How review-platform ratings differ above and below 500 employees
SMB here means a company with fewer than 500 employees — the cut these figures are scoped to. Each platform is shown twice, once from buyers under that line and once from buyers at or above it; the figures across all interviews live on what reviews-platform buyers wish they'd known. Two of these platforms cannot be shown on both sides: too few buyers at companies of 500 and above rate them for a scoped average to be reported.
| Platform | Under 500 | 500 and above |
|---|---|---|
| 8.5 | not rated | |
| Reviews built for Shopify stores. The highest figure here, on few enough ratings to carry no decimal, and 83% of its ratings come from this group. | ||
| 7.6 | not rated | |
| Reviews and UGC for ecommerce. The best-sampled of the two tools at the top, with 97% of its ratings from this group. | ||
| 6.5 | 7.1 | |
| Reviews alongside loyalty and messaging in one platform, and the most-rated here with this group. | ||
| 6.4 | 6.9 | |
| An enterprise reviews and syndication network. Most of its ratings come from companies above this line. | ||
| not rated | 7 | |
| A public review site rather than an on-site reviews tool. Too few buyers under 500 rate it for a scoped average to be reported. | ||
| 4.5 | 6.8 | |
| Reviews and syndication. Its under-500 figure rests on the fewest ratings any platform here can be reported on. | ||
| not rated | not rated | |
| Visual UGC. Too few buyers in either group rate it for a scoped average to be reported. | ||
| not rated | not rated | |
| Reviews and loyalty for smaller stores. Too few buyers in either group rate it for a scoped average to be reported. | ||
Two things about that table are worth stating plainly. Every platform with enough ratings on both sides reads higher with the larger group — Yotpo, Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews all do, which is the same direction for all three. And the two platforms at the top cannot be compared that way at all: too few buyers at companies of 500 and above rate Junip or Okendo for a figure to be reported, which is itself the subject of the next section.
How much of a published rating is buyers your size
Every platform above also carries a figure across all interviews. This is what sits behind those figures — the share of each platform's ratings that comes from companies under 500 employees.
Share of each platform's buyer ratings that comes from companies under 500 employees. The bars run 0 to 100% and are not on the rating scale used in the table above.
The company-size mix varies sharply by platform: from 97% of ratings coming from companies under 500 at one end to 17% at the other. For Okendo and Junip, the scoped and published figures draw largely from the same rating population: 97% and 83% of their ratings, respectively, come from companies under 500. By contrast, the published figures for Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews are weighted predominantly toward companies of 500 and above.
The counter-current: the largest observed gap rests on the smallest reportable SMB sample
Three cautions come with this table. PowerReviews at 4.5 rests on the fewest under-500 ratings any platform here can be reported on, so the 2.3-point difference from its 500-and-above average should be interpreted with that sample disparity in mind. The two platforms at the top draw most of their ratings from companies under 500 — 97% for Okendo and 83% for Junip — which is a fact about who rates them rather than evidence they would hold up at larger scale, and the corpus cannot say how they would read there. And a satisfaction average is not a fit assessment — none of these figures tells you whether a platform syndicates to the retailers you sell through, or what it costs at your review volume.
What this means if you are an SMB
A rating scoped to companies your size is closer to a peer benchmark than a corpus average, and it is still an average. Our read, not a practice buyers describe, is that the share behind a figure matters alongside the figure: a platform whose published rating draws mostly from larger companies gives an SMB a less size-matched benchmark. On this page that share runs from 97% down to about a sixth.
Want this read against your own stack?
Get my read →The narrow version is that the under-500 column gives an SMB a more size-matched benchmark than the blended figure — and that for Okendo and Junip the published figure is already heavily weighted toward companies under 500, at 97% and 83% respectively. What is worth taking away is how differently the published figures are composed: 97% of Okendo's ratings and 83% of Junip's come from companies under 500, against 23% for Bazaarvoice and 17% for PowerReviews. The questions that actually separate two finalists are the ordinary ones a rating cannot answer: which retailers a platform can syndicate to, what happens to the bill as review volume grows, and how much of the collection flow you have to build yourself.
For what buyers report after choosing, see what reviews-platform buyers wish they'd known; for why they move, why brands switch reviews platforms. The same split across other categories is in does company size change how buyers rate software.
Common questions
What is the best review platform for a small business?
Among the platforms rated by buyers at companies under 500 employees, Junip carries the highest observed average at 8.5 and Okendo is next at 7.6 on roughly five times as many ratings from that group. Their overall ratings are also heavily weighted toward companies under 500: 97% of Okendo's ratings and 83% of Junip's come from that group, so for those two the scoped figure and the published figure are close to the same number. None of this establishes a best fit for any particular company: these scores measure buyer satisfaction rather than fit.
Do review platforms rate differently for small and large companies?
On this page every platform with enough ratings on both sides of the 500-employee line rates higher with the larger group: Yotpo 6.5 against 7.1, Bazaarvoice 6.4 against 6.9, and PowerReviews 4.5 against 6.8. That is the same direction for all three. The two platforms SMBs rate highest cannot be compared that way at all, because too few buyers at companies of 500 and above rate them for a scoped average to be reported.
Why does the same review platform get a different rating from small and large companies?
The interviews do not settle why the ratings differ. One possible contributor is that the same product name can cover different plan tiers, catalogue sizes and implementations at different company sizes, which this analysis does not separate. Separately, the company-size mix behind each platform's published overall rating varies substantially: 97% of Okendo's ratings come from companies under 500, against 17% for PowerReviews.
Should an SMB trust a published software rating?
It is a starting point rather than a peer benchmark, and the company-size mix behind it is useful context for interpreting the figure. On this page two platforms draw more than four fifths of their ratings from companies under 500, while another draws about a sixth, so the company-size composition behind the published figures differs substantially. Our read, not a practice buyers describe, is that a scoped figure is closer to a company-size-matched benchmark than a corpus average, though it remains an average and the number of ratings behind it still matters.
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