Importing reviews

Last updated: April 17, 2026

If you’ve been collecting reviews on another platform (Okendo, Judge.me, or via a CSV export from anywhere), you can bring them into BetterReviews without losing them.

What you can import

  • Okendo — direct API connection. Reviews, photos, ratings, customer info, and replies.
  • Judge.me — OAuth connection. Same coverage as Okendo.
  • CSV — upload a CSV export from any other platform (Yotpo, Loox, Trustpilot, Google, etc.).

Connecting Okendo → · Connecting Judge.me → · CSV import and export →

More direct integrations (Yotpo, Loox) are planned. If you need one that’s not listed, let us know.

What gets imported

For each review from Okendo or Judge.me:

  • Star rating
  • Review title and body text
  • Reviewer name (preserved as it was on the source platform)
  • Reviewer email — imported and stored encrypted at rest (via our PII vault). We also compute an email_hash for deduplication. Imported reviewers do not receive review request emails unless they place a new order at your Shopify store.
  • Photos — uploaded from the source platform and re-hosted on our storage
  • Submission date — we preserve the original date so your review history is accurate
  • Verified buyer status — if the source platform marked the review as verified
  • Merchant replies — pulled during the initial bulk import. Replies added on the source platform after initial import currently do not sync via webhooks.
  • Product mapping — we match by Shopify product ID

What doesn’t get imported

  • Helpful / not-helpful votes — schemas differ per platform
  • Source-platform-specific fields — custom attributes or tags specific to your old tool
  • Reviews with no product match — skipped rather than silently misplaced

Moderation status on imported reviews

Imported reviews preserve the source platform’s status:

  • Approved on Okendo → approved in BetterReviews (publishes on the widget)
  • Pending on Okendo → pending in BetterReviews
  • Rejected on Okendo → rejected in BetterReviews

If the source status is missing, we default to pending. There is no “import as pending” toggle — status always comes from the source.

Imported reviews do not run through your auto-approve rules (those only apply to reviews submitted through BetterReviews’ own flow).

Ongoing sync vs one-time import

Two modes:

One-time historical import

When you connect a platform, we fetch every historical review. This runs in the background and usually finishes within an hour for stores under 10,000 reviews.

Ongoing webhook sync

After the historical import, we subscribe to the platform’s webhooks (where available) so new reviews continue to flow into BetterReviews. Useful during a transition period when you haven’t fully switched yet.

Judge.me caveat: webhook sync requires the Awesome plan. On the free Judge.me plan we can still do the one-time import, but you’d manually resync via the “Sync Reviews” button to pull new reviews.

You can disconnect anytime. Disconnecting stops the ongoing sync; previously imported reviews stay in BetterReviews.

Timing and scale

Typical import speed:

  • Under 1,000 reviews — under 5 minutes
  • 1,000 – 10,000 reviews — under an hour
  • 10,000 – 100,000 reviews — a few hours, often runs overnight
  • 100,000+ — we batch to respect source-platform rate limits; reach out first

You can use your BetterReviews admin during the import. The Reviews tab populates incrementally.