Its paid plans provide automated campaigns to generate a steady flow of new reviews proactively.
A significant advantage of Trustpilot is its Google AdWords certification. This means that Google sources feedback directly from reviews on the Trustpilot platform, contributing to the minimum reviews needed to get Google snippets to display.
If you're unsure whether you should go for Google or Trustpilot, check out our dedicated blog post.
Whichever platform you end up going for, be sure to set up review monitoring notifications on Slack, MS Teams, or email.
#7 AppSumo: Best platform for Lifetime deals
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 4.1M (Source)
AppSumo is a large B2B marketplace for lifetime deals on SaaS products, courses, templates, and more.
But over the years, they've built an incredible community, famous for their straightforward feedback.
It’s designed to build social proof and foster community engagement through Q&A and review sections, where product owners and users can respond to feedback and discuss use cases.
In addition, AppSumo incentivizes positive reviews by featuring products in newsletters and app collections. There are two ways to list your product:
- Submit your product to AppSumo’s self-service marketplace.
- Apply for AppSumo Select, which targets more mature products.
The process for self-publishing on AppSumo is straightforward, with listings remaining indefinitely at no cost. For AppSumo Select, products receive white-glove treatment, access to affiliate networks, beta testing, and dedicated launch campaigns.
#8 Product Hunt: Best review platforms for indie products
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 4.1M (Source)
Product Hunt is a platform with substantial discoverability potential. Or used to be anyway.
It generates daily lists of tools, programs, and apps that reach a large audience of product enthusiasts.
Users can upvote, follow, and leave comments on products, in addition to leaving traditional reviews.
These interactions are visible to site visitors, but an account is required to engage with product pages.
Now however, PH has become a little bit of an artificial community, with tons of pseudo consultants selling their networks of fake profiles to get you upvotes.
Like AppSumo, Product Hunt has a strong community aspect where users connect, discuss, and provide feedback.
It’s an effective platform for generating leads for up-and-coming businesses if leveraged strategically.
#9 Clutch.co: Best review platform for B2B Agencies
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 1.6M (Source)
Clutch.co is a B2B marketplace focused on vendor services. It benefits agencies significantly by offering personalized business profiles and long-form customer reviews.
Clutch places a strong emphasis on review generation, with staff members even conducting phone interviews with your customers to collect detailed reviews for your profile.
Clutch offers a free Basic Profile plan that includes unlimited review collection and listings on its directories.
In Europe, Sortlist would be worth having a look at if you're evaluating Clutch.
#10 Salesforce AppExchange: review-driven marketplace for Salesforce Apps
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 89.9M (Source)
The Salesforce AppExchange is a B2B marketplace for apps that extend and integrate with Salesforce.
It’s a great way to gain organic exposure for your software, especially if your product targets Salesforce users.
The AppExchange isn’t pay-to-play; instead, rankings are driven primarily by the quantity and quality of reviews.
The platform features curated collections, personalized recommendations, and an App Guide highlighting top-rated products.
#11 Zapier: The marketplace for Zapier Integrations
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 6.1M (Source)
Zapier offers a marketplace for apps that integrate with its automation platform.
The marketplace is smaller than other platforms like WordPress or HubSpot, and only certain apps are accessible without a Premium plan.
Zapier ranks apps based on popularity, which means heavyweight integrations like Twitter, Facebook, and Notion rank the highest.
The cool thing about Zapier's marketplace is that it will suggest common Zaps, which is a great way to browse use-cases and possible time-saving integrations.
Reviews are only visible to other Zapier users, making it less effective for generating external social proof but helpful for targeting existing Zapier users.
#12 WordPress: The Plugin marketplace for the CMS powering a third of the internet
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 263.1M (Source)
With over 50,000 WordPress plugins available, having a solid collection of reviews can help your product stand out.
Only users who have downloaded a plugin can leave a review, and some plugin creators even embed review CTAs within the WordPress user dashboard.
The Wordpress ranking algorithm isn't exactly top notch. It's quite easy to game, and there are tons of pretty funny examples online.
Once they become outdated, people will often post about their "hacks".
But reviews are still a strong ranking factor, and the WordPress plugin marketplace values all reviews equally, regardless of language. The algorithm considers both top-rated plugins and the number of active installs for ranking.
#13 Shopify App Store: The marketplace for Shopify sellers
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 58.5M (Source)
The Shopify App Store is a powerful tool for generating leads. Shopify has managed to drive millions of wannapreneurs & serious entrepreneurs to its solution, and built an entireecosystem in the process.
Customer reviews are front and center on the marketplace, and app developers know how critical they are to ranking.
Shopify definitely does a better job at their marketplace ranking algorithms than Wordpress or other platforms.
Shopify features apps in various categories like marketing, store design, and others that are “hand-selected” by Shopify staff. It also curates apps used by featured businesses on its platform.
To leave a review, customers need to have a Shopify store, which can make it slightly harder to gather reviews compared to other platforms. However, the platform values reviews in all languages and ranks apps based on average rating and review count.
Where this gets tricky is every app developer can bid to outrank the competition on category & search result pages.
And as you'd rightly expect, indie developers often have to fight against giant software companies for which Shopify is just an extra channel.
Shopify has also come under a lot of criticism for encouraging external developers to build apps that they eventually end up adding to Shopify's core functionality.
If you're in the e-commerce space though, getting reviews on Shopify is an absolute must.
#14 HubSpot: The CRM's apps review platform
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 40.2M (Source)
HubSpot is an inbound marketing powerhouse. Its app marketplace is a growing B2B platform, highly valued for quality apps.
HubSpot’s marketplace encourages review generation and leads through its App Partner Program. Apps listed on the platform are available to both free users and paid subscribers, making it an excellent source for potential reviews.
If you have a proven track record of quickly addressing customer feedback, you can even get your product certified. HubSpot-certified apps gain more exposure through marketing campaigns, collections, and blog posts.
#15 Pipedrive's marketplace: another CRM app review platform.
- Monthly Traffic Estimate: 9.4M (Source)
The Pipedrive Marketplace offers both free and paid apps that integrate seamlessly with Pipedrive’s sales software. Users are verified and typically must be Salesforce customers, ensuring high-quality reviews.
The marketplace features collections, categories, and homepage highlights for new and trending apps. Rankings appear to be driven by the number of installs and top-rated reviews.
While not as active as some other review sites, it’s a valuable platform if your product integrates with Pipedrive.
