What's going on with the Product Reviews app it's no longer available?

[TimFreet]

https://apps.shopify.com/product-reviews

Does anyone have a good replacement recommendation?

[Elias]

Hey, @TimFreet.

Thank you for reaching out and posting this question!

I'm afraid the Product Reviews app has been sunset and delisted as of Sept 05, 2023. However, if you're looking for an alternative, then we've got a number of third-party recommendations here: Product reviews. If you need to get help with third-party apps, then the app developers are always to assist you. Simply reach out to them using the contact information found at the bottom of their app pages. 

That being said, I noticed you're a new member of our Shopify Community and I'd love to hear more about your business! What kinds of products are you selling? Do you have a marketing plan prepared for your store?

[CarmineT]

What about actual review how we will import them in the new app?

I quite sure the other app do accept csv but what in case not?

I mean why a central app like this is been sunset?

As beginner said, shopify is getting worst, not better.

Maybe those billions in IPO get the board spoiled.

[CarmineT]

could you fix this mess please!

[Elias]

Hey, @CarmineT.

Thanks for joining the thread.

If you've been using Product Reviews before our app was delisted, then you can continue to access Product Reviews and export your reviews until Jan 2024. While most third-party reviews app should support CSV files, you would need to find an alternate app if you happen to be using one that doesn't. Should you need help finding an alternative, then here are some of our suggestions: 

• Judge.me
• Stamped.io
• Yopto
• Loox
• Okendo

One reason that we've decided to delist Product Reviews is simply because third-party product reviews apps offer more robust features, such as review verification, and they can be a more complete solution for our merchants. 

If you have any other questions, then don't hesitate to let me know!

[CarmineT]

I understand the decision.

However after have disinstalled the app, the count of review remain, and this is something to do with backend.

I can have a look myself but is a shame a sunset is been done so not "professionally".

I know also alternatives but so far I am not satisfied with them.

But fair enough, 

[Elias]

Hey, @CarmineT.

Thanks for following up and sharing the additional context.

If the reviews from Product Reviews are still appearing after uninstalling, then it's possible that the snippet of code is still saved in the theme's coding and this is something that we can help you with. While we're unable to provide account-specific support via the Shopify Community, we'd be happy to further assist you with this through live chats. Simply visit the Shopify Help Center and login to your account to create a support request.

If you have any other questions on this topic, don't hesitate to let me know!

[wholesome1]

Hello - I have the same problem. The product review app uninstalled but I still have the CUSTOMER REVIEW count shown in my product pages at the bottom. Please help me to get this removed so I can move onto a new review app.

[dean_nusara]

It's NOT fair enough. We should all sue Shopify. I spent my time and money building my platform. I paid for those feature. I selected shopify because Product Reviews were part of the offering. If I am now not getting Product Reviews then why aren't I getting a monthly discount to compensate having functionality taken away. This is not acceptable.

[CarmineT]

I agree. Funny enough i can't change that comment.

I actually, meant ok, then let's move one. Shopify is getting worst and worst since 2020.

Marketing automation do not work, many internal app are disabled etc.

[Waldhoff]

They delete the app just to cut costs, to make more profit, while spitting on us users. That's what Shopify is becoming, a greedy system that turns its back on its users.

[carboncreative]

Unfortunately I have been unable to export my reviews so that I can import them over to a 3rd-party. The Shopify Product Reviews app is completely broken with multiple Javascript errors and http 500 and 502 errors. So you can't access the admin area to export reviews.

I spoke with support and here is what they told me: "So I went ahead and checked this further with our team. As the Product Review app is no longer supported and depricated by Shopify, we are unable to provide additional assistance to it. At this point, they strongly suggest using a third-party app such as Judge.me app. Any troubleshooting will not work as of this time. We humbly ask for your understanding and patience."

Unbelievable.

[CarmineT]

@Staff  are you aware this is making shopify loosing a lot of merchants?

[benpellwall]

---

@Elias wrote:

One reason that we've decided to delist Product Reviews is simply because third-party product reviews apps offer more robust features, such as review verification, and they can be a more complete solution for our merchants. 

---

Or you could invest in your application and build such a key feature in - therre are lots of things that Shopify is missing and your only solution is to pay more for a third party app!

[Scruffy]

No, third party apps do NOT offer more robust features... They offer less, MUCH LESS! For instance, how do businesses protect their private business and customer data from 3rd party apps IF WE DO NOT CONSENT to give up our propietery business data including customer and sales. How do businesses retain their rights to a trial if 3rd party apps 'Terms of Use' or "Privacy Policies" require that we enter into agreements for arbitration? Please explain how this is BETTER from the standpoint of the business! How is giving up their business secrets and rights BETTER for them?!

What options are there for store owners who want to OWN their reviews, CONTROL their reviews and EXPORT THEIR REVIEWS while also retaining their CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION WITHOUT ANOTHER 3RD PARTY GETTING ACCESS TO IT???

PLEASE SHOPIFY... fix this abominable situation and restore the basic "Product Reviews" app that covered the necessary bases for most stores without requiring more money, more headaches with less privacy and legal protections for store owners.

[CarmineT]

I installed another app but unfortunately your previous app is messing up with reviews, because now I can't see them!

So basically with this sunset all ecommerce have loste their reviews!

This is really bad!

[italicsbold]

Do you still have the Product Reviews installed? You should be able to export your reviews from the Product Reviews app. 

And then you can import them into a different app. Here is a guide on how to do that with Kooee Reviews https://resources.kooee.reviews/en-US/move-from-shopify-product-reviews-to-kooee-reviews-321306

Once the reviews are imported, you then need to update your theme blocks to use the new review app theme blocks (not the Product Reviews theme blocks.)

We can help you get up and running on Kooee Reviews if you like. There is a free plan available. https://apps.shopify.com/kooee-reviews

[CarmineT]

Yes I know that, I exported those and imported.

The problem is the format. Not all app do use same csv format(that can change or any others.

This means take time of the process

[italicsbold]

Kooee Reviews can import the Product Reviews CSV directly in. No need to reformat it. This guide show how. https://resources.kooee.reviews/en-US/move-from-shopify-product-reviews-to-kooee-reviews-321306

[Elias]

Hey, @CarmineT.

The CSV format would likely be different between platforms (including apps), and you would need to curate the CSV file for the specific system that you're uploading to. While this is considered a standard process for exporting and importing data (eg. products, customers, orders, etc.) between various platforms, you can reach out to the app developers if you need to get help with a third-party app. Simply reach out to the app developer using the contact information found at the bottom of their app's page. 

Let us know if you have any other questions!

[StevenJacobs]

This is the stupidest decision I've ever seen. Are you guys trying to make shopify worse? I'm building custom themes and paying you guys a lot of money every month to use shopify, I always use this app, and now I can't add it to a new theme I'm working on. Some of us don't need super "robust" solutions. Just something simple, not third party, that works, and is FREE. How stupid to need to pay an addition $10-20 on top of shopify's $80+ a month for the ability to REVIEW?! 

This is a fundamental part of any online store, who's dumb idea was it to remove it? just wow... I may start looking for a different provider.

bring back the app! open source it and allow us to host it ourselves at least! 

[brendonwbrown]

The fact that Shopify chose to sunset the app instead of incorporate it as a core feature should show you that the kickbacks from app developers are just too much of an incentive.

Small shops aren't making them much money. Screw the small businesses.

[chadmin]

Unfortunately shopify customers are beholden to shareholders who demand cost cutting hence the outsourcing of core app development and higher profitability at the expense of customer experience. This is a bad road to go down shopify, you tarnish your name amongst your customers. I guess wall street is more important though.

[CarmineT]

Soon some big player could gain advantage on this as they do care very few to keep good part.

Definitely now Shopify is only marketing centered sas, the product is getting worst.

[dean_nusara]

So please confirm. I have been using Shopify for 8 years. What I would like to know is, you are taking Product Reviews away and now forcing us into more 3rd  party apps with their ridiculous (lost touch with reality) monthly fees which are just not sustainable for small business. What other features are we going to be forced to pay for? I already also pay hideous fees to Shopify for payment despite the fact that there are near free Crypto payment platforms available. WHAT AM I GETTING FOR MY MONEY? I am three seconds away from ditching shopify. If I now have to move my reviews then I might as well go all the way and move the whole website elsewhere.

[CarmineT]

I agree. Write me a pm.

[italicsbold]

Anyone looking for a free alternative to Product Reviews should also try Kooee Reviews. You can export the Product Reviews and import them straight into Kooee Reviews. Here is a guide on how to do that https://resources.kooee.reviews/en-US/move-from-shopify-product-reviews-to-kooee-reviews-321306

The theme blocks are compatible with Shopify 2.0 themes only.

[Waldhoff]

"Sunsetting"  (meaning deleting) apps that are widely used, is a disservice to your paying customers and a huge pain to deal with.

There was no reason to delete it, the app worked very well. This is only a cost-cutting move that has no consideration for your paying users.

Please cut the nonsense and reinstate this app.  The reason why I use Shopify is because of its ease of use, and now having to research how to move existing reviews to an all new app is too much of a pain in the butt to be worth my time.

For all the money that we spent on Shopify, all the massive commissions you pocket, I demand better.

[oneon]

Elias,

Regrettably, I removed the Shopify review app too soon. So far, I've experimented with two renowned review apps recommended by Shopify, only to be disappointed by their subpar customer service. Trying to make them work with my existing theme has been exceedingly difficult. Lately, it seems Shopify's support strategy leans heavily towards suggesting we "Hire a third Party." Sadly, I've encountered little to no direct support from Shopify itself.

It's disheartening to see how every small enhancement to our site incurs additional fees. Now, I find myself compelled to engage a third party, as the app developers' assistance only extends so far.

This situation is adversely affecting my SEO, leading to potential revenue losses, not just for me, but indirectly for Shopify as well. It appears this perspective isn't shared by the Shopify team.

Best,
Robert

[CG6]

Hello fellow shopifiers and Elias

Been here 4 years and like the way my store works.

The Shopify review app is perfect for my store.   Simple and non invasive to my customers privacy.

I have looked at the other options, they are full of features I do not want, and obviously they all want to make money from you, or your mailing lists. 

There is nothing wrong with the shopify review app, pretty sure it requires zero maintenance from shopify itself.

So this is an obvious money grab by shopify to the benefit of them and their app developers.

Elias, I don't envy your position of being the mouthpiece of the company, but perhaps you can let the accountants know they are on the road to their own demise with merchants abandoning what was a great interface.

It was one thing to not offer some basic things like accurate shipping so I had to pay for boxify, quite another to start dismantling an existing product.

Sunsetting is a great word tho - kudos to the marketing department for finding a synonym for "money-grab"

Hope you can turn this boat around.

Go Elias!

CG

[TimFreet]

Well Elias as a new customer let me give you my first impressions. Second day I try to use Shopify all login is disabled for the day the help system doesn't work and I spend 40 minutes trying to find out how to contact support as the support email facility has also been sunset. I then try and add reviews to my theme to find that has been sunset. If I want to do anything vaguely like an online store I find I have to buy another app subscription for every store one at a time. Quite honestly I'm less than impressed and may well sunset my store.

[StevenJacobs]

Me too. Dumbest decision I've seen so far to sunset a fundamental app and make us subscribe to a third party app for another $10-20 month on top of shopify's already expensive subscription. There was nothing wrong with this app and would not have hurt to just keep it available for us that get value from it.

[Dan-From-Ryviu]

Hi @TimFreet 

I'm Dan from Ryviu: Product Reviews & QA.

Our app supports to import your existing reviews from Shopify product review app to our.

We hope to be able to serve you!

[italicsbold]

Hi @TimFreet,

Give our reviews app a try if you like (https://kooee.reviews/). We have a built in importer that easily migrates reviews from the Shopify Product Reviews app.

There is a generous free plan as well to get you started, and loads of handy features all aimed ate getting you more reviews.

Feel free to reach out if you need some help getting set up.

[TimFreet · Accepted solution]

So we have decided so sunset our store. The reason is the ever growing costs to run a basic store out of the box without endless third party subscriptions for core functionality. We will remain with Woocommerce for all its flaws.

[CarmineT]

Sad to read this. Let me know in case you may think to go back to reactivate it, I may help provide some of those app again for free with some automation 🙂

[brendonwbrown]

Shopify may have positioned itself as the best in the market for a time, but at some point it will simply come to the point that it's half the cost to run a WooCommerce store.

[CarmineT]

The advantage is that for anything professional, there is quite a large choose of apps.

Indeed is a good choose for someone selling professional and not much more "drop shipping" hobbiest

[Patry2310]

Product reviews is a vital feature to bring customer to our webpage. Shopify, you still have time to not sunset your own product review app. it has worked great for us as it is and when it stops working in May 2024 will be widely unpopular and damaging for all our stores. You'll be cursed by many  in May when it happens. It is not a good decision to leave a vital feature for store health to third party providers, if anyone wants more that the actual app, they would pay more for a third party app but why don't you leave a fee alternative for some?. The migration itself has been problematic with remaining code left overs or complex instrutcions.  If more customers come to my store due to my reviews it makes shopify more popular too. It is a win/win situation. Please reconsider it.

[Italia-Straps]

Agree with Patry2310.
I would also add that many stores don’t need “more robust” or complicated features in a reviews app. For our store, we just need a place where customers can leave their comments and a rating.

Its already looking like the transition for some shop owners in problematic.

Again… We'd  consider a small monthly fee to continue using the Shopify Reviews app and avoid what will surely be a hassle of transitioning to a new third party reviews app

[Elias]

Hey, @Patry2310 & @Italia-Straps.

Thank you both for joining the thread and sharing this feedback.

I understand that both of you would prefer to continue using Product Reviews. While I'm unable to make any promises, I'd be happy to share this feedback with our development team. If Shopify changes their decision on sunsetting the Product Reviews app, then we'll be sure to announce this on the Shopify Changelog.

If you need an alternative reviews app for the time being, then here are some notable suggestions: 

• Judge.me
• Stamped.io
• Yopto
• Loox
• Okendo

If you have any other questions on this topic, then don't hesitate to let me know!

[Italia-Straps]

Thanks.  Yes, please pass it on to the development team.  In our case we would definitely like to just continue using the Shopify Product Reviews in its current form. Given the likely hassles of changing to a third party we'd be ok with a reasonable monthly fee too. 

[larshink]

Please do not delete the review app.  I signed up with this review as part of the package and I consider it a breach of contract to delete this service.  My product does not sunset EVER!  It is unaffected by Right-To-Repair laws because anyone can fix it FOREVER!!!!    Why don't the Right-To-Repair laws extend to software and services such as Shopify?    For my site, I simply will not have reviews but will only have testimonials that are screenshots / copies of existing reviews, submitted emails and submitted photos.  I have recommended Shopify to several outfits but I am not sure I am so enthusiastic any longer as I await the next feature to sunset.  What will it be????  

[Italia-Straps]

Is Shopify giving any consideration to keeping the Shopify Reviews App alive?

We are about to make the change to a new app using the downloaded data.  Unfortunately, it looks like we will need to do some development work since years ago we did some custom coding around the in-house Shopify Product Reviews App. This is an expense we did not budget for so thought I'd check one final time. 

Thanks

[ToyMaster]

Shopify pulled the plug on my site after giving me 1 notificaton that they were taking the site down and 15 blogs after I cancelled Shogun. Everything I read about cancelling Shogun said my pages would remain as they are but I wouldn't be able to edit.

I paid Shogun $600 over 6 months and Shopify has been nickel and diming me for 5 years.

I'm done with this service. They destroyed my dreams and hard work.

[chadmin]

How can such a basic feature of selling not be a core product feature? I left woocommerce to get away from 10's of third party plugins. Shopify is offloading their app development to third parties. Probably laying off developers and cutting costs at the expense of customer experience. Yay for the shareholders! 

[Italia-Straps]

Just received email notice the other day about the Shopify Reviews App sunsetting. This is a real bummer.

What is everyone out there doing to transition away from the in-house app? Judge.me looks like a possible solution but hard to tell. This is a big issue for our business since we have 2300+ reviews in the 8 years we've been on Shopify.  https://italiastraps.com/collections/all 

Additionally, we did some extra coding early on to make the review stars from the Shopify app appear on the home page and the collections pages etc. This coding obviously wouldn't work with a new app. 

We are also running an older theme (Venture). I would say it's pretty unlikely a new version of a third-party app will work seamlessly with an older theme. In our case we're probably looking at a theme update and integrating a new third-party reviews app hopefully with the look we currently have which all results in $$$ cost to develop.

Shopify: We'd be willing to consider a small monthly fee to continue using the Shopify Reviews app and avoid what will surely be a hassle of transitioning to a new third party reviews app. 

Hopefully Shopify considers something like this. 

Thanks for listening.  🙂 

[Waldhoff]

Indeed, it a rock bottom base feature that should be included in any e-commerce platform.

For the tens of thousands of dollars they collected from us in commission, they have nerve to simply delete an app used by many Shopify customers. 

As someone said, they are just cutting jobs to reduce costs and reward shareholders, who cares about their paying customer's experience. For a premium price I demand decent services and features.

I hear Woocommerce is a good alternative, I will start looking into it; I initially switched to Shopify for ease of use but that is being eroded away so why bother staying on considering the fees?

[HamayunRasheed]

Hey Tim! Check out Quoli, free plan available. Fully native, 15+ Widgets Library, and tons of email templates. You can easily import your existing reviews too.

Check us out - https://apps.shopify.com/quoli-product-reviews-ugc

[Omnisend]

Hello, Team Omnisend here!

For those still looking to migrate their store reviews before May 6, you can now do that with Omnisend. This means you can easily integrate reviews with email, SMS, push notifications, automation, and segmentation.

We've gathered all the important information to address any questions you might have, which you can find here: https://www.omnisend.com/blog/shopify-delete-reviews/

For a more detailed comparison with other review apps and a video walkthrough, check out this: https://www.omnisend.com/product-reviews-omnisend/

Our Support Team is here for you 24/7. Feel free to reach out anytime at support@omnisend.com. And if you're already using Omnisend, remember we have an in-app chat available on our platform.

Hope that helps!