Approving, rejecting, and other review actions
Last updated: May 12, 2026
A review that needs human attention can be acted on from two places: the dashboard detail modal, or directly from a notification email if you have email-driven moderation turned on. The actions are the same in both places, though the email surface bundles the two most common decisions (“Approve as-is” and “Approve & reply publicly”) as primary buttons.
The six actions
| Action | What it does | Reversible? |
|---|---|---|
| Approve | Publishes the review on your storefront widget. Counts toward your approved-review average. | Yes — move back to Pending or Archive any time. |
| Approve & reply publicly | Same as Approve, plus your reply renders underneath the review, attributed to your store name. | Yes — edit or delete the reply later from the dashboard. |
| Reply privately | Sends a private message to the customer over email. Review stays in Pending until someone makes the publish/reject call. | No (email already sent) |
| Archive | Hides the review from the storefront. Kept in your records. | Yes — restore from the dashboard. |
| Reject | Marks the review as Rejected. Never shows on the widget, kept for audit. | Yes — re-approve any time. |
| Mark as spam | Same effect as Reject, plus the signal helps tune future automatic spam filtering. | Yes — re-approve any time. |
| Delete | Removes the review permanently from your admin. | No. |
Only Delete is irreversible. Everything else can be flipped back later.
Approve
What it does: the review moves to Published and starts showing on your product page widget. It begins counting toward your approved-review average. If you have the auto-thank-you message wired up in Shopify Flow, it fires unless you opted out (per-review checkbox on the email confirmation, or the store-wide setting in Collect → Email moderation).
When to use it:
- The review has useful content and a reasonable tone
- It’s specific to the product (or close enough)
- It’s not obviously spam or off-topic
Approve & reply publicly
What it does: publishes the review with your public reply attached underneath, attributed to your store name. Available from both the dashboard modal and the email confirmation page (textarea with a live preview as you type).
When to use it:
- A negative review you want to acknowledge and address publicly
- A glowing review where a thank-you-from-the-store touches the customer
- Any review where future shoppers benefit from your context
Replies render under the review card on the widget. One reply per review — saving a second overwrites the first.
Reply privately
What it does: sends a private email to the customer from your store name with the rep’s message. The customer’s reply lands in your CS inbox (the address tied to your Shopify store), not back into BetterReviews.
Where the review goes afterward depends on which surface you used:
- Dashboard “Reply privately” button — the review stays in Pending afterward. Someone still has to make the publish/reject call.
- Support-cascade email “Approve & reply privately” or “Hold + reply” — the review moves to On hold so it’s flagged for a follow-up call after the customer responds (see email-driven moderation).
When to use it:
- The customer described a defect or shipping issue and you want to follow up offline before deciding what to publish
- You want context from the customer before approving (e.g. “can you send a photo of the issue?”)
- You don’t want a public-facing back-and-forth on the storefront
This action ships in v1 specifically because many CS reps don’t have access to a separate helpdesk — and chasing them off-platform is friction. The private reply lands in the customer’s inbox and they can respond directly.
Archive
What it does: hides the review from your storefront but keeps it in your records. Different from Reject in tone — Archive is “shelf this for now,” Reject is “this never publishes.”
When to use it:
- The review is fine but you don’t want to surface it right now (off-message for a current campaign, etc.)
- The customer asked you to take it down for non-fraud reasons
- You’re cleaning up your moderation queue without committing to permanent rejection
Restorable from the dashboard. Doesn’t count against the customer’s submission history.
Reject
What it does: marks the review as Rejected. It never shows on the widget, but the record is kept.
When to use it:
- Obvious spam or nonsense (“asdasd”, bot-looking content)
- Reviews that reference a competitor’s product, not yours
- Off-topic content (a customer venting about shipping when they were asked about the product)
- Reviews that violate your policies (abusive language, PII, etc.)
Rejected reviews are kept (not deleted) so you can re-approve later if context changes. Use Archive when you want a softer “shelf this” state without the policy-violation framing of Reject.
Mark as spam
What it does: same end state as Reject — the review never shows — plus the signal feeds into automatic spam detection for future reviews.
When to use it:
- Burner-domain reviews with copy-pasted text from elsewhere
- Reviews that look like spam-pattern attempts (keyword stuffing, link drops)
- Anything you’d want the system to auto-reject going forward
Don’t use it for honest critical reviews. Reject those instead — Mark as spam reinforces a pattern, and you don’t want low-rating reviews to train the spam filter.
Delete
What it does: the review is removed permanently. It no longer exists in your admin.
When to use it:
- The reviewer asked you to remove their review
- Rare edge cases where you want the record gone entirely (legal, compliance)
- Testing or obvious duplicates you don’t want to keep
Reversible? No. There’s no undelete.
When you hit delete from the list or the bulk action, we ask you to confirm. Don’t skip the confirmation — there’s no “oops” button after.
The right default workflow
For day-to-day moderation:
- Clear spam pattern (burner email, copy-paste text, keyword stuffing)? → Mark as spam (trains the filter)
- Off-topic, policy-violation, or competitor-product? → Reject (keeps the record)
- Defect or complaint that needs follow-up? → Reply privately, then decide later
- Legitimate review? → Approve, or Approve & reply if you have something to add
- Don’t want to surface it right now? → Archive
- Customer explicitly asked you to remove it? → Delete
Treat Delete as a special-case action for when nothing else fits.
If a customer wants to edit their review after submitting
Customers can’t edit a review after submission — the chat flow ends at submit. If a customer wants meaningful changes, the simplest path is:
- Delete the existing review in the admin
- Ask them to submit a new one (they can start a fresh chat from the widget or ask you for a request link)
We don’t have in-admin review editing today. If you need a typo fix or redaction urgently, email us.