TrustRadius for Buyers

I like reviews that are detailed and well-worded. When something works well, I like to see specifics on what has worked well and what impact it has made. When things are not so great, I like to see a complete explanation of the problem so I can determine whether that same problem might be an issue for me, or whether that's something that can be overlooked or weighed against the pros.

As stated before, I always refer to reviews during the buying process and I am wary of reviews that appear to be "fake" or otherwise solicited in a way that made the user feel they had to give a positive review. I do not get this impression at all from TrustRadius - I see a fair mix of positive and constructive feedback in the reviews shown.

I want real use cases in the reviews I read. I don't want hyperbole. I don't want marketing- or sales-speak. I want the good, the bad, and most importantly the UGLY. The most valuable reviews for me and the ones that include a healthy dose of cons to balance the pros. I can read about the pros for days on the vendor's website. I need to understand if the cons are large enough to dismiss the solution from consideration, not relevant to my use case, or small enough to not be a problem.

Similar to current client references, reviews are a MUST HAVE in my buying process. References & reviews are both required sections in my RFP roadmap. If reviews are not available for a solution, it's highly likely that the solution will not make it far into the RFP process.

[I look for] Practical use information and honest reviews on what doesn't work.

Reviews give a realistic understanding of products by users, not just the sales pitch from the company.

I primarily look for reviews that are current (less than 6 months old), and most closely match the technical environment in which I will be working. I this case, I was working with Ubuntu so I was able to quickly and easily narrow my search to similar implementations.

Having credible reviews during the buying process provided invaluable insight allowing me to make the most accurate decision possible. By using these reviews, I was able to avoid wasted time "trying" various products only to find limitations preventing implementation.

Having other users' evaluations about a product is tremendously valuable. It allows you to avoid buying a product that will be more expensive in money and time. Having reviews from other users allows you to find the software that best suits your needs, in a faster and more reliable way.

When looking through all the reviews on a product I find it best to look for all the pros and all of the cons, which can be very helpful with any decision making. After pros and cons are researched, it allows you to paint a picture of how a product or products may or may not work for your business. Reviews that are most valuable are generally the ones that give you an accurate and detailed review on how it is used and if there the ease of use for the people using it.

It is valuable to have reviews that are accurate and detailed to assist in the purchasing process. It helps you view the pros and the cons of a product. This is very helpful in guiding you to a product that would work best for your business.

I look for honest feedback and like the anecdotal approach to one's experience, for instance, a time they had such a problem and how the support team helped them out to fix it. I like users who are hands on and you can tell when they are writing it. Critical feedback is also great because you can put yourself in their shoes and see what the outcome was.

I definitely like demos, and talking to salespeople can be pretty enlightening at times but also dreary because it comes with a certain selling attitude. Reading reviews of people who actually used a product can give you a good look at the pros and cons of what you might be walking into.

I looked for first hand information about the product within the reviews. I want to know if the product, if implemented will save my company time and money. Saving time/money is the whole purpose of these tools - to remove the manual labor and to assist in organizing information to make it easier on reporting.

I was able to create proposals with information that had outside sources confirm what we suspected, shed light on questions that we had, and even completely kill proposals when enough evidence was gathered to show that pursuing a certain platform wasn't worth it.

When reading product reviews, there are a couple of things I look for:

1. Relevance - Is the review featured on the brand's site? Is this review recent or is it outdated? Does it feed in organically or was it cherry picked? If the boxes are not checked on this, then I cannot trust the review.
2. Accuracy - Who left this review? What narrative does their story tell?
• A passionate review that lends itself to extravagant & hyperbolic language cannot be trusted

It is incredibly valuable to have reviews that are recent, accurate and detailed to assist in the purchasing process. My experience would have been somewhat similar, but without reviews, I would have had to make a much harder case to my superiors as to the value of the platform I wanted to go with.

I look for pros and cons and basic outlines of the features that a product presents. Even when a product claims it's for a generic category of activities, such as a code editor or an agile project manager, those tools are still geared towards a particular style of use. I primarily look for tools that have reviews showing they are geared towards my anticipated use case.

Reviews allow me to find an unbiased third party that can confirm that what I think is true, or what I've been told is true. Having access to reviews increased my confidence quite a bit when coming to an opinion about a product.

[I look for] Mid-length reviews that offer an equal number of Pros and Cons. While some software far exceeds (or never meets) our expectations, there is no "perfect software" so getting the cons is extremely important.

Honest reviews are a go-to. Salesmen sell the product with all the "perks" of the product. Users find the pain points.

When checking reviews I am initially going to reviews with low ratings, as usually I know products (I have already tried them) and my goal is for those "bad" reviews to reveal something that might impact me later with usage. Of course, as there might be some "angry" users those bad reviews are not really deal-breakers (as long as bad reviews are not the majority). As a second step I'll check medium level reviews and then totally positive ones. All in all, target is to make a bit better picture before making a decision to purchase something.

Clearly the main benefit is connecting to other people's experience with products. On one side it helps me get a better perception about products, and on the other side it might help me to test and see if some of their experiences are applicable in my case.

Authenticity, real examples that highlight issues and potential traps. Reports that come from real life experience. Best reviews provide a balanced mix of negative and positive experiences and timely lessons learned.

When you are trying to make a decision with long-term consequences for the company, getting unbiased data related to the actual experience is very important in order to maintain objectivity. All evaluation teams bring their own bias and preferences, so by confronting such preferences with experience from other industries, customers, etc., we can attempt to balance our team's thinking. Data based decisions result in better outcomes. Independent and anonymous reviews provide the level of authenticity that's difficult to get through a vendor's sponsored use cases.

Feedback both positive and negative are important to me. What real world implementations are like is another.

Reviews are crucial for me. They provide as close to an unbiased evaluation of the process as possible. Instead of taking the word of the vendor, the reviews provide better insight I may not receive elsewhere.

Reviews from similar or relevant industry peers is, for me, the most valuable type of review. I'm not too concerned what someone working in construction thinks of a tool that I'm going to use for my team's creative environment. I look for detailed and practical reviews, ones that aren't praising too much or ones that are being overly negative.

Having reviews from other relevant industry peers not only provided me with a level of comfort in continuing to investigate a particular solution, it also assisted in providing proof points to those key stakeholders that I needed to get by in from.

I look for authentic reviews. One company I reviewed, I found employees reviewed the software but did not disclose that information. I also look for both good and bad reviews. Bad reviews can be very telling but I do take them at face value meaning the customer was likely upset when they wrote the review so could be more harsh and exaggerate.

[Having reviews as a resource is] Extremely important. I read reviews for nearly every product and service I purchase. Having access to real customer experiences is everything.

I look for solid descriptions of capability, problems described, and comments that give more than just general statements but describe actual capabilities.

Reviews are very helpful. They provide an easy kind of benchmark, instead of having to call customers of the software and find out directly.

I look for detailed reviews that are presented very objectively. They should have a good balance of things that the solution does well and things that the solution needs to improve. And usually the longer they are, the better - because it means that they are providing more information. I try to make my own reviews thorough so that they cover every possible feature of a solution that I've experienced myself. The more familiar I am with a solution, the more trustworthy my review is, so I look for people who seem to be expert or power users.

I think reviews bring a very personalized experience to the buying process - individual stories sometimes tend to be even more effective sellers than a salesperson themselves. Being able to read through trustworthy experiences from others who have already gone through the process has, in some cases, saved us the time of having to go through some of the evaluation process ourselves. Obviously nothing will ever come close to replacing a hands-on trial with the tool, but having someone tell you about it secondhand is almost just as good.

I look for and read more negative comments than positive ones. I look for things like how easy or difficult it is to implement the software and how quickly the software vendors are able to provide service. All these things are more important to me than the cost because one of our company's mottos is fast execution.

The value of having a centralized place to see the reviews is priceless. It used to take us so much time trying to arrange the demonstration, conference calls, and face to face meetings with so many vendors out there and even then it was still very risky because you have a very limited set of information because vendors do not want to share the negative things about their software.