How to Move Reviews From One Shopify Reviews App to Another

You move reviews between Shopify reviews apps with a CSV file: export every review from the current app, check that the columns are complete, import the file into the new app, and confirm each review is attached to the right product before you remove the old app. Done in that order, with a short overlap between the two apps, the product pages are never without reviews. This guide goes through each step, including what to check in the file, how to keep review markup continuous, and how to clear out old theme code.

What should you do before you export anything?

Take stock, so you can prove afterwards that everything arrived. Write down three numbers from the current app:

• the total number of published reviews;
• the review count and average rating for your five top-selling products;
• the number of reviews with photos or video.

Also note where the current app appears in your theme: product page, collection page stars, home page carousel.

Do not uninstall or cancel the old app yet. Some apps stop serving data or media once the subscription ends, so get the export and the images first.

Step 1: export the reviews and check the columns

Look for an export option in your current app's settings or reviews list. The process is the same whether the file comes from Judge.me, Loox or another app. Export all reviews, not just published ones, then save the original file somewhere safe and work on a copy.

Open the copy in a spreadsheet and confirm that it holds what the new app needs. The essential columns are:

• Rating: a number from one to five on every row.
• Body: the review text, with the title in its own column if there is one.
• Date: the original date. Check the format, because day-first and month-first dates are easily confused.
• Product identifier: usually the product handle, sometimes a product ID. This is what attaches the review to the right page.
• Reviewer name.
• Media URLs: links to any photos or videos.

Then look for problems in the data itself: rows with no product identifier, handles for products you have since renamed or deleted, and accented characters that have turned into symbols.

Rename the column headings to match the template the new app asks for. Change headings only. Do not edit the review text or the ratings, and do not delete the low ones.

Step 2: import, then map reviews to products

Import a small batch first, ten or twenty rows covering two or three products, and inspect the result before loading the rest.

When the test looks right, import the full file. Then compare against the numbers you wrote down at the start: total count, and the count and average for each of your five main products.

With Marka Reviews, reviews imported from a CSV keep their text, ratings and dates, and CSV import is included in the free plan.

Next, check that every review has landed on the right product. Reviews go astray for predictable reasons:

• the product handle changed after the review was written;
• variants were split into separate products, or merged into one.

Correct the identifier in the file and re-import those rows. Move reviews from a discontinued product to its successor only if it is honestly the same item.

What happens to the verified badge?

Expect imported reviews to appear without a verified badge, and treat that as correct. The new app did not see the original orders, so it cannot confirm the purchases. In Marka Reviews, imported reviews are never marked verified for exactly this reason. The reasoning is set out in what a verified purchase badge means.

Step 3: set up the widgets and keep the markup continuous

Add the new app's widgets wherever the old ones appeared, using the list you made at the start. Then check on a real product page, on a phone as well as a desktop:

1. The star summary shows the right count and average.
2. The full review list loads, with the original dates.
3. Photos display. If media links still point at the old app's servers, they may stop working once you leave, so confirm how the new app handles imported media.

Also make sure each product page carries exactly one set of review markup throughout the switch. The markup is what lets search engines read your rating, and two things can go wrong:

• A gap. The old app is removed before the new one is live, so pages have no rating markup for a time.
• A duplicate. Both apps, or the theme and an app, output rating markup at once, sometimes with different counts.

Switch the old app's widgets off as you switch the new ones on, then run a product URL through Google's Rich Results Test to confirm one valid result. If stars vanish from search, see why review stars are not showing in Google.

Step 4: remove the old app and its code

Uninstall the old app only after everything above has been checked, then look for what it left behind. Apps added through the theme editor as app blocks are removed there. Apps installed by editing theme files can leave snippets, script tags and stylesheet references that keep loading on every page.

Search the theme code for the old app's name, remove what you find on a duplicate theme first, and test before publishing. Our Shopify store customisation team does this kind of clean-up if you would rather not edit theme code.

Stop the old app's review request emails too, so customers are not asked twice.

A short checklist

1. Record total reviews and per-product counts before you start.
2. Export everything and keep an untouched copy of the file.
3. Check rating, body, date, product identifier and media columns.
4. Import a small test batch, then the full file.
5. Reconcile counts and fix reviews attached to the wrong product.
6. Confirm one set of review markup on each product page.
7. Uninstall the old app, remove leftover code and stop its emails.

A careful migration is methodical work more than difficult work, and it leaves shoppers seeing no difference except the new layout. For the wider context on collecting reviews after the move, see our guide to verified product reviews on Shopify. If you are moving to Marka Reviews, its widgets are added from the theme editor, so there is no theme code to clean up later.