“Best company ever!”, “Great product!”, “Excellent service!”

When reviews like these dominate a page, can the service truly be that good? Consumer review platforms like Trustpilot were designed to aid our decision-making, but are actually manipulating our choices. Behind these effusive praises lies a multi-million dollar review marketing industry.

Can you trust Trustpilot? Follow SafePaper to see how Trustpilot works, how it manipulates the rules for profit, and some reliable alternatives you can opt for.

What Is Trustpilot?

Trustpilot is a review-gathering platform where consumers can leave feedback about businesses, search for comments on certain services, and make better decisions.

How Does Trustpilot Work?

Trustpilot is open to everyone. Consumers can register and post reviews. Businesses can claim their profiles to invite reviews, respond to comments, and flag inappropriate ones. All the reviews contribute to a “TrustScore” to reflect the company’s performance.

How does Trustpilot make a profit? It generates revenue through paid enterprise plans, which offer businesses additional privileges like inviting more reviews, getting deeper insights, gaining an embedded widget, etc.

Is Trustpilot Legit?

Yes, Trustpilot is a legitimate platform operated by the company Trustpilot Group plc, legally registered in Denmark and has offices in several countries, subject to local laws.

However, the legality doesn’t equate to credibility. It shares common interests with businesses, removes “fraudulent” reviews opaquely, and is unable to fully regulate fake reviews. All those controversies have resulted in a less-trusted Trustpilot for both consumers and businesses.

Can You Trust Trustpilot as a Consumer?

The simple answer is no. The following evidences suggest that placing your full trust in Trustpilot would be a mistake.

1. Fake Reviews

As anyone over 18 who has an account can review, the authenticity is unguaranteed. As a report by The Guardian shows, there are enormous 5-star Trustpilot review services on Freelancer. Businesses can easily buy Trustpilot reviews to manipulate consumer choices.

2. Privileges for Paid Enterprises

Trustpilot’s model of selling premium services to the reviewed parties creates a conflict. One of the most controversial parts is the TrustBox widget. It allows businesses to filter and display only 3-star, 4-star, or 5-star reviews on their websites. Furthermore, companies can manually select which reviews to display. This misleads website visitors into believing that all customers have left positive reviews about their services on Trustpilot, which is not true.

3. Reviews Were Deleted Unreasonably

As widely discussed on Reddit, Trustpilot frequently removes user reviews. As this screenshot shows, he/she left a negative review about a paid business account on Trustpilot, and uploaded all the necessary documents to prove, but this review was still deleted by the platform without being given a specific reason.

4. Personal Privacy

Another significant threat to Trustpilot is the risk of personal data breaches. Trustpilot officially introduced 5 methods for enterprises to invite reviews, 2 of which make the reviewers “verified”, but posed a threat to user names, email addresses, and other sensitive data:

• Trustpilot Business Email Invitation: Trustpilot encourages businesses to upload a CSV file with customer data to their Trustpilot Business account to start sending review invitations. This Trustpilot article explicitly states that the file should contain consumers’ names and emails, which we believe should be protected and shouldn’t even be collected.
• Automatic Feedback Service: Trustpilot AFS system is designed to automate this invitation process. The AFS setup guide explains that AFS will be triggered by adding Trustpilot as a BCC on the follow-up emails, which could possibly contain a receipt or other sensitive payment data.

While collecting user data might be a gray area for some e-commerce sites, it is a clear violation for services built on privacy. Especially for “no-logs” VPN providers, using personal data like emails to acquire “verified” reviews on Trustpilot is indefensible.

Is Trustpilot Reliable for Company?

Are businesses benefiting from this type of review marketing? Not necessarily. For big-scale enterprises, yes, it’s a paid service to amplify their voice. For smaller competitors, however, it’s a modern payola.

1. Paid Advantage of Removing Competitors

On a free business profile, 4 competitors will be listed in the “People also looked at” section to help make better decisions. However, the rule changes for paid businesses. They can choose not to display competitors, minimizing the chance of a visitor opting for competing products.

This creates a clear paid advantage. Given SafePaper’s focus on cybersecurity, the VPN industry offers a perfect example. A free profile, like Proton VPN’s, displays 4 “People also looked at” products, while a paid profile, like NordVPN, displays no competing products on the page.

2. Unreasonably Remove Positive Reviews

There’s a Reddit discussion about Trustpilot removing genuine positive reviews from verified buyers without warning. There’s no explanation, no notification to commenters, nothing. One Redditor on this discussion said he/she was actually being forced to pay Trustpilot in case their online influence continues to decline.

3. Business Reported Sales Outreach

Companies on Reddit also shared their bad experiences with Trustpilot’s sales outreach. After an unsatisfying test, this company said no to Trustpilot, after which those sales representatives reached out “a million times”, and deleted good reviews unreasonably.

4. Ridiculous Price Hike

Even if your business can afford a premium account on Trustpilot, chances are you can not in the future. A business owner previously bought on Trustpilot, but got an about 500% raise just because they’ve had a few hundred reviews.

Trustpilot Reviews Survival Tips

As Trustpilot continuously gains its presence in reflecting business performance, how to take those reviews wisely? Here are a few Trustpilot reviews survival tips.

1. For Consumers

Consumers should realize the “vocal extremes” bias. Most customers only take the time to write reviews when their experience is extremely good or bad, making it important to figure out what’s real.

💰 Pay Attention to Paid Profile

Check for signals of a paid business profile. Typical signs are a beautifully designed banner above and no competitors displayed after the “Contact info” section.

>> Check our NordVPN review for more insights on this provider: Is NordVPN Safe? Honest Analysis in 2025

📇 Check for Reviewer’s Profile

Be cautious of accounts without profile pictures or names, write on one or two reviews, and accounts that always comment on the same industry.

✅ Understand What Verified Means

Verified reviews only occur in 2 situations: when a business invites the customer to review through Trustpilot’s automated tools (with user data provided), or when a reviewer proactively provides documentation to prove their transaction.

2. For Businesses

If small businesses can not afford the payment. Here are still some tips to offset your negative presence on Trustpilot.

✉️ Claim Profile to Reply

Claiming your profile on Trustpilot allows you to reply to negative reviews timely. Explaining what users are confused about can offset the negative influence to some extent.

🚩 Flag Suspicious Reviews

You can flag any suspicious reviews if you believe it’s not from your genuine users or against Trustpilot policy. Your flag will be reviewed by the platform and may be removed.

📬 Reporting Non-Compliant Activity

Even if you have provided evidence and Trustpilot still fails to remove the false review, you can report it to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which handles misleading online reviews and unfair trading practices.

5 Reliable Trustpilot Alternatives

Instead of recommending the same controversial Yelp, here are 5 more reliable review-gathering sites like Trustpilot.

1. Google Reviews

Google Reviews is such a user feedback platform integrated with the world’s largest search engine. It requires users to log in with their genuine Google account, and does not make a profit from additional features to the reviewed parties.

2. Better Business Bureau (BBB)

Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a nonprofit organization that mainly helps resolve disputes between customers and businesses. Its ratings from A+ to F are based not only on reviews but also on other factors such as how the company handles complaints.

3. Consumer Affairs

Consumer Affairs is another alternative to Trustpilot, which verifies reviewers’ identities via email. Businesses can pay to verify their profiles and acquire potential customers, but cannot pay to remove or modify negative reviews.

4. TestFreaks

TestFreaks is a review aggregator that collects product reviews from multiple sources, including professional reviews, video reviews, and verified user comments. The multi-channel nature makes it more trustworthy.

5. Sitejabber

Sitejabber is an online review platform that features a strong community atmosphere. It displays a summary of a reviewer’s activity to help users make a decision, and offers a “helpful” voting button to highlight the most relevant reviews.

Conclusion

“It sucks”, “Disappointing”, “Don’t buy!”

Next time when seeing such negative reviews on Trustpilot, read the details between the lines. Trust lies in our critical thinking instead of star ratings on any platforms. As for businesses, beyond Trustpilot, build your reputation through solid products and sincere service, just like SafePaper does.

FAQs