Trustpilot for Business: A Practical Setup and Review Guide

Trustpilot for Business is the company side of Trustpilot: the free account (with optional paid plans) you use to claim your company’s profile, invite customers to review you, reply to reviews and flag reviews that break Trustpilot’s guidelines. Anyone can review your business on Trustpilot whether or not you sign up, so claiming the profile is mostly about taking part in a conversation that’s already happening. You can’t delete reviews or your profile, and you must invite customers without being selective.

This guide walks through setting up a Trustpilot business account, building a steady flow of genuine reviews, and handling criticism well.

How Trustpilot works for companies

Trustpilot is an open review platform. Any consumer with an account can write a review of any company, and if no profile exists yet, the first review creates one. That openness is the reason Trustpilot profiles often rank for “[company] reviews” searches, and the reason a business can’t opt out.

A few basics shape everything else:

• Reviews are about an experience. Trustpilot’s guidelines require reviews to be based on a genuine buying or service experience within a recent period.
• Invited and organic reviews both count. Reviews can come from customers you invite or from people who find Trustpilot on their own. Trustpilot labels some reviews as verified when it has evidence of the experience, such as reviews collected through an invitation.
• The TrustScore isn’t a simple average. Trustpilot calculates it in a way that gives more weight to recent reviews, so a profile can recover from a bad period by collecting fresh, genuine reviews.
• Businesses can’t remove reviews. You can reply and flag. Trustpilot’s content integrity team decides on flags.

Ecommerce companies and online services tend to see the most Trustpilot traffic, but any business with customers online can end up with a profile.

Step 1: Claim your Trustpilot business profile

1. Search Trustpilot for your domain. Profiles are tied to a website domain, so check for your main domain and any older or country-specific ones.
2. Sign up for a Trustpilot business account using an email address on your company domain, which helps verify you’re connected to the business.
3. Complete your company details: description, logo, contact information and categories. Choose categories that match what customers buy from you, since that’s where you’ll appear when people browse.
4. Add team members with their own logins, including at least one backup admin.
5. Set up notifications so new reviews reach the person responsible for replying.

Trustpilot offers a free plan and paid plans with more invitation volume, integrations and marketing features. Plans and what they include change, so compare them on Trustpilot’s site against what you actually need. You don’t need a paid plan to reply to reviews or flag them.

Step 2: Invite customers the right way

Most companies with a weak Trustpilot profile have the same problem: the only people who review are the ones who had a bad experience and went looking for somewhere to say so. Routine invitations fix that by giving satisfied customers an easy prompt.

Invitation methods

• Automatic invitations triggered after an order or service, typically by adding a Trustpilot address or integration to your order confirmation emails or ecommerce platform.
• Manual invitations by uploading customer lists or sending individual invites from the business dashboard.
• Review links you can add to emails, receipts or your site.

Timing

Invite customers once they’ve experienced what they paid for. For a physical product, that’s usually after delivery, not at checkout. For a service, after the job or first billing cycle. An invitation that arrives before the parcel does tends to produce reviews about shipping anxiety.

The rules that matter

Trustpilot’s guidelines for businesses and the FTC’s 2024 rule on consumer reviews both point the same way:

• Don’t be selective. Invite customers without filtering them by how happy they seem. Sending invitations only to customers who gave a high satisfaction score first is review gating, and Trustpilot’s guidelines don’t allow it.
• Don’t offer incentives for reviews. The FTC rule bans incentives conditioned on positive sentiment, and Trustpilot doesn’t allow incentivized reviews on its platform.
• Don’t write or buy reviews, or ask staff and friends to post them. Trustpilot has placed public warnings on profiles it found misusing the platform.

A simple invitation email you can adapt:

Hi Maria, your order arrived last week and we’d love to hear how it’s going. Would you share an honest review on Trustpilot? It takes a couple of minutes and helps other shoppers decide. [link]. If anything isn’t right, just reply to this email and our team will sort it out.

Step 3: Reply to Trustpilot reviews

Replies are public and sit under the review. Future customers read them to judge how you treat people when things go wrong.

• Reply to negative reviews within a day or two where you can. Acknowledge the problem, say what you’ll do and give a way to reach a named team or person.
• Reply to a sample of positive reviews with short, specific thanks. Copy-pasted replies on every review look automated.
• Never share order details or personal data in a reply. Ask the customer to contact you instead.
• Follow up. If you fix the problem, the customer can edit their review. You can ask once whether they’d like to update it, but don’t pressure them or tie any refund to it.

Hi James, I’m sorry your refund took so long. That’s not the standard we aim for. I’ve asked our billing team to look at your case today; please reply to the email we’ve just sent so we can confirm the details privately.

Our guide on how to respond to negative reviews covers structure and tone in more depth.

Step 4: Flag reviews that break the guidelines

From your business account you can flag a review and choose a reason. Grounds Trustpilot has recognized include reviews that are harmful or illegal, contain personal information, are advertising or promotional, or aren’t based on a genuine experience. Trustpilot may ask either party for more information, for example evidence that the reviewer was a customer.

If a customer threatens a bad review unless you give them something, keep the messages. That’s a separate issue covered in our guide on what to do when a customer threatens a bad review. For a full walkthrough of flagging and what happens next, see how to remove Trustpilot reviews.

A worked example: an online retailer with a lopsided profile

This is an illustrative scenario. A small online homeware store has around forty Trustpilot reviews, most of them one-star complaints about slow delivery during one holiday season. It has never claimed the profile, and its TrustScore is poor even though most orders arrive without problems.

1. The owner claims the profile, fills in the company details and sets up alerts.
2. She replies to recent delivery complaints, explaining the store changed couriers, and invites affected customers to get in touch.
3. She connects the store’s order system so every customer receives an invitation a few days after delivery, with no filtering.
4. She flags two reviews: one that includes a staff member’s home address, and one about a different company with a similar name. Trustpilot removes the first; the second is corrected after the reviewer responds.

Over the following months, new reviews come in steadily. Because the TrustScore weights recent reviews, the score gradually reflects how the store operates now. Some reviews are still critical, and those point to things worth fixing.

Common mistakes

• Ignoring Trustpilot because you didn’t sign up. The profile exists anyway and ranks for your name.
• Inviting only happy customers. Selective invitations break Trustpilot’s rules and can lead to warnings.
• Offering discounts for reviews. It breaks platform rules and the FTC rule.
• Arguing in replies. Even when you’re right, it reads badly to the next customer.
• Treating flags as a removal service. Genuine negative reviews stay.

If you’d rather have help running invitations and replies across Trustpilot and other sites, our Trustpilot reputation page explains how we work, and our ecommerce reputation management page covers online retailers specifically.

Frequently asked questions

Is Trustpilot for Business free?

Trustpilot offers a free business account that lets you claim your profile, reply to reviews, flag reviews and send a limited number of invitations. Paid plans add more invitations, integrations and marketing tools. Check Trustpilot’s current plans, since they change.

Can I delete my company's Trustpilot profile?

Generally no. Trustpilot is an open platform, so consumers can review any business. You can claim the profile and manage it, but you can’t remove it or opt out of reviews.

Does paying Trustpilot improve my rating?

No. Paid plans give you more tools, such as higher invitation volumes and widgets, but they don’t change your TrustScore or let you remove reviews. More invitations can lead to more reviews, which is the legitimate way a score improves.

How long does it take to improve a TrustScore?

It depends on how many customers you serve, how many you invite and what their experience is. Because recent reviews carry more weight, a steady flow of genuine reviews usually moves the score over months rather than days.