Treat each software review site profile as a page your company answers for: keep its factual fields current, ask customers for reviews in a way that does not depend on what they will say, keep employees and partners from posting undisclosed reviews, and answer criticism with facts. Never pressure a reviewer to take a review down. Read each platform's vendor rules too, because they can be stricter than federal law.
A software buyer may read a review site profile with your website open in the next tab, and the profile they find there is partly yours. Customers write the reviews, but on some platforms the vendor manages part of the profile. One major software review site's seller documentation, as read in October 2026, lets sellers update fields such as the product overview, logos, and main category directly, and request changes to others. Fields like these can be set up once, at launch, and then left alone while the product changes underneath them.
This is a content-planning question for software owners and marketing leads, not legal advice. Your counsel decides how review rules apply to your program. For the wider page set, see our guide to software and SaaS content.
The parts of a profile you control
Start with an inventory of every review platform where the product has a profile, and who on your team holds the login. Then compare each profile's vendor-managed fields with your website. Common things to look for are a description written for an older version of the product, integrations that no longer exist or are missing, screenshots of a retired interface, and pricing notes that contradict the pricing page.
Fix those fields from the same approved facts your website uses. A review profile is not a second homepage, and it should not carry claims the site itself would not make; buyers often have both open side by side. Where a field asks for a short description, write the plain sentence a buyer would want: what the product does, for which teams, and what it connects to.
Asking for reviews without steering them
The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials draws a line between broad requests and pressure from inside the company. It states that its provision on soliciting reviews from relatives, employees, and agents "does not apply to generalized solicitations to purchasers" asking them to post reviews about their experiences. It does reach an officer or manager who solicits reviews "from any employee or agent of the business" when the result is a review without a disclosure of the relationship, including where the manager did not tell prospective reviewers to disclose it.
The same rule also bars offering compensation or other incentives for a review when the reward is conditioned, expressly or by implication, on the review "expressing a particular sentiment, whether positive or negative." Platforms add their own layer. The same review site's community guidelines, as read in October 2026, state that "Employees working for the product's company and employees of a direct competitor may not leave reviews," that eligibility for an incentive "is never based on the opinions, positive or negative, expressed in the review," and that the site "limits the value of any incentive offered in exchange for a review to $100 USD." They also bar vendors from collecting reviews by any method that "segments out potentially negative reviews or exclusively targets positive reviews." Other platforms set different rules, and any platform can change its own, so read the current vendor guidelines for each one before a campaign starts.
A sound request goes to all active customers in a segment, not only the ones who scored you highly in a survey, and it asks for an honest account of their experience. Keep your sales team, your partners, and your own staff out of it unless a platform permits their reviews and they disclose the relationship.
Responding to criticism, and what not to do
A negative review on a software site is usually specific: a setup problem, a missing feature, a support delay. The response should be specific too, and short. Before anyone replies, the person writing should check with support: "What does the ticket history show happened, and what can we say publicly without exposing this customer's account details?" A reply built from that answer acknowledges the problem, states what changed if anything did, and offers a direct contact.
The federal rule sets hard limits on the other side. Under its review suppression provision, it is a violation to use "an unfounded or groundless legal threat, a physical threat, intimidation, or a public false accusation" to prevent a review or get one removed. The same section bars a business that displays reviews of what it sells, on a site or platform it controls, from misrepresenting that those reviews "represent most or all the reviews submitted" when reviews are being suppressed based on rating or negative sentiment. The platform cited above also says plainly: "We do not edit or remove reviews at a seller's request." A review that breaks a platform's content rules can be reported through that platform's process; one that is merely unflattering stays.
A fictional example: one review, one reply
Here is a hypothetical case for a fictional learning management system sold to manufacturers' training teams. It describes no real company or review.
A two-star review says single sign-on took weeks to set up and the documentation was unclear. The support history shows the customer's identity provider used a configuration the setup guide did not cover, and that the guide was updated afterward. The reply:
Thank you for the detail on this. Your setup used a configuration our single sign-on guide did not cover at the time, and that cost your team time. We have since added a section for it to the guide. If anything is still not working, our support lead can be reached through your admin console.
The reply names the cause without blaming the customer, states a change the company actually made, and makes no claim it cannot support. It also tells the next buyer who reads it something true about how the vendor handles problems.
Keep the profiles and the site in step
Put the profiles on the same review schedule as your product pages, and add them to the release checklist when a change affects a field they show. The person updating a profile should never be improvising the feature list, since the approved descriptions, integration list, and plan details already exist for the website and should be copied from there. Our page on how software companies get named when buyers ask AI to compare tools covers the wider record buyers and assistants encounter, and the one on writing customer stories with real specifics covers the proof you publish yourself.
In Hudson South's process, the Authority Asset gathers the approved product facts that both your site and your profiles should draw on. Hudson Twenty-One records how your company communicates across 21 dimensions, so a public reply to a critic sounds like your team on a good day. Market Intelligence researches the questions buyers raise in your category, including the complaints that recur. AEO Creation turns those inputs into answer-first pages that address those questions on your own site.
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- 16 CFR Part 465, Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. Read 2026-10-16.
- Community Guidelines. G2. Read 2026-10-16.
- Product Information. G2 Documentation. Read 2026-10-16.