In previous articles, we talked about what to look for when hiring a mobile app development company and the importance of checking the reputation, and work quality. Many app review sites can help you find the best developer for your project, but you need to ensure their reviews are accurate and reliable.
This article goes over the best app review sites, how they work, their advantages, their disadvantages, and how to pick the right review website. So let’s dive into what makes a good or bad review website.
Table of Contents
What’s the Purpose of Review Sites?
The purpose of any app review website is to gather as many reviews as possible from trustworthy or verified sources and use them to help clients choose the right company for the job.
While reviewing websites can be helpful for finding the perfect app developer for your business and when choosing a company to work on developing your app, it’s crucial to keep in mind that review websites are a business. And businesses will always try to monetize everything they can on their platforms.
So it’s not uncommon for review websites to monetize their platform by making users pay for additional reviews, listing projects, premium placement, or even putting your company logo on the company page. Sometimes, important information can even be obscured behind paywalls.
Finding Helpful Reviews
Since they’re making money off the reviews on their website, you must be wary and take reviews with a grain of salt. However, there are some measures you can take to find more balanced and helpful reviews while shopping for app development.
To find helpful reviews, you must make sure that the website you’re using does not tamper with them in any way. Some websites go as far as hiding reviews from free users and only display them once you subscribe to a paid plan.
Another way to tell if the website is reliable is checking if they have any reviewer screening process or barrier of entry. For instance, some websites require an account and personal information to log in, avoiding bots and review bombing. Others deal with the issue by carefully reviewing each reviewer and talking to them to ensure they’re legitimate.
5 Top Review Sites for App Development
To help streamline the process of finding good app review sites, we compiled a list of the five best websites, with insight on their advantages and shortcomings.
Clutch
Clutch is a specialized review website focused on B2B (Business-to-Business service) reviews. They aim to help businesses find the right company to push a project forward. Their website supports filtering reviews, shortlisting favorite picks, and customizing shortlists to your needs.
Advantages
Clutch strives to make its reviews as trustworthy as possible. They require any reviewer to log in with a LinkedIn account, making it much harder to review bomb a company. They go a step further and sometimes call the reviewer to check on the legitimacy of their review to guarantee the reviewer wasn’t biased or had a relationship with the reviewed company.
- B2B reviews;
- Requires LinkedIn authentication;
- Over the phone review option;
- Focus on providing quality reviews;
- Verification of every review.
Disadvantages
Their monetization model is fair but leaves free users in a bad spot. They serve ads on their website for extra revenue, sell premium placement, and have premium badges to outline paying users.
- ADs for free users;
- Premium content placement.
UpCity
UpCity is a B2B review website that greatly worries about the quality of its reviews. They offer a straightforward and intuitive website, host awards for the best B2B business in their platform, and provide several “best of” lists to aid users.
Advantages
UpCity makes it simple to understand which businesses provide high quality before you even click to see their reviews. Due to their strict and recurring award program, the website periodically picks the best-performing companies, giving them award seals in their listing.
Additionally, the award seals are a simple and fast way to find quality companies at a glance. Another way to find companies easily is using the lists offered by the site with the best companies for each kind of job.
- Best company list;
- B2B reviews;
- Strict reviewing process;
- Requires LinkedIn or Google authentication;
- Focus on providing quality reviews.
Disadvantages
The way UpCity monetizes its business is harsh. The website is known for its best companies lists, but free users rarely get featured. So if a company fits several lists but isn’t enrolled in a paid plan, it may only show up in one or none of those lists. However, after purchasing a subscription, the company may be added to several lists, increasing visibility.
- Anonymous reviews;
- Free members not featured in lists;
- Premium content placement.
Yelp
Yelp is large and popular when shopping for developers, as it’s accessible even for small companies and developers. One of its main draws is the large traffic, increasing company visibility. Its main issue is how competitive the market is for free users, almost demanding users to pay if they want to be seen.
Advantages
Yelp can massively boost the visibility of any company. It has many options to help your company, like publishing individual products, customizing your profile, and filtering out the competition. It allows visibility even for free users, making it an option for smaller businesses.
- Large popularity;
- Many active reviewers;
- Ways to boost visibility;
- Large community.
Disadvantages
While Yelp allows free profiles, they’re at a disadvantage. Ads from competitors can show up on your company’s profile, and the only way to remove it is by paying. Moreover, the movie Billion Dollar Bully goes in-depth about the many issues of using Yelp, like penalizing free users by hiding some of their reviews or even selling reviews.
Yelp also has many small payments. For instance, they charge for new projects, profile customization, ads removal, and other issues. On top of that, the website allows inexperienced reviewers to review your product and doesn’t do reviewer authentication, which allows review bombing.
- Anonymous reviews;
- Premium content placement;
- No review authentication;
- Inexperienced reviewers;
- Expensive enhanced listing.
Google Reviews
Google Reviews are not monetized by Google, as their main objective is to improve the information provided by Google Maps instead. Since Google doesn’t stand to earn with the review, they tend to be raw and more accurate.
Advantages
Google Reviews are the most accessible in this list. Showing up on Google Maps and easily shareable on social media, they’re going to be one of the first things customers find when searching for your company. This makes Google Reviews a great way to reach customers with minimal investment while giving you a large pool of reviewers.
- Great visibility;
- Free and fair;
- A large pool of reviewers;
- Displayed on Google maps.
Disadvantages
There’s almost no oversight when it comes to Google reviews. Anyone with a Google account can post a review on your company’s profile, and that freedom leads to several issues if you are not checking on reviews often.
- No review oversight;
- Prone to review bombing;
- Many fake reviews;
- Reviewers can rate without commenting;
- Limited fraud detection.
LinkedIn Reviews
Like Google, LinkedIn reviews are not monetized. Instead, the systems aim to connect service providers and clients through a safe and trusted medium, allowing past clients to review services. Currently, these reviews are only enabled for services listings, which is useful for anyone looking to hire an app developer.
Advantages
Having LinkedIn as a review platform is helpful as there are several layers of fraud prevention when setting up an account, so issues like review bombing and fake reviews are mitigated. Additionally, since the review feature is focused on services listing on the website, you can find good quality reviews from other professionals in the area or tech companies, making it a great place to find reputable app development companies like Idea Maker.
- Service focused;
- Professional reviewers;
- Free and fair;
- Requires authentication.
Disadvantages
If you have a larger company or want the premium placement to increase the visibility of your services on LinkedIn, you’re out of luck. The feature does not support company profiles, nor does it allow you to boost your visibility in any way to get ahead of the competition.
It’s worth noting that the system is still in its early stages, and we may see more features to help get your name or brand in front of clients.
- No company profiles;
- Feature light;
- No way to boost visibility;
Which Is Right For You?
The right review website for you depends on the public you’re trying to reach, how much money you’re willing to spend, and whether or not you want to invest to avoid fake reviews, review bombing, or defamation.
For companies looking for minimal investment and maximum visibility, Google Reviews are a good choice. However, if you want to make sure your reviews are accurate, fair, and authenticated by a third party, we believe that Clutch is the right choice.
Summary
Reviews can make or break a business, and investing time and resources to improve your review scores is an impactful way to reach customers and inspire trust in future clients. While most review websites monetize their reviews, they can still be a great way to reach potential customers if you invest in their paid plans.
Mobile App Development from Idea Maker
Instead of shopping around in various app review sites to find a developer that fits your next project, you can always save time and resources by hiring Idea Maker.
We are a team of experts in mobile, web, and software development with an experienced team of professionals that can take your idea and make it into a quality product.
If you’re tired of frustrating yourself looking for a developer, contact us to talk about your project, and we’ll be glad to develop it to your specifications.
