Thumbtack Reviews: How Pros Can Get, Reply to and Report Them

Thumbtack reviews are the ratings and written comments customers leave on your pro profile, and they strongly shape whether a customer picks you from a list of pros who responded to the same request. To manage them well, keep your profile complete, ask every customer for an honest review soon after the job, invite past customers to review you through Thumbtack’s own tools, reply to reviews professionally, and report only reviews that break Thumbtack’s rules. Thumbtack doesn’t remove genuine negative reviews on request, so a steady flow of honest reviews is your best protection.

This guide is for the business side: cleaners, movers, photographers, tutors, handymen, DJs, personal trainers and anyone else who gets work through Thumbtack.

How Thumbtack works for pros

Thumbtack is a marketplace that matches customers with local service professionals. A customer describes a job, sees a list of pros who fit, compares their profiles and contacts one or more of them. Depending on your settings and category, you may pay to receive leads or to reach customers, but that doesn’t change how reviews are collected or moderated.

When customers compare pros, they usually look at a few things side by side: the star rating, the number of reviews, how recent they are, what the written reviews actually say, photos of past work and how quickly the pro responds. Your reviews sit alongside those other signals, so a strong profile with a modest number of reviews can still win work against a thin profile with more stars.

Thumbtack is one of several places homeowners and consumers compare local pros. Our overview of sites like Angie’s List covers the others, including Google, Yelp, Nextdoor and Houzz. Our guides to Houzz reviews for pros and claiming a Nextdoor page go deeper on two of them.

How Thumbtack reviews work

Reviews on Thumbtack typically include a star rating and a written description of the experience. Customers you were hired by through Thumbtack can review you after the job, and Thumbtack also gives pros a way to request reviews from customers they served outside the platform. Thumbtack may label reviews differently depending on whether the customer hired you through Thumbtack, so a customer reading your profile can tell the difference.

Thumbtack’s review guidelines cover who can write a review and what it can contain. In general, a review must describe a real experience with your business, and pros may not write reviews of themselves, have friends or family pose as customers, or pay or reward people for positive reviews. The details change, so read Thumbtack’s current review and community guidelines in your pro account before you start asking for reviews or report one.

Your overall rating and review count also feed into Thumbtack’s recognition programs, such as its Top Pro status, alongside things like responsiveness and how often you’re hired. The criteria change over time, so treat those programs as a by-product of good service rather than a target.

Step 1: Build a profile customers trust

Reviews do the most work when the rest of the profile backs them up. Before you ask anyone for a review, tidy the profile they’ll land on.

1. Use your real business name and contact details. They should match your website and Google Business Profile so customers who cross-check find the same business.
2. Choose only the services you actually offer. Being matched to jobs you don’t do leads to awkward conversations, canceled bookings and poor reviews.
3. Set an accurate service area and availability. Late arrivals because of an over-wide travel radius are a common source of complaints.
4. Add photos of real work. Before-and-after shots, your equipment, your team. Get the customer’s permission before posting photos of their home or event.
5. Write a plain introduction. Who you are, how long you’ve done the work, what a typical job looks like and what customers can expect. Skip superlatives.
6. Complete any background check or license details Thumbtack offers for your category, where they apply to your trade.
7. Turn on notifications so you see new messages and reviews quickly. Response speed is one of the things customers notice first.

Step 2: Ask for genuine Thumbtack reviews

The single biggest lever is asking. Most satisfied customers don’t think to leave a review unless someone asks them, and the ones who do write without being asked are often the unhappy ones. Asking everyone evens that out.

Ask customers from Thumbtack jobs

Ask at the end of the job, when the customer can see the result. A short, low-pressure request works best:

Thanks for choosing us today. If you have a minute, an honest review on Thumbtack helps other people decide whether we’re the right fit. Thumbtack will send you a link, or I can text it to you now.

Follow up once, a day or two later, if they haven’t had a chance. Then stop. Repeated reminders feel like pressure and can produce a grudging review.

Invite past customers you served off the platform

If you’ve been in business for a while, you likely have customers who never found you on Thumbtack. Thumbtack’s pro tools let you send those customers a request to review you, which helps a new profile look established. Send it to every past customer you can reach, not just the ones you’re sure loved you. Choosing only the happiest customers is review gating, and it can breach platform rules and the FTC’s rule on consumer reviews. Our guide on review gating explains why.

What you can’t do when asking

• Offer a discount, gift, entry into a draw or anything else in exchange for a positive review.
• Write reviews yourself, or have employees, friends or relatives post them.
• Ask customers to copy and paste a review you wrote for them.
• Only ask customers you’ve screened as happy first.

The FTC’s final rule on consumer reviews and testimonials (2024) bans fake reviews, buying reviews and making incentives conditional on sentiment. Our guide to the FTC fake review rule covers what that means for small businesses.

Step 3: Reply to every review, especially the critical ones

Thumbtack lets pros post a public reply to reviews. A reply is written as much for the next customer reading your profile as for the reviewer. Keep it short, specific and calm.

For a positive review, thank the customer and mention something specific about the job. For a negative one, a good reply usually does four things: thanks them for the feedback, acknowledges the specific problem without arguing, explains what you’ve changed or offered, and moves the rest of the conversation to a private channel.

Thank you for the honest feedback, Dana. You’re right that we arrived later than the window we gave you, and we should have messaged when the previous job ran over. We now send an update to every customer if we’re running behind. I’d like to make this right, so I’ve sent you a message here on Thumbtack.

Avoid disputing every detail in public, sharing private information about the job or the customer, or suggesting the customer is lying. Our guide on how to respond to negative reviews has more examples.

Step 4: Report reviews that break the rules

If a review appears to break Thumbtack’s guidelines, use the reporting option in your pro account or contact Thumbtack’s support team, and explain which rule you think it breaks. Reviews that may qualify include ones that:

• Come from someone who was never your customer, or describe a different business.
• Contain threats, hate speech, harassment or someone’s personal information.
• Look like they were posted by a competitor or someone with a conflict of interest.
• Duplicate another review from the same person about the same job.

Include evidence where you have it, such as the lack of any matching booking or message history. A real customer’s harsh opinion, even one you think is unfair, generally stays up. If a review makes specific false statements of fact that are seriously damaging, talk to a lawyer before you do anything else, and read our guide on defamation vs opinion for the general distinction.

A worked example: a house cleaning business

This is an illustrative scenario, not a real client. A two-person house cleaning business joins Thumbtack with no reviews, even though it has served dozens of regular customers for years. The first review that comes in through Thumbtack is three stars, saying the clean was good but the team missed the inside of the oven the customer had asked for.

1. The owner replies, thanks the customer, admits the oven was missed and explains that the team now uses a written checklist for every add-on. She offers to come back and do the oven at no charge, with no strings attached to the review.
2. She uses Thumbtack’s tool to invite all of her regular customers to leave a review, sending the same message to everyone.
3. She adds real before-and-after photos and tightens her service area so the team stops arriving late.
4. At the end of every new Thumbtack job, she asks the customer for a review in person and follows up once.

Within a few months, the profile shows a steady mix of reviews, most mentioning reliability and attention to detail. The three-star review is still there, but it sits among many others, and the reply shows customers how the business handles mistakes.

Common mistakes pros make with Thumbtack reviews

• Waiting for reviews to arrive on their own. Without a habit of asking, reviews come mostly from the extremes.
• Asking only the happy customers. That’s review gating, and it can cost you reviews and trust.
• Using friends and family. It breaks Thumbtack’s rules and is a fake review under the FTC rule.
• Replying in anger. A defensive reply often hurts more than the review itself.
• Ignoring Google. Many customers check your Google reviews too. Keep your Google Business Profile as active as your Thumbtack profile, one platform per review request.

If you manage reviews across several platforms and want a system for requests and replies, our review management service can help, and our home services reputation management page covers the wider picture for trades.

Frequently asked questions

Can I remove a bad review on Thumbtack?

You can’t delete a review yourself. If a review breaks Thumbtack’s guidelines, for example because the person was never your customer or the review contains personal information, you can report it for Thumbtack to assess. Genuine negative reviews generally stay up, so a calm public reply and more honest reviews are usually the best response.

Can past customers review me on Thumbtack if they didn't hire me there?

Thumbtack gives pros a way to request reviews from past customers they served outside the platform. Those reviews may be labeled differently from reviews by customers who hired you through Thumbtack. Send the request to all past customers you can reach, not just the ones you expect to be positive.

Can I offer a discount for a Thumbtack review?

Not in exchange for a positive review. The FTC’s 2024 rule bans incentives conditioned on sentiment, and Thumbtack’s guidelines restrict rewarding reviews. The safest approach is to ask every customer for an honest review and offer nothing in return.

Do I have to pay Thumbtack to get reviews?

No. Paying for leads or visibility affects how you reach customers, not whether they can review you or how reviews are moderated. Check Thumbtack’s current pro terms for how its paid features work in your category.