How to Choose a Shopify Product Reviews App: A Buyer's Checklist

Choose a Shopify reviews app on what you cannot easily change later: how it verifies reviews, how much control you have over moderation, how request emails are sent and limited, whether you can leave with your data, and what it costs as orders grow. Widget design comes last, because every serious app has presentable widgets. This guide goes through the questions to ask under each heading, in the order they matter.

How does the app decide a review is verified?

Ask this first, because the answer shapes everything shoppers see. A verified badge should mean the app matched the review to a real order for that product. Find out exactly what triggers the badge, and whether it can appear on reviews that were imported or typed in by hand.

If the badge can be applied to anything, it tells shoppers nothing, and it leaves you defending a label you cannot back up. The guide on what a verified purchase badge means explains what to look for. As one example of a strict answer, Marka Reviews, listed on the Shopify App Store as ReviewMaster, marks a review verified only when it came through a request tied to a fulfilled order, and never marks imported reviews.

What control do you have over moderation?

You want two modes and an honest default. Check that the app lets you:

• hold every review for approval before it appears;
• switch to automatic publishing and moderate by exception when volume grows;
• reply in public to a review.

Be wary of any feature whose purpose is to route unhappy customers away from the public form. It may be sold as 'feedback management'. What it does is filter your reviews, which gives shoppers the same false picture as hiding the negative ones.

How do request emails work, and what will they cost as orders grow?

Reviews come from requests, so this is the engine. Ask:

• What triggers the email? It should be fulfilment, not the order being placed, with a delay you set.
• Are reminders included, and on which plan?
• Can you edit the wording and the sender name?
• How many requests does each plan include per month, and what happens when you reach the limit? Do the emails stop without warning, queue, or prompt an upgrade?
• Do reminders count towards the limit?

Here is an example with made-up figures. Say a store ships 400 orders a month and the plan it is considering includes 250 request emails. Each month, 150 buyers are never asked. If orders grow to 1,200 a month next year, the store will need a higher tier, so the price to compare is that tier's price, not today's. As a rule of thumb, work out the cost at three times your current orders.

Check the small print as well: whether a free plan carries the app's branding on widgets, whether billing runs through Shopify, and whether you can move down a plan as easily as up.

What kinds of review can it collect and show?

Check media and questions, since both tend to be plan-limited.

• Photos. Can customers attach them in the review form itself, and on which plan?
• Video. Is it supported, where is it hosted, and on which plan?
• Questions and answers. Can shoppers ask a question on the product page?
• Incentives. If you plan to offer a reward for reviews, does the app label incentivised reviews for you?

Can you bring reviews in, and leave with them?

Ask both halves. Import is how you start; export is how you stay free to leave.

On import, ask which sources are supported, whether a CSV file from your current app is accepted, and what happens to dates, ratings, photos and replies on the way in. Ask also how imported reviews are labelled, because they should not gain a verified badge in transit.

On export, ask for a straight answer: can you download all your reviews, with text, rating, date, product and media links, at any time and on any plan? Your reviews are an asset built over years. An app that makes them hard to take away is charging you a price that is not on the pricing page. The guide on moving reviews between Shopify apps shows what a clean move involves.

How do the stars reach Google?

By two separate routes, and an app may cover one or both.

• Organic results depend on review markup on the product page. Confirm the app adds it, and that it describes each product's own rating.
• Google Shopping depends on a product ratings feed. Confirm the app produces one, and on which plan.

No app can promise stars; Google decides when to show them. If stars are missing on a store today, the guide on why review stars are not showing in Google lists the usual causes.

How does it install, and what does it weigh?

Prefer app blocks to code edits. An app that adds its widgets through the Shopify theme editor as app blocks can be placed, moved and removed without touching theme files. One that asks you to paste snippets into Liquid leaves code behind when you uninstall, and that code can break quietly on a theme update.

Then check the weight. A reviews widget loads scripts, styles and often customer photos onto your most important page. Install the app on a duplicate theme, load a product page on a phone, and compare it with the same page without the widget. If the product page is already slow, our Shopify speed optimisation work looks at the page as a whole.

For what a reviews app is for in the first place, start with the guide to collecting verified product reviews on Shopify.

A short checklist

1. Ask what exactly earns a verified badge, and whether imports can get one.
2. Confirm both approve-first and auto-publish moderation are available.
3. Check request triggers, reminders and monthly email limits against your order volume.
4. Confirm photo, video and Q&A support on the plan you would buy.
5. Test import from your current app, and confirm full export on any plan.
6. Confirm product page markup and a Google Shopping ratings feed.
7. Install on a duplicate theme, check it uses app blocks, and measure page weight.

If you want to put these questions to one app straight away, the Marka Reviews page lists its plans, limits and features in full.