Software Advice Community Guidelines- FAQs

Review Verification & Publication

Who determines which reviews should be published?

All reviews are manually examined by our team of experts in an effort to ensure published reviews are from verified sources and provide helpful content. All reviews are treated equally during the verification process, regardless of rating or vendor. During this process, the team verifies the reviewer’s identity, checks for conflicts of interest, and evaluates the review against our site guidelines. For a more in-depth overview, please see our Quality Assurance guidelines.

Does your site publish negative reviews?

Simply put, yes. We treat one-star reviews no differently from five-star reviews. Like all online reviews platforms, our sites are intended to provide a forum for honest discussion between vendors and software users. By remaining neutral, they can host a wide array of opinions that help software shoppers make informed decisions. For this reason, and also to ensure compliance with applicable laws, we do not modify content or remove an opinion or statement from a valid review. For a detailed overview of our Quality Assurance process, click here.

Why was a previously published review disabled after being published?

The reviews program is continuously evolving. As we improve our methods, we periodically audit previously published reviews as they are flagged by our system. If a past review does not meet our current standards or our current guidelines, it may be removed by our team.

What happens if a fraudulent review is found?

If a review is found to be fraudulent by our team, it will be removed from our site. In addition, the reviewer may be subject to removal from any outreach campaigns, and/or banned from leaving future reviews from our site. If a software vendor is found to have participated in fraudulent activity, their account may be subject to future penalties such as a publicly visible warning about suspicious activity.

What is considered fraud?

Software Advice is committed to providing our visitors an unbiased reviews catalogue with content from other community members. Though every reviewer is entitled to–and encouraged to share–their own opinion, Software Advice is vigilant against attempts to deceive others through their review’s content. Any reviews found to be fraudulent will be removed, and the submitter of the review will be subject to penalties.

Fraudulent activity may include, but is not limited to, the following:

Attempts by a vendor to influence the reputation of themselves, or another vendor, by:

Paying for the services of a third party, such as a marketing agency, to post reviews
Submitting reviews of their own product, or of any software (such as a competitor’s product) in which they have a financial interest
Submitting reviews on behalf of an actual user, with or without their consent
Encouraging reviews to be posted based on false pretences
Discouraging users from posting negative feedback
Harassing or bullying a reviewer over a review in an attempt to force its removal Vendors should also refrain from reviewing a competitor’s product or paying for reviews to be submitted to a competitor’s account.

Fraudulent activity may also include attempts by a reviewer to damage the reputation of a vendor, or obtain incentives, through false pretences such as:

Writing a review of a software product without actual experience using the product
Writing a review of a software product after being solicited by a competitor
Copying content from another source, including our own site
Allowing a third party to post a review on your behalf

A reviewer should not review a product for which they have a conflict of interest or a financial stake in its success.

What is considered a “Bad” review?

We believe it is important not to focus on the star rating alone. Our research has shown that people actually find reviews of products more believable if they have a variety of star ratings. In addition, a detailed review, even if a “lower” score, provides a much clearer picture of an experience than a five-star review with few details.

We encourage our vendors to respond to all customer reviews, regardless of rating given. We believe (and research shows) that a vendor’s willingness to address critical reviews builds credibility, shows responsiveness, and generally creates a more favourable opinion of the vendor and product.

Can a review be submitted by a competitor?

No. When our Quality Assurance (“QA”) team verifies each reviewer’s identity, we take steps to ensure that they are a real person, not a scammer, and (among other items) do not have any conflict of interest (financial or competitive) with the vendor they are reviewing. Please see an overview of our Quality Assurance guidelines for more details.

Are old reviews removed if a product’s features have been updated?

If a review was submitted for a version of the product which was active and being supported at the time the review was submitted, the review will remain published. It is an accurate reflection of what the user’s experience was at that point in time.

As a product evolves, it is typical to see a shift in the nature of the reviews listed, and we believe this helps increase the value to software shoppers visiting our site. Older reviews can help a software shopper see how things have changed over the long term and help them gain confidence that issues are being addressed and updates being made over time.

How can I flag a suspicious review?

We take several steps to safeguard against fraudulent reviews. We have technology in place, as well as a team dedicated to moderating reviews. But no system is perfect, and occasionally an inappropriate review may slip through the cracks. In these rare instances, you may flag a review by emailing us at [email protected], providing as much information as possible about the review, and the reasons you believe it should be investigated.

Vendors may log in to their vendor portals for instructions as to how to flag a review. For more details about our process, please refer to our Reviews Investigation Guidelines. What evidence do you consider while evaluating a review flagged for fraud?

While our internal investigative processes are confidential and all decisions are subject to our discretion, we have outlined some key factors that we consider during our reviews investigation process. Click here for an overview of our investigation process.

Do you require proof of use when evaluating a review?

We’ll request proof of use from users when investigating reviews, but it’s not required. Our experience has shown that “proof of use” is a valuable piece of the puzzle, but not a reliable source of proof on its own. It’s just one aspect among an array of considerations we use when evaluating a review. Faking proof of use through doctored screenshots or images taken from web searches is a method favoured by those looking to scam our system. Moreover, with tens of thousands of products listed in our catalogue, it is simply not feasible for our QA team to become experts in verifying proof of use across all products. In our ongoing efforts to treat all vendors equally, we consider “proof of use” as one aspect among the many that make up our investigation.

How is it possible for fraudulent reviews to pass inspection?

We have technology in place, as well as a team dedicated to moderating reviews, to safeguard against fraudulent reviews. Every review is manually verified with care and consideration to ensure a high quality of content is published across our site. No system is perfect, however, and with tens of thousands of reviews submitted monthly, occasionally an inappropriate review may slip through the cracks. In these cases, we rely on our vendors and our reviewer community to alert us of potential fraud by “flagging” a review for further review “flagging” a review for further review.

Why are some reviews accompanied by a notation stating they were incentivised?

We have implemented an “i” icon on our site, which will indicate the reviewer was offered an incentive to leave their review. The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” (an American agency)) Endorsement Guidelines require online companies to provide clear notice when a review has been submitted in exchange for a nominal incentive (whether invited by the website or by the software vendor). See here for more information. Our policies require that any such incentive must be made available to all reviewers who submit honest reviews, regardless of the rating they ultimately give the product they are reviewing.

Does Software Advice fact-check reviews for accuracy?

Our team has analysed hundreds of thousands of reviews across the tens of thousands of products listed in our catalogue. It would not be feasible for our QA team to become experts equally across all products or to spend an equal amount of time verifying the details of each review. In our effort to treat all vendors equally, we must not fact check the opinions submitted by our reviewers. Instead, our Quality Assurance team focuses on verifying the identity of the reviewers and ensuring that reviews posted meet our site guidelines. Please find more details about our QA process, and our Reviews Guidelines.

May a foreign language review be published on your site?

We accept reviews submitted in the local language of the User’s country. In addition, all foreign language reviews will have a translate button where users can translate them to the appropriate language.

How valid are videos or articles promoting false reviews submissions?

Our teams are aware of the existence of videos or articles promoting our site as a way to earn extra income, or even offering suggestions on how to game our system and submit reviews under false pretenses. Unfortunately, being targeted in this fashion is not uncommon for any site that offers a rewards program. Our teams actively monitor all such content, and use it to strengthen our existing methods of detecting fraudulent activity. We condemn the submission of reviews under false pretenses, and have built a robust Quality Assurance program to safeguard against reviews fraud. Any review that does not adhere to - or is found to violate - our strict guidelines will not be published, and any reviewer who is found to have submitted a false review will have their accounts banned.

Does your site edit the content of the reviews published?

As per our reviewer policies , we will never make an edit that would change the original intent of a review. However, we may make simple edits to correct typos or remove non-standard characters. Edits may also be made to hide sensitive data (as further described elsewhere), such as personally identifying information, or private contract terms that are not intended for public disclosure. The reviewer will not be notified about these edits, which are made at the discretion of our site.

Does a reviewer need to be a customer to leave a review?

No. A reviewer does not need to be a customer in order to leave a review- so long as they are a direct user of the software, they may submit a review. For example, if a reviewer uses a software while working a company licensing the software, their review would be valid even though they may not be listed on any contracts, or have their own user account.

When is a reviewer’s software experience not acceptable?

It is not acceptable for a review to be based on a user experience influenced by a third party. For example, a review of an ecommerce platform based off of a shopping experience on a 3rd party’s ecommerce store would not be allowed, as the ecommerce store itself would dictate the user experience.

It is also not acceptable for a review to be based on an indirect experience with the software. Reviews must be submitted by the actual user of the software, and not on behalf of the software user by a 3rd party. For example, if a software is used by coworkers of the reviewer, but the reviewer has no direct experience using the software themselves, they may not submit a review on behalf of the experience of their coworkers.

FAQs for Vendors

How can a vendor respond to a review?

We allow, and encourage, all vendors to respond in a constructive and respectful manner to reviews left on their profile pages. For guidance in this process, vendors may access their vendor portal to find more details on leaving a response via our platform.

What should we do if we receive a negative review?

We understand a negative review can be upsetting. As a reviews platform, we provide an opportunity for vendors to address misunderstandings or issues. A vendor’s response to a negative user review has the potential to result in a positive experience for both vendor and reviewer, as well as demonstrate to other software shoppers a great customer service experience. Please see our guide to addressing negative reviews as well as this blog post about the positive outcomes of negative reviews.

Will my responses to reviews be sent to the reviewer?

When submitting a response to a review through your vendor portal, there will be an option to select “Send response to reviewer.” You may send the response to the reviewer regardless of whether the reviewer decided to publicly display their information.

Will we be notified of a new review submission for my product?

No, vendors are sent a notice only after a review has been published by our team. To avoid confusion from spam or reviews that do not pass our QA process, no notifications are sent upon a review submission.

We didn’t ask for this review to be published to our profile - why was it published on your site?

Visitors to our sites are free to submit reviews to our QA process on whichever software they choose. As an unbiased, user-driven reviews platform, we do not ask for consent from the vendor before a review is published. All vendors are treated equally in this respect and cannot opt out of receiving reviews. In this way, our reviewers generate valuable content that help our other community of software shoppers make informed decisions.

May a vendor request its profile or product listing be removed from your site?

Like all online reviews platforms, we endeavour to provide our users with software product directories that are as comprehensive as possible. As such, our policy is not to remove product listings from our sites unless: (i) the product listing does not fit within one of the existing software categories (or “directories”); (ii) the vendor can provide evidence that product is no longer actively being marketed and/or sold to the public; or (iii) the listing or profile fails to comply with our guidelines.

Why is a review submitted in the past just now being published?

In our ongoing efforts to improve our service, we periodically audit our reviews database. And, as our ability to vet these reviews improves, we may find past reviews that still contain entirely valid content that we can now publish. These reviews will display in the order of their submission date. Because there is currently no time stamp on verified reviews, we treat these past reviews the same as all other verified reviews submissions. We publish them exactly as they were originally submitted.

We flagged a review for investigation, but it was not removed. Can you tell us why?

If a review was not removed following your investigation request, this means that during the course of our investigation our team found the flagged review to be in compliance with our site guidelines. While we cannot provide further details about the investigatory process, we can confirm that the reviews team devotes significant time and effort to investigating every escalated review and evaluating the review against our site guidelines.

The reviews on our profile mention features we no longer offer – can we remove those reviews?

A review cannot be removed simply because it is referencing features that are no longer actively supported. If the review was valid at the time of submission, it is reflective of the user’s experience with that software at that point in time. While recent reviews are more likely to reflect a product’s most current set of capabilities and most relevant experiences, it is important for our shoppers to consider how reviews about a vendor have progressed over time as the software as developed.

Does your site share the contact information of a reviewer with a vendor?

Our site does not share the personal contact information provided by the reviewer along with a submission to any vendor, though certain non-private information such as name and company may be publicly displayed alongside a review to provide important context to our site users, except in cases where reviewers have opted to submit an “anonymous” review.

As a vendor, would any evidence we provide along with a review be considered in its evaluation?

Yes, we consider all information when investigating a flagged review. However, we are unable to act as an intermediary between vendors and reviewers. As an unbiased reviews platform, we cannot make decisions based on interactions that took place between a vendor and a reviewer outside of our site. Because we are not able to validate private communications, such as email exchanges or phone conversations that happen outside of our site, these can be unreliable. Therefore, we consider outside communications as one aspect among the many that make up our investigation. More details about our investigation process can be found here.

We do not know this reviewer. We do not believe they are a user of our software. How could they leave a review?

While we understand that many vendors pride themselves on knowing their user base, there are many valid cases where a vendor might not know a legitimate reviewer, based on the information provided along with a review. These cases include but are not limited to the following:

Software buyers who evaluate multiple tools before purchasing software. We believe these evaluative experiences (in a proof of concept or with trial versions) are valid experiences in their own right and thus worthy of sharing with our user community.
Software accounts that are shared by multiple users or business units at a single company. The reviewer may not be the account owner and thus may be unknown to the vendor.
Vendor contracts that are signed under a company name, not by an individual.
Reviewers who change jobs and have used the software at their previous company.
Users who submit under a name other than the name used on their contract with the vendor. For example, “Bob” rather than “Robert”, or the use of a maiden name.
Users who enter an alternative name for their current company, such as initials or a shortened name, or a parent or sister company, rather than the name used on their vendor contract.
Users who opt to use an abbreviated or screen name to maintain their anonymity.
Reviewers who log in with LinkedIn but choose to remain anonymous. These users have been validated by our Reviews team, but their reviews will not display any identifying information. Learn more about anonymous reviews.

As a neutral content platform, we rely on our reviewers to provide accurate and honest descriptions of their software experiences. In keeping with our efforts to provide the broadest possible picture of the software industry, we try not to limit the types of software experiences that are shared on our site. Because any software user has a valid experience to share, a reviewer is not required to be the account owner or to have been in direct contact with the vendor.

We received multiple reviews for our product from reviewers working at the same company. Is this allowed?

Yes, there are no restrictions as to how many reviewers from the same company may review a given product. As co-workers often use the same product in different ways, we feel that providing these multiple viewpoints is a valuable service to our community. However, any one reviewer is prohibited from writing more than one review of a product within a short time period.

Are vendors allowed to ask for a review in exchange for an incentive?

Vendors are permitted to ask their customers for reviews and offer nominal incentives for doing so. Software Advice also sends out periodic email campaigns asking for a software review in exchange for an incentive amount.

These incentives must be offered to all reviewers, regardless of whether they leave a positive or negative review.
Vendors found using incentives to influence the content of a review will result in the review’s removal.
Vendors are required to notify SoftwareAdvice if they source reviews in exchange for an incentive. Please refer to our guidelines section About Incentivised Reviews.
Why were some of our users emailed by your site about reviews? Most of our reviews come from users posting reviews directly on our site or in response to our in-house reviews campaigns (which are targeted to our own database of site members). Users are added to our database voluntarily as they leave reviews on our site, sign up for our mailing lists, or phone our in-house sales teams. While visiting our site or when responding to our reviews campaigns, users are free to review any software they wish. We may then email these users about reviews from time to time based on their past interaction with one of our sites.

May a vendor contact a reviewer to request that they remove their review from the vendor’s profile?

We encourage interchanges between vendors and reviewers via our review response mechanism. Vendors should not contact a reviewer, either directly or indirectly, with the goal of getting a review removed or edited. Software Advice does NOT condone, and has a zero tolerance policy for, any threats or bullying of our reviewers. If we receive a report that a vendor has reached out to a reviewer to request a review to be removed/edited, or harasses that reviewer in any manner, we encourage the reviewer to contact our site immediately by emailing [email protected]. Based on the results of our investigation, the offending vendor may be subject to site penalties as well as legal redress.

Why are vendors prohibited from submitting reviews on behalf of their customers?

Though no fraud may have been intended, when a third party submits a review on a reviewer’s behalf, we have no way to determine whether the content was submitted with the reviewer’s consent or if the original content has been modified in any manner. When we identify a customer review submitted by a vendor, we will disable the review. The original reviewer is encouraged, following such disablement, to submit a review in their own right directly to our site.

Do you treat reviews for products by paying vendors differently than reviews for products by non-paying vendors?

All reviews for all vendors across all directories are subject to the same Quality Assurance process, regardless of whether or not they are a paying client. We make every effort to ensure that our reviews team is completely unbiased and unmotivated by revenue. This is one of the primary reasons the reviews team is separate from the sales and marketing teams.

Why are vendors found to have participated in fraudulent reviews activity not banned from your site?

We believe that providing a full catalogue of software across a variety of categories is more important to our users than removing a listing altogether. Instead, we look to penalise vendors for fraudulent activity in other ways, such as flagging their profile for fraud as a warning to software buyers. In this way, we provide valuable information to software shoppers that would not be evident were we to simply remove the profile from our catalogue.

Our software has been penalised, what can we do?

In the event that your software page displays a penalty and you’re unsure why, reach out to the reviews team through your vendor portal for a brief synopsis of the activity that led to the penalties, along with additional details about the penalty.

What should we do if someone is blackmailing us by threatening a negative review?

We do not facilitate arbitration. We are not mediators and cannot intervene in disputes between our reviewers and vendors. If you feel you are being harassed or threatened, we suggest you contact applicable law enforcement.

If a negative review does not meet our guidelines, please flag the review for investigation through the vendor portal. Our team will investigate accordingly as per our standard investigation procedures.

What is the “Reviews as a Service” program?

The free Reviews as a Service program helps vendors recruit reviews for their product listing by allowing Software Advice to email their customers asking for a software review in exchange for a nominal incentive. Reviews collected are displayed across the Gartner Digital Markets network: Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice, as further described in our Privacy Policy. You may learn more about the RaaS program by speaking with an account representative or clicking.

How are reviews sorted on product pages?

Reviews are by default sorted by Most Helpful to software buyers, driven by our proprietary algorithm reflecting the depth and quality of the review, recency of experience, and other factors. As a neutral reviews platform, the star rating of the review is not considered in the “Most Helpful” ranking, and there is currently no voting mechanism that would allow site visitors to influence the ranking. This default sorting algorithm has been applied across every product profile for every vendor at the site level. Users of the site may choose to change the sort to other options, such as Most Recent or Highest Rating.

Why is there a delay shown between the date submitted and the notice of publication?

When a review is submitted, it goes through our QA process, conducted by a team dedicated to ensuring published reviews meet our guidelines. We aim to publish reviews within a few business days of being submitted, though during busy times, the delay may be longer. Vendors are then notified when reviews are published.

May a vendor opt out of participating in the reviews program?

As a neutral reviews platform, we endeavor to provide our users with reviews directories that are as comprehensive as possible. As such, our policy does not allow vendors to opt out of our reviews program. Whether or not vendors choose to participate in collecting reviews, we will publish reviews we receive about any product listed in our catalogs, as long as it passes our QA process and meets our guidelines.

Are resellers listed on your site and can resellers respond to reviews?

Lead Gen: We allow authorised resellers to participate in our lead generation programs. However, if the parent company expresses interest in lead generation for their product, the parent company will take precedence and the reseller will be disabled.

Product Listings: Because Product Listings are reserved for the companies that own the products, we do not list resellers, integrators, consultants and other partners in product listings.

Reviews: A reseller or partner that has signed up for a profile is able to respond to reviews provided that they disclose in their response that they are a reseller or partner for the company that owns the product.

Can a review mention a competitor to our product?

Yes, a review may mention a competitor to the product being reviewed so long as the reference is intended to add value to the review and not to deliberately promote or disparage the competitor. Reviews may contain mention of alternative products considered or used before or after using the product being reviewed. This additional information can help put a review into the proper context, and provide valuable information to software shoppers.

Why were previously published reviews removed from our profile?

Our teams have built an extremely robust QA process, but we understand that with tens of thousands of reviews submitted each month there will be reviews that violate our guidelines, which occasionally slip by. In our ongoing efforts to improve our service, our teams periodically audit our reviews database. These audits help find reviews that do not meet our guidelines, which we may not have initially identified. When reviews are found to violate our guidelines for any reason they must be disabled, even if the review was originally published by us. If Reviewers are found to have submitted deceptive reviews, we will ban their accounts and remove their historical reviews across all products. As such, an audit may occasionally impact the published review count for a number of unrelated products. Please know that we do not share information about decisions related to a review removal, or our investigatory process.

We are expecting a review but it has not been published, can we know the status?

It is not our policy to provide status updates regarding content submitted to our site. If an expected review has not been published (for example, one submitted through our Reviews as a Service program) , there are three likely reasons: i) the review has not yet been processed by our QA team, or ii) the review failed to meet one or more of our Community Guidelines( and was disabled, or iii) our team was unable to validate the reviewer. Regardless of the reason, or time for our QA process to complete, please know that every review submitted to our site is examined by our Quality Assurance team according to a strict set of universally applied guidelines and submission criteria. As a neutral reviews platform, we must apply our methods equally and without bias across all vendors, and may not engage in debate regarding the decisions made about a review.

Are notifications sent if a review has been disabled?

If a review was not published because our teams were unable to validate a reviewer’s identity (a cornerstone of our QA process), we will send the reviewer an email asking for additional information that can help validate who they are. A user who responds to this request with accurate information makes it more likely that our team will be able to verify their identity during our QA process. However, in cases where a review is disabled because it violated our Community Guidelines, we do not send notice to the reviewer or vendor as we have found that doing so encourages repeat attempts by those seeking to violate our guidelines. While we realise there are cases where the reviewer was not intending to violate our guidelines, we must treat intended and unintended violations equally.

Can a negative review be removed if our team has resolved the reviewer’s issues?

No. When submitting a review, a reviewer attests that their statement is an honest reflection of their experience. If the review was based on a bad experience, a retired product feature, or even a miscommunication or misunderstanding on the reviewer’s part, it is reflective of the user’s experience with that software, even if later action may have resolved the problem. As a product evolves, it is typical to see a shift in the nature of the reviews listed. We believe the inclusion of this history serves to increase the value to software shoppers visiting our site, as they can better understand how a product has evolved over time.

Can we have a negative review removed if we have a non-disparagement clause in our contract?

No. A review cannot be removed simply due to the existence of a non-disparagement clause in a contract. Not only would this allow vendors to unduly influence the overall rating of their product, Federal law prohibits the use of non-disparagement clauses in customer contracts. It is important that our shoppers receive an unbiased view of a product, and any vendor found to be enforcing such a contract may have penalties applied to their account.

How many reviews for a product are allowed per reviewer?

To prevent a single reviewer from overly influencing the reviews of a product, only a single review is allowed by a reviewer for the same product at a given time.

Can we independently solicit reviews from our users?

Yes, vendors can solicit reviews from their user base outside of our programs, so long as our Community Guidelines are observed. When soliciting reviews, vendors are encouraged to make use of the “Share Your Review Form” links provided within the Reviews section of the Software Advice Vendor Portal. Using the supplied links ensures our system apply proper source attribution.

All vendors that independently solicit reviews in exchange for an incentive are required to use the Incentivised Review Form link found within their Software Advice Vendor Portal. The FTC requires that all reviews submitted in response to an incentive offer disclose that such an offer was made. Using the provided Incentivised Review Form link ensures that our system applies the appropriate disclosures to any published review. Please know that any review which is found to have been received in response to an undisclosed incentive offer must be disabled on our site in violation of our Community Guidelines and the FTC.

A review mentions pricing details—can we remove the review?

We do not endorse pricing that is posted by a reviewer, and rely on reviewers to submit accurate, publicly available information. However, as per our Reviews Guidelines, reviews must not violate any legal agreements, and a review disclosing confidential pricing details should be flagged to our attention. If a review is challenged on pricing concerns, our teams will investigate to see if the pricing is from a publically available, validated source. Pricing information not found to be public can be removed in violation of our Community guidelines as it would be considered private information. At our discretion, we may i) mask the sensitive information from public display, or ii) disable the review entirely.

Why does this review show [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]?

If a review contains sensitive information, we will hide this information from public display. Sensitive information may include, but is not limited to:

Personally Identifying Information. Information, such as email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, names, or other details that could help identify an individual. Private Contract Terms. Contracts between two parties often contain sensitive information that may not be disclosed publicly such as pricing information, account service details, or other terms. Information that could harm a reviewer, vendor or another individual. In such cases the text [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] will be displayed in place of the original text.

NOTE: We will never edit a review in any way that would change the original intent. If a review is worded such that masking sensitive information would change the intent of the review, the review would not meet our Community Guidelines, and would be disabled. In all cases, notifications are not sent about these edits, which are made at the discretion of Software Advice.

What are Buyer Alerts?

A Buyer Alert is a banner placed at the top of a vendor’s product profile page, informing software shoppers that suspicious behaviour has been found to be associated with this vendor, which behaviour (i) may be causing doubt as to the veracity of the reviews submitted about the vendor’s services, or (ii) may be manifesting in other deceitful activity across our site.

After a vendor’s violation of our policies has been identified and confirmed, we will issue a visible Buyer Alert on the offending vendor’s associated product profile page(s), and then monitor the vendor’s account for a 90 day period. After this period, our teams will review the vendor’s profile(s) and determine whether the Buyer Alert will remain active on the vendor’s product profile page(s), or be removed. Egregious and ongoing violations may warrant additional action, including without limitation, removal of access to the offending vendor’s product profile pages, extension(s) of the Buyer Alert period, referral to appropriate regulatory authorities, or legal action.

How are Buyer Alerts issued and enforced?

When a violation of our site or vendor policies, or manipulation of our reviews system, has been identified and confirmed we will remove any reviews found associated with this activity, and send an email warning to the vendor requesting that all such violations cease as quickly as is practical, or within a period of five (5) business days, whichever comes first. If the offending activity persists, or the vendor is unable to provide evidence which we, at our discretion, believe removes the activity from suspicion, we will disable any additional reviews found associated with this activity, and send a final notice requesting cessation of this activity. If violations still continue, we will place a visible “Buyer Alert” on the vendor’s product profile page(s). A vendor with a “Buyer Alert” in place will also be removed from consideration for any reviews-based awards and/or badges.

A “Buyer Alert” serves as notice to software shoppers that the vendor has engaged in fraudulent activity on our sites, and will remain in place until we determine that the vendor has satisfactorily addressed its non-compliance. Egregious and ongoing violations may warrant additional action, including without limitation, removal of access to the offending vendor’s product profile pages, extension(s) of the Buyer Alert period, referral to appropriate regulatory authorities, or legal action.

May a vendor protest a “Buyer Alert”?

Yes. At any time following the initial warning, but prior to the Buyer Alert being issued, a vendor may submit evidence to argue against an Alert being applied. Because we are not able to validate private communications, including email exchanges and phone conversations taking place between a vendor and a reviewer outside of our site, evidence submitted for consideration should be objective in nature, and capable of independent validation. Any evidence provided by a vendor will be considered as one factor among many in our investigation.

After a Buyer Alert has been applied to a vendor’s account, all communications challenging the Buyer Alert must be handled through the Ombudsman. A vendor may only make a direct appeal to the Ombudsman, and must provide arguments and supporting evidence not already submitted for previous consideration.

Are reviews-related products impacted by a Buyer Alert?

Yes. Issuance of a Buyer Alert will result in the removal of a vendor from any Gartner product which showcases reviews. Once an alert has been lifted, a vendor would regain eligibility for future consideration based on the merit of the reviews associated with their product profile.

Can we trust reviews from a vendor with an issued “Buyer Alert”?

Prior to issuing a “Buyer Alert,”, our Teams will take corrective action to remove any content that violates our Site guidelines. Any reviews remaining on a vendor’s product profile page after a “Buyer Alert” has been issued will have passed through intensive scrutiny by our expert Quality Assurance team. However, because the actions of the vendor has placed their account under suspicion, we encourage buyers to proceed with caution when relying on reviews of a flagged vendor to make an informed software purchasing decision.

What is a Review Snippet?

Review snippets are direct quotes compiled from user-submitted reviews that have been published to a product’s profile (see How are Review Snippets Selected). Snippets provide software shoppers with an easily digestible snapshot of “Pros” and “Cons” extracted from the user-submitted reviews for quick reference, and may be displayed where a summarised view of reviews highlights is required, such as a product’s reviews profile page, or product comparison pages.

Snippets have been deployed equally across all products which meet the minimum requirements for snippet generation. As a neutral reviews platform, our site does not edit, or create, any content selected for snippet display. The opinions expressed in selected review snippets are those of the reviewers and not of SoftwareAdvice, and we do not endorse any of the opinions expressed through a snippet.

How are Reviews Snippets selected?

Snippet selection is driven by our proprietary algorithm which analyses a product’s published reviews to identify relevant and impactful content “snippets”. Snippets are then classified as appropriate for “Pros” or “Cons” classification based on sentiment analysis.

The snippet algorithm is applied equally to all products on our site that qualify for the display of reviews snippets.

What qualifies a product for the display of Reviews Snippets?

Review snippets are generated from published reviews content. To ensure a high level of accuracy, our system requires a robust set of reviews content from which to choose snippets . Snippets are only released to a product profile once our system determines that there is enough reviews-sourced content available to generate a balanced set of both positive and negative snippets.

New reviews added to a product profile will work towards fulfilling snippet requirements, but as not all reviews contain content suitable to generate a snippet, snippet eligibility is not based on reviews count alone. If snippets are not currently displaying on your product profile, additional reviews content is needed, and we can only suggest recruiting fresh reviews in order to increase the diversity of content available for our snippet service to select from.

How many Reviews Snippets will display on our profile?

All products that meet the requirements for snippet selection will display up to four (4) “Pros” and four (4) “Cons”. Our system seeks to display a balanced number of snippets of each sentiment. However, on occasion a profile may display fewer snippets of either sentiment depending on the availability of relevant snippet content.

Can we prevent Snippets from displaying on our profile?

Because reviews snippets display is a feature universally applied across our site, vendors cannot opt out of this feature simply to prevent the display of snippets on its product profile pages. However, vendors are welcome to challenge individual snippets they believe do not meet our criteria for display.

Can we remove or replace a snippet with a different snippet?

As with the reviews they are sourced from, snippets cannot be removed based on subjective challenges regarding their content. Snippets may be considered for replacement with another snippet only in the following situations: (i) where content has been incorrectly identified as a “pro” or a “con”, (ii) where they mention an unsupported product feature, (iii) where they mention a lack of a product feature that currently exists, or (iv) where they otherwise violate our Community Guidelines.

Any vendor or site visitor may flag a review snippet for investigation by sending an email to [email protected]. If it is determined that the snippet does not meet our criteria for display, the flagged snippet will be replaced by our system during the next scheduled system refresh.

Why did we decide to display review snippets on our site?

Reviews provide a great source of honest feedback for software shoppers. Review snippets facilitate that feedback by providing software buyers with easily digestible content regarding a product’s reviews, which can be quickly referenced as they progress in their product search

Can vendors repurpose reviews snippets for display on their own site?

Yes, a vendor may quote or excerpt individual review comments about their own company or its products, and a snippet qualifies as an individual review comment. As with the reviews that snippets are sourced from, snippet use must comply with Gartner’s Copyright and Quote policy for Excerpting from Gartner Digital Markets.

Are vendors allowed to solicit reviews from their own user base?

Yes, vendors are allowed to solicit reviews from their own user base. However, any reviews received in relation to an incentive offer must be disclosed as such so that our site can apply the proper attribution. Failure to disclose an incentive campaign misleads software shoppers in regards to the source of the review, and as such is a violation of both the FTC Endorsement Guidelines and these Community Guidelines. As per our Guidelines, if it is determined that a review was submitted in response to an undisclosed incentive offer, our site will, at our discretion, i) retroactively apply the correct attribution on our site, or ii) disable the review(s) entirely. Any vendor found in violation of our guidelines as a result of their failure to disclose an incentive-driven reviews campaign may also, at our discretion, be subject to penalties applied to their account.

How can vendors properly disclose their own reviews campaigns?

Our site provides links for all vendors within the Vendor Portal, under the “Reviews” section. Two different links are provided: 1) a link to be used for soliciting reviews without an incentive offer, and 2) a link to be used when offering an incentive reward in response to a review. Using the links provided is the easiest, and most preferred method of disclosing incentive offers. However, if the link cannot be found, or is otherwise unavailable, the vendor must contact the Compliance team at [email protected], with details that can help our team identify reviews submitted on behalf of the campaign.

Can a vendor retroactively disclose a reviews incentive offer?

Yes, we encourage all vendors to reach out to our team at [email protected] and alert us about any undisclosed reviews submitted in response to an incentive offer. Disclosure of an incentive campaign will not result in the disablement of the review, and allows our team to apply proper attribution to the reviews and remain in compliance with FTC guidelines.

NOTE: We encourage vendors to disclose to us - BEFORE their campaign is run - those reviews that were submitted in return for an incentive. Otherwise we will have no choice but to either disable or list as paid those reviews we later learn have been incentivised without proper notice, as per our published guidelines.

FAQs for Reviewers

Why am I receiving emails from SoftwareAdvice after submitting a review?

Users who submit a review on our site may receive future communications from us about the submitted review. Any user who does not wish to receive these marketing notices may choose to opt-out of our email program by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link provided in these emails. Please review our site terms for further details.

I left a review but didn’t receive a gift card! Why not?

For those reviewers who submitted a review as part of an incentive program, please keep a few key points in mind:

Only published reviews are eligible for an incentive. If a review did not meet our Guidelines and was not published, the reviewer will not be eligible for an incentive for that review. We do, however, encourage that reviewer to submit reviews in future incentivised review campaigns they remain eligible for.
Gift cards are automatically fulfilled by our system at set times. In order to minimise error, our system automatically fulfils gift cards at periodic intervals.
Ensure that the email link to which you responded contained an incentive offer. Only reviews that are submitted after clicking on an incentive link in an email are eligible for an incentive. These links contain tracking information that allows us to match the incentive to the submitted review. If you did not click on a link in the campaign email, our system has no way to know that you left the review.
We could not verify your identity. If we required additional information from you, we may have reached out to you for additional information, during which time both your review publication and incentive were paused. Responding to our request may allow us to publish the review and provide you with your gift card.
The gift card confirmation link was not clicked on. To ensure our gift cards are going only to valid emails, we send a confirmation email containing a link that must be clicked on before the actual gift card is sent.
The review was submitted after the incentive expired or after payout limits were reached. Some of our programs offer a limited number of gift cards only, or have an offer that expires after a set period of time. Reviews submitted after the thresholds have been met would not qualify for a gift card. In all cases, please double check your Spam and Trash accounts for our gift card offers before reaching out to our support team.

A note on fraud. Gift card codes are unique and may only be used by those who have access to the email the cards were originally sent to. Please know that we are able to track gift card balance and identify whether a gift card has been redeemed and used. Illegitimate requests for an incentive, as well as any fraudulent activity related to leaving reviews in exchange for an incentive, may result in removal from our reviews incentive program.

Why wasn’t my review published?

To protect the integrity of our reviews program, reviews may be disabled if we do not feel confident we have verified the identity of the reviewer, or if we feel the content submitted does not adhere to our guidelines. In some cases, we will reach out to reviewers requesting additional information to help us determine whether we can publish the review. Following your review submission, please keep an eye out for an email from us requesting additional details that may be required to publish your review!

If it’s only been a short while since you submitted your review, please be aware that it may take up to a week before a submitted review has time to be properly vetted. On average, a review takes up to 72 hours to be verified and published.

There were some edits to my review. Can you tell me why?

As per our reviewer policies, so long as a review meets our guidelines, we will never edit it in any way that would change the original intent. However, we may make simple edits to correct typos or remove non-standard characters. The reviewer will not be notified about these edits, which are made at the discretion of SoftwareAdvice.

Why was my published review removed?

Our teams have built an extremely robust QA process, but we understand that with tens of thousands of reviews submitted each month that there will be reviews which violate our guidelines that occasionally slip by. In our ongoing efforts to improve our service, our teams periodically audit our reviews database. These audits help find reviews that fail to meet our guidelines, which we may not have identified initially. When reviews are found to violate our guidelines for any reason they must be disabled, even if the review was originally published by us. Audits are conducted across our entire reviews database, and impact all reviewers equally.

How can I edit or remove my own review?

Only the original reviewer is entitled to direct us to edit their content or request that we remove their review.

To request an edit to an existing review: Any reviewer may send us an email (using the email address via which they submitted their original review) to [email protected], explaining the exact edits, along with any additional rationale behind the edits (for our records). Assuming the edits or new content adheres to our Guidelines, we will be happy to make those changes.
To request a review to be removed: Any reviewer may send us an email (using the email address used to submit the original review) to [email protected], explaining which review they want to remove and the rationale for such removal (for our records). Once we disable an existing review, a reviewer always has the option to submit a new review for the product.

I submitted a review but was told the review did not meet site guidelines and will not be published. What now?

If a review does not pass our QA process or is identified by our team as not meeting our Community Guidelines, the review will not be published. Reviews that are not published do not qualify for an incentive, even when submitted in response to an incentive offer. Users may submit another review that meets our guidelines.

Is a reviewer allowed to review the same product more than once?

While a reviewer may update their own review at any time, only a single review per product is allowed within a six-month period. If a second review is submitted by the same reviewer within this timeframe, the older review will be disabled and the newer review will remain published as the most recent experience.

Are reviewers liable for any penalties for leaving fraudulent reviews?

In short, possibly. As a condition of submitting a review, you tick a box stating that you acknowledge and agree to our site guidelines, which among other things state that all content submitted meets our guidelines. Our site has the right to seek legal action against any reviewer who submits a review containing fraudulent, or misleading, information. In addition, many jurisdictions in and outside of the United States take reviews content very seriously and have prosecuted reviewers over posting fraudulent content. Countries outside of the US, such as the UK, France, Italy, and Germany, have especially strict laws posted about reviews fraud, as dictated by the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.

May I leave a review for a product based off of a demo I viewed?

We believe software reviews should be based off of actual experience in using a product. Watching a product demo is not the same as hands-on experience in using a product, and as such a review found to be based off of a viewed product demo would be disabled by our team. However, a viewed demo is not treated the same as evaluating a product during a free trial period. Participating in a free trial does include hands-on experience. If you used a software during a free trial period, you may review the software, but should indicate that you used a free trial on the review form.

Why was my review flagged for investigation?

Reviews may be flagged as potentially fraudulent by the vendor, other reviewers, or during our internal audits of our reviews database. At these times, we may ask for more information, such as proof of use, in order to better understand if the review in question does meet our guidelines. If a review is found to be in violation of our guidelines, it will be removed. Please reference our investigation process overview for more detail.

May I leave a review for a product based off of a free trial?

Software buyers may evaluate multiple tools before purchasing software. We believe these evaluative experiences in a proof of concept or with trial versions are valid experiences to share with our user community. If you used free trial version of a software, you may review the software, but should indicate that you used a free trial by selecting “Free Trial” on the review submission form.

Why did I receive a note that my reviews account was suspended?

We are dedicated to connecting software shoppers and vendors by being the largest, and most trustworthy, source of software reviews. To achieve this end, all reviews are manually reviewed by a dedicated Quality Assurance team. Any signs of reviews fraud result in the review being disabled. Users who are found to have committed fraud may have their accounts banned, with associated reviews removed across all products, and would not be allowed to submit future reviews. If your reviews have been marked as fraudulent, you may receive a note indicating such. We understand that you may not agree with our decision, but please know much consideration is given before flagging and closing any user’s account. We encourage you to reference our guidelines to help understand factors involved in our decisions.

Can I protest a review removal?

Our site strives to maintain a neutral stance on reviews, disabling only those that fail to meet our Community Guidelines. If you believe your review met our Community Guidelines, and was incorrectly disabled, you are welcome to submit an inquiry to our Compliance team at [email protected] . The Compliance team is tasked with upholding our guidelines, and will investigate the review status to ensure that the appropriate decision was reached. Please know that we do not share information about our decisions underlying a review removal because there are many data points that our systems collect, which are considered proprietary.

Are notifications sent if a review has been disabled?

If a review was not published because our teams were unable to validate a reviewer’s identity (a cornerstone of our QA process), we will send the reviewer an email asking for additional information that can help validate who they are. A user who responds to this request with accurate information makes it more likely that our team will be able to verify their identity during our QA process . However, in cases where a review is disabled because it violated our Community Guidelines, we do not send notice to the reviewer or vendor. While we realise there are cases where the reviewer was not intending to violate our guidelines, we must treat intended and unintended violations equally.

How can I edit my own review?

Our team may make simple edits, such as typos or spelling corrections, upon receipt of a request from the original reviewer to [email protected] . The request must be sent from the email address used to submit the original review, as only the actual reviewer is entitled to direct us to edit their review.

We cannot otherwise edit the content of a previously published review. Instead, reviewers may replace existing reviews at any time by submitting a new review for a product they have previously reviewed. The updated review will then be re-evaluated by our QA team. Only a single review is allowed by a reviewer for the same product at a given time, and if published the new review will replace the original.

If it has been less than six (6) months since the review was originally submitted, please notify our team of the submission at [email protected] to ensure our team treats the review appropriately. Failure to contact our team will result in the new submission being disabled. Please note that reviews submitted within a six (6) month window for the same product are regarded as edits, and are not eligible for any incentive offer the reviewer may have received.

How can I remove my own review?

To request a review to be removed, any reviewer may send us an email to [email protected], explaining which review they want to remove and the rationale for such removal (for our records). The request must be sent from the email address used to submit the original review, as only the actual reviewer is entitled to direct us to remove their review.

Once we disable an existing review, a reviewer always has the option to submit a new review for the product for evaluation by our QA team. If it has been less than six (6) months since the review was originally submitted, please notify our team of the new submission at [email protected] to ensure our team treats the review appropriately. Failure to contact our team will result in the new submission being disabled. Please note that reviews submitted within a six (6) month window for the same product are regarded as edits, and are not eligible for any incentive offer the reviewer may have received.

How often can I update or edit my review?

You may request a minor edit to an existing review, or submit a new review to replace an existing review, at any time (see How can I edit or remove my own review?). Please note that reviews submitted within a six (6) month window for the same product are regarded as edits, and are not eligible for any incentive offer the reviewer may have received.

How many reviews for a product are allowed per reviewer?

To prevent a single reviewer from overly influencing the reviews of a product, only a single review is allowed by a reviewer for the same product at a given time.

Can I submit more than one review for the same product?

We understand that experiences with a software can change over time, and we believe an updated review allows a new opinion to be expressed. However, we only allow a single review from an individual reviewer to be published at any time for any one product, and require at least six months to pass before a new review for the same product may be accepted.

If you are looking to edit an existing review, please read more here).

Why was my review edited to show [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]?

If a review contains sensitive information, we will hide this information from public display. Sensitive information may include, but is not limited to:

Personally Identifying Information. Information, such as email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, names, or other details that could help identify an individual.

Confidential Contract Terms. Contracts between two parties often contain sensitive information that may not be intended for public disclosure such as pricing information, account service details, or other terms.

Potentially Harmful Information. Any other information that we in our reasonable discretion determine could be detrimental to the interests of a reviewer, vendor or another individual. In such cases the text [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] will be displayed in place of the original text.

NOTE: We will never edit a review in any way that would change the original intent. If a review is worded such that masking sensitive information would change the intent of the review, the review would not meet our Community Guidelines, and would not be published. In all cases, the reviewer will not be notified about these edits, which are made at the discretion of SoftwareAdvice.

What content is considered “sensitive information”?

Sensitive information may include, but is not limited to:

Personally Identifying Information. Information, such as email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, names, or other details that could help identify an individual.
Confidential Contract Terms. Contracts between two parties often contain sensitive information that may not be intended for public disclosure such as pricing information, account service details, or other terms.
Potentially Harmful Information. Any other information that we in our reasonable discretion determine could be detrimental to the interests of a reviewer, vendor or another individual. In such cases the text [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] will be displayed in place of the original text.

What are Buyer Alerts?

How are Buyer Alerts issued and enforced?

Last Update: JuneNovember 2020