How to get your startup reviewed on Trustpilot
TL;DR
Trustpilot is an open review platform where customers rate companies. A profile appears as soon as someone reviews you, claimed or not. The free plan lets you claim it, reply to reviews and send 50 review invitations a month; paid plans start from $99 a month, billed annually.
What is Trustpilot?
Trustpilot publishes reviews of companies of every type. Consumers decide which businesses get reviewed: once someone writes a review, Trustpilot creates a profile page to host it, and the page stays visible even if the company never claims it.
Its guidelines for businesses say reviewers must be over 18 and have had a recent, genuine experience with the company. Family members, employees and competitors cannot review it.
About the domain authority of 93: it belongs to trustpilot.com. The benefit for a startup is the star rating and the written reviews that prospects read before paying.
Who should collect reviews on Trustpilot?
Good fit:
- Online stores, apps, SaaS and service startups with a steady flow of paying customers.
Skip it for now:
- Pre-launch startups with no customers yet. An empty profile or two reviews says little.
- Founders who want to invite only happy customers. Trustpilot forbids selective invitations.
How much does Trustpilot cost?
The plans page lists:
- Free: no cost and no credit card. 50 review invitations a month; after that you wait for the next month or upgrade. Your reviews stay on the profile if you stop using the service.
- Starter: from $99 a month, 100 invitations a month, only for new small business customers with up to $5 million in revenue.
- Plus: from $319 a month, 300 invitations a month, with a 14-day free trial.
- Premium: from $799 a month, 1,000 invitations a month.
- Enterprise: price on request, unlimited invitations.
Paid plans are priced per domain, billed annually, with a 12-month commitment.
How do you get your startup on Trustpilot?
- Search trustpilot.com for your website. If a profile exists, claim it. If not, create a free business account at business.trustpilot.com/signup with your website and a work email.
- Verify your domain. With an email address on your own domain, you confirm through a link Trustpilot sends. Otherwise use one of the methods in Verify your domain: an HTML file upload, Google Search Console, a meta tag or a DNS TXT record, which takes up to 72 hours to update.
- Complete the profile and reply to any reviews already there.
- Invite customers. Trustpilot asks you to invite consistently and fairly: everyone in the same way, at the same point in the customer journey. Incentives are banned, including discounts, prize draw entries and refunds tied to writing or editing a review.
Tips to get more out of Trustpilot
- Pick one trigger for every invitation, such as seven days after delivery or after the first month of a subscription.
- Keep the wording neutral. Trustpilot gives "If you like us, please leave us a 5-star review" as an example of prohibited language.
- Reply to every negative review in public with the fix you made.
- Count your monthly customers before upgrading. Under 50 new customers a month, the free plan covers all of them.
- Ignore emails asking you to verify through a link. Trustpilot verifies only inside its platform.
Our verdict
Trustpilot costs nothing to start, and the free 50 invitations a month cover every customer of a startup that wins fewer than 50 a month. Claim the profile before your first unhappy customer writes there, invite every customer the same way, and pay only when your volume passes the free limit.
More options: see all software and SaaS review sites. Planning the launch around this listing? The Fe/male Switch startup game walks women founders from idea to first customers.