How to Switch from Loox to BetterReviews

What it costs

Loox now has three tiers: a free Beginner plan (capped at 500 total orders, review request emails and widgets but no AI features), $49.99/mo (Convert) with 300 orders included and $50 per additional 300 orders, and $299.99/mo (Loox Unlimited). Order-volume charges on Convert climb as you grow. (Checked against the Shopify App Store listing, August 31, 2026.) BetterReviews Unlimited is $149/mo: unlimited orders, reviews, and review request emails, with 1,000 AI-collected reviews included every month.

That means $149 sits above Loox Beginner and Convert’s base, and below Loox Unlimited. If Loox Beginner or base Convert covers your volume, BetterReviews costs more. Here is what the difference buys — a dedicated CSM, AI-guided collection, and a bill that never counts orders.

Someone runs it for you. Daniel does the migration himself, gets the widget and star rating block placed on your theme, and reads your dashboard once a month to tell you what your reviews are actually saying. Same person every time.

Reviews detailed enough to put in marketing. Loox asks for a photo and a line of text. BetterReviews collects through a short conversation that asks follow-up questions. On Missouri Star Quilt Company, a co-founder’s store and the first store this was built for, the switch took average review length from 17 words to 38, and the share of reviews detailed enough to use in marketing went from 9% to 45%.

If your storefront identity is a Loox photo wall and short captions are all you need, Loox is doing its job and this is not a switch worth making. This page is for stores that want the text to carry weight too.

Installing is free and asks for no charge approval, so a long migration costs you nothing. Import your reviews, run the widget on them, and take as long as you need. Billing and the 14-day free trial both start when you switch review collection on.

Common fears addressed

”I’ll lose my photo reviews”

You won’t. Loox’s CSV export includes photo URLs, and BetterReviews preserves them through import. Your existing photo reviews keep their images and continue to display in the widget after migration.

That said: Loox’s storefront widget is heavily photo-first by design — masonry photo grids, video tiles, etc. BetterReviews’ widget shows photos but isn’t built around them the same way. If your storefront identity depends on a Loox-style photo wall, the visual change post-migration will be noticeable.

”What about my referral program?”

Loox bundles a referral program with reviews. BetterReviews doesn’t have a referral product — we focus exclusively on reviews. If you use Loox referrals, you’ll need a separate referral app (Smile.io, ReferralCandy, Friendbuy) after migrating reviews to BetterReviews.

The referral migration is independent from the reviews migration. Plan them as two projects.

”Loox emails customers to upload photos. Does BetterReviews?”

BetterReviews collects reviews through AI chat conversations. The chat asks for photos naturally when it makes sense — “did you take any photos of it in use?” — and the customer either uploads or skips. We don’t have a dedicated “upload your photo” email flow the way Loox does.

On the store this was measured on, 9.8% of reviews came back with a photo, up from 5.3% on a standard form. Loox’s photo-first flow typically gets 30-50%. If photo volume is core to your brand, this is a real tradeoff.

”Will I lose my reviews?”

No. Loox supports CSV export including photo URLs, and a person on our team runs the import: original dates, star ratings, text, photos, and product associations all come across, plus verified buyer status when present in the export. We send you a count-match report per product, reviews in on Loox against reviews out on BetterReviews, so you can see nothing went missing.

What you keep, what changes

You keep:

All your existing reviews with original dates, ratings, text, and photo URLs
Verified-buyer badges (when present in Loox’s export)
Rich snippets for SEO — Google re-indexes within 2-4 weeks

You change:

Widget layout. BetterReviews ships our own widget — less photo-first than Loox, but customizable.
Star rating placement. Loox’s star-rating widget is a separate block from the review list. BetterReviews ships both as composable theme blocks; you’ll need to swap them in the theme editor.
Collection mechanism. Loox’s photo-request emails get replaced with BetterReviews’ AI chat conversations.
Referral program. Goes away — migrate to a dedicated referral app separately.

You keep (consent behavior is identical): Loox sends review-request emails as transactional post-purchase messages by default — to every customer, not just marketing-opted-in ones — under their Transactional mode. BetterReviews uses the same default classification. Switching from Loox to BetterReviews doesn’t change your send volume because of consent gating; if Loox was reaching your customers, BetterReviews will too. (For the rare merchant whose legal team requires the stricter explicit-opt-in rule, BetterReviews has a Require marketing consent setting in Collect → Marketing-consent gate — see Marketing consent.)

You lose:

Loox’s referral program (move to Smile.io, ReferralCandy, etc.)
Loox’s photo-upload incentive flow (BetterReviews asks for photos in chat instead, with lower opt-in rates)
Loox’s photo-wall widget aesthetic

Before-you-switch checklist

Decide if photo-first identity matters. If your storefront’s hero element is a Loox photo wall, the post-migration look is noticeably different.
Export your reviews from Loox with photo URLs included. Settings > Export.
Plan referral migration separately. Pick a referral app (Smile.io, ReferralCandy, Friendbuy) and migrate that workflow independently.
Document your current widget setup. Screenshot photo grid placement, star rating positions, and any custom CSS.
Audit your theme for Loox snippets. Plan 15 minutes for cleanup after uninstall.

The migration process

1. Export from Loox, hand the CSV to us

Go to Settings > Export in Loox. The CSV includes review text, ratings, dates, customer info, photo URLs, and product associations. Then install BetterReviews: onboarding step 1 (/onboarding/connect) accepts the Loox CSV via the “Yotpo, Loox, or other” card, and a person on our team takes it from there. No import wizard for you to babysit, and we send you a count-match report per product.

Photo URLs come through the importer and continue serving from Loox’s CDN initially. We rehost to BetterReviews’ own R2 storage in the background so photos keep working even if you uninstall Loox later.

2. Add BetterReviews to your theme

Onboarding step 2 (/onboarding/test-product) lets our team swap your widget on a single product and validate end-to-end before you commit to a full cutover. About one business day. This is where you’ll see the BetterReviews widget aesthetic side-by-side with the Loox aesthetic — useful for catching brand-identity issues before they go store-wide.

3. Keep new collection off until cutover

Don’t enable BetterReviews collection while Loox is still collecting. Run a single product on BetterReviews first, validate it, and only then flip collection at the /cutover surface. This avoids dual-sending review requests to your customers.

When you’re ready, the cutover surface flips collection_enabled and digest_enabled atomically. Before that, BetterReviews stays in observe-only mode on the imported library.

4. Verify your Google stars, swap widgets, then remove Loox

Add the BetterReviews widget (and star rating block) in your theme editor and verify your product pages look right. We run your product pages through Google’s own testing tools until the stars read from BetterReviews. After that check passes, and not before, uninstall Loox. Grep your theme for loox references and remove any leftover snippets.

If you use Loox’s referral program, do NOT uninstall the Loox app yet — switch the Reviews-specific configuration off but keep the app installed until your replacement referral app is wired up.

Note: The BetterReviews team handles the import and assists with widget setup. The migration is a handoff, not a DIY project, and billing starts when your widget goes live on your storefront, not at signup (first-time installs; returning subscribers bill on Shopify approval).

Auto-moderation and your imported reviews

Imported reviews keep the status they had in Loox (approved stays approved; pending stays pending). They are not put through BetterReviews’ auto-moderation preset — even if you later switch from Manual to a non-manual preset, the retroactive re-scoring only touches reviews collected through BetterReviews’ AI chat or public form. Imported pending reviews stay in your queue until you approve or reject them by hand.

BetterReviews vs Loox — full feature and pricing comparison
Loox vs Judge.me — how Loox compares to the free alternative

For the broader guide to collecting and displaying reviews, see the complete guide to Shopify reviews.