About TrustRadius Reviews — Frequently Asked Questions

This FAQ describes who can write a review, how TrustRadius gets reviews, and the role of incentives—in short, the efforts we undertake to ensure TrustRadius is a useful, trustworthy source for B2B technology buyers.

Who are TrustRadius reviewers?

TrustRadius reviewers represent a wide range of backgrounds and experience. They include end-users, implementers, consultants, business stakeholders, and decision-makers from companies of all sizes, from small businesses to the world's largest enterprises. All TrustRadius reviewers have a few things in common:

  • Authenticated — All TrustRadius reviewers are authenticated via LinkedIn or their work email address prior to writing a review.

  • Verified Users — Before publishing a review, TrustRadius research staff verifies that each reviewer has recent experience with the product.

  • Objective Opinions — While every reviewer has a distinct individual point of view, TrustRadius will not publish any review with a clear bias or conflict of interest. We don’t publish reviews from a vendor's own employees or those of their competitors. We do publish reviews from resellers, but do not include their ratings in the overall score calculations.

TrustRadius is committed to ensuring all reviewers are providing quality, candid opinions you can trust.

What about anonymous reviewers?

Actually, no reviewers are anonymous to us. TrustRadius authenticates all reviewers via LinkedIn or their work email address. We give reviewers the option to remain unnamed to the general public, and approximately 40% of reviewers choose this option. Allowing anonymity encourages candor among our reviewers. Reviewers who have chosen to remain anonymous are shown as “Verified User." We include useful metadata about the reviewer to help you understand the reviewer’s context, including company size, industry, department, and title.

Where do TrustRadius reviewers come from?

TrustRadius reviewers come to us from a variety of sources. We use the following labels on each review to tell you how it was sourced:

  • Independently invited by TrustRadius — This means that the individual was invited as part of our independent sourcing methods of acquiring reviews (such as inviting members of our community to contribute reviews, or using external sources to find potential reviewers). The majority of reviews on TrustRadius are sourced by us independently.

  • Invited by TrustRadius on behalf of the vendor — This means the vendor enlisted TrustRadius to invite their customers to write reviews (as part of our vendor offerings).

  • Invited by the vendor — This means the vendor invited the user to write a review on TrustRadius.

You can view the source of the review by hovering over “Review Source” at the very top of the review. We track the source of reviews through codes embedded in the invitations, and by asking the reviewer when they submit a review. We also audit reviews to ensure the sourcing data is accurate.

We offer these labels because, while all reviews on our site are valid and useful, it’s also important for readers to know where they came from. Generally, if a reviewer was independently invited by TrustRadius, they were part of a random, representative sample of users. However, when vendors invite their customers, they sometimes introduce selection bias into the results by inviting only known advocates. These labels help readers like you understand whether you’re accessing a full spectrum of user perspectives.

What is the role of incentives?

Both TrustRadius and vendors use incentives to encourage users to write reviews. Incentives are widely used in B2B reviews: they increase response rates overall, increase participation from a diverse set of users (rather than just advocates or detractors), and tend to motivate reviewers to spend more time on their reviews. This yields a more diverse, representative, detailed set of opinions and experiences. Incentives can never be contingent on a particular response or sentiment.

Incentive Disclosures

TrustRadius uses its best efforts to determine and disclose the use of incentives. We track incentives using codes embedded in the invitation, and reviewers are prompted to disclose whether they have been offered an incentive to write a review (per FTC regulations) during the review authoring process. The use of incentives is disclosed together with the review source (see above) with a sentence such as “TrustRadius offered a small incentive to thank the reviewer for their time.”

Incentives and Bias

Incentives may be used to motivate reviewers to participate. However, they may not be used to bias or drive a particular response. Reviewers are required to confirm that any incentive received is not contingent upon the ratings given or the language used in their review. TrustRadius will not publish any reviews with incentives tied to particular responses.

What about reviews from resellers?

A small percentage of reviews on TrustRadius are from individuals who are consultants and resellers of the product. Reviews written by resellers contain some of the most sought after information for buyers—product to product comparisons, best-fit scenarios, cost-benefit analysis, expectations for implementation and integration, questions to ask during evaluation, etc. (These are insights that end-users, who shine giving feedback on day-to-day usage, can’t always provide.)

Resellers tend to have deep insight into business value, because, like vendors, they need to quantify ROI in order to make a sale. They also often have years of experience with a single product, or set of products, and have seen how the same products work for a variety of clients with different needs. Yet resellers are willing to share advice more freely than analysts or expert consultants with similar levels of experience, who monetize their recommendations.

Of course, as vendor partners who stand to profit from product sales, resellers are not impartial reviewers. On TrustRadius, each reseller review is clearly marked so that buyers understand where the perspective is coming from, and that it may be biased. Whether the reseller partners with a single product in the space, or consults on a range of options, they have a financial incentive to provide a high overall rating. For this reason, ratings provided by resellers do not contribute to a product’s trScore. We also don’t publish reseller reviews that are clearly just promotional and don’t offer useful feedback.