Hello everyone, are the reviews in the native shopify reviews app gone forever? I figured with the sunsetting of this app that they would at least allow retrieval of reviews even though public facing reviews would no longer surface. Within the “apps and sales channels” settings, though, all I see is that the app was uninstalled on May 7th, 2024.
While Shopify did allow ample time and give warning that the app would no longer be live, they surely did not warn that every review collected over the years would vanish completely without a way to migrate them to another reviews app.
Any suggestions for retrieval would be great. Thanks.
Thank you for reaching out about this. I recommend connecting with our authenticated chat support team to make this request. I am not sure if the review data is recoverable, but they will be able to assist you in looking into this further. To access our authenticated support, please follow this link: Shopify Help Center. Open the AI chat window and type “contact support” to get started.
I’ll do this, but if it turns out that this data is not recoverable, I can’t see how this wouldn’t be a huge blunder on Shopify’s part. Delisting a native app without allowing for data retrieval seems quite brazen.
Hi again, @mrreed ! Thanks for following up with us!
I checked out the help document you linked there, and I noticed the following line in the first paragraph: If you’ve exported reviews from the Product Reviews app, then you can import your reviews into a different product review app. This suggests to me that if you have not already exported these reviews from the old Shopify Product Reviews App, you won’t be able to import them into these apps, as you wouldn’t have the saved data to import.
I did take a moment to consult some internal resources on this topic, and it looks like the reviews that were a part of the Shopify Product Reviews App are not accessible, or exportable, since the sunsetting of the app. We sent out communications on the matter back in February 2024, along with instructions on how to export your reviews.
If you like, you can follow the recommendation from my colleague Shay in regards to reaching out to our Authenticated Team to see if there is anything they can do to assist you with those reviews.
Hello Imogen, I was unable to locate an email or other direct comms. I knew of the termination, as I think it was mentioned in store notifications. Still, nothing about the permanent erasure of all review data.
When GA4 switched over I must have had close to 20 email from Google announcing this shift, and how certain ops would cease for our store if action was not taken. I don’t know what product manager, or lack thereof was at the helm of this, but what extremely poor foresight here.
I left a message with support, but this is by no means resolved. I’m not sure why the query was marked as such. To that end, I appreciate you adding to the conversation, and hope to find a solution.
Did you get anywhere with your issue - we have had the same problem and lost many reviews from our website which we can’t recover. I am not sure the best course of action to try and get them back.
I understand your frustration with the loss of reviews from Shopify’s native reviews app. Since it’s gone, consider switching to Quoli, which is fully native, affordable, and feature-rich. Feel free to schedule a demo call with me to see how Quoli can seamlessly integrate with your store and help you retain and showcase customer reviews effectively.
I have found one workaround which is labour intensive but potentially able to recover some reviews: if you had email notifications for reviews turned on, search “Product Reviews -” in your inbox to find each individual review notification including review text, rating and customer. You can then take this data and manually transpose it into a spreadsheet to be uploaded into your new review software. Might take a while but could salvage your reviews for you. Hope that helps!
Ha! That actually might just work. A mind numbing task, but a solution nonetheless. Thanks for chiming in here. This is the best advice in the thread, so I’ll be marking this as a solution vs. the non-solution replies from Shopify itself.