How to get more Trustpilot reviews

Who is allowed to write a review?

Start here, because inviting the wrong people is the quiet way to lose the reviews you gain. Trustpilot's page on who can write a review sets four conditions.

• The writer is over 18.
• They had a genuine experience of your business, normally in the past 12 months.
• Nobody offered them anything for it.
• They have no conflict of interest. Employees, owners, family and competitors are out.

A purchase is not required. Someone who called you, chatted with your support team or started an order has had an experience. That is a bigger pool than most teams assume, and it is worth mapping before you write a single email.

Which invitation methods can you use?

Trustpilot groups its invitation methods into two kinds.

Automated is better for more than convenience. If every order triggers the same invitation after the same number of days, your process is fair by design and you can show that it is. The free plan includes 50 invitations a month, and our guide to what a Trustpilot business account covers sets out the rest. If you send more than that, our breakdown of the paid plans and their invitation limits shows what each one costs.

What do the labels on a review mean?

Trustpilot marks where a review came from. Its page on review labels lists four: Invited, Redirected, Verified and Unprompted.

Invited means you asked. Verified means the review is tied to a confirmed transaction. Unprompted means the reviewer came on their own. No label changes how a review counts toward your score. Readers still see them, and a wall of invited reviews reads differently from a mix. Our guide on invited and organic reviews explains what each one changes.

What makes an invitation fair?

Trustpilot's best practices page is short and strict. Two things matter most.

Everyone, not a selection. Invite all your customers. If you cannot, Trustpilot says to pick by an impartial method, such as every third order. The test to apply to your own process is simple. Would a customer who had a bad week have received the same email at the same moment? If not, you are choosing.

Neutral words. Ask about the experience, not about a good experience. "How was your order?" is fine. "Loved your results?" is not. Our guide on asking customers for reviews within the rules has templates you can copy.

A few more points from the same page and from Trustpilot's Guidelines for Businesses:

• One invitation per experience. Do not chase people who ignored you.
• Give the customer time to use the product before you ask.
• Do not collect reviews on your own device or in your own store without permission first.

Our guide to the invitation rules has the full list, with the wording Trustpilot itself gives as banned.

Why is asking only happy customers a problem?

The email that says "if you were happy, review us, and if not, contact support" is called review gating. It breaks two rules at once.

Trustpilot gives that exact wording as an example of what is not allowed. It also treats reviews gathered through biased invitation methods as fake reviews, even when every individual reviewer is real and honest.

The FTC's rule on consumer reviews covers the same ground from the other direction. The rule was announced in August 2024 and took effect that October. Section 465.4 bans compensation or incentives conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment. Section 465.7 bans suppressing reviews by rating or sentiment on your own site. That matters if you show reviews on your site, and our guide to choosing and setting up a TrustBox covers the star filter.

Gating also fails on its own terms. A profile of nothing but 5-star reviews invites doubt, and Trustpilot's labels make the pattern easy to see.

Why are incentives banned?

Trustpilot's ban is total. Nothing of value for writing, editing or removing a review. That covers discounts, promo codes, prize draw entries, refunds, freebies and loyalty points.

The FTC has shown what enforcement looks like. In its case against the telehealth firm NextMed, the agency said the company offered Amazon gift cards to consumers to remove or change negative reviews, and conditioned refunds on agreement to remove them. It also said the company used fake positive Trustpilot reviews. The final order landed in December 2025 with a payment of $150,000.

A thank-you that goes to every customer, whether or not they reviewed you, is not an incentive. A reward that depends on the review is.

What do you give up by inviting at scale?

One thing, and it is worth knowing before you switch the tap on. You cannot flag an invited customer's review as not based on a genuine experience. Trustpilot closes that reason for reviewers you invited.

In practice this matters less than it sounds. That reason is for reviews from people who were never your customers, and an invited reviewer was. Your other four reasons stay open, so a promotional review or a review full of personal information can still be flagged.

The trade is usually worth it. Invitations reach the quiet majority, and most profiles are short of those, not short of flags.

How much do new reviews move a TrustScore?

A TrustScore is not the plain average of your stars. Trustpilot's page on how the score works describes a weighted average with three inputs.

• Time. Newer reviews carry more weight than old ones.
• Frequency. How often reviews arrive matters, not just how many there are.
• A neutral start. Every profile begins with seven 3.5-star reviews built in, which holds down a score built on very few reviews.

Two consequences follow. A thin profile moves fast, because the neutral start is a large share of it. And a steady flow beats a burst, because the score keeps counting the recent window.

To see what a given number of new reviews does to your own score, use our TrustScore calculator. Our guide on how Trustpilot calculates a TrustScore explains the arithmetic behind it.

What should you set up first?

Where does removal fit?

Getting more reviews and removing rule-breaking ones are two different jobs, and they solve different problems. Invitations fix a profile that is thin or out of date. Removal fixes a profile carrying reviews that should never have been published, such as fake ones or reviews meant for another company. Our guide on fake Trustpilot reviews covers how those are spotted and reported.

Doing the second job badly makes the first one harder. Bulk flagging can end in a Consumer Warning, and while one is active Trustpilot hides the TrustScore, so the reviews you worked for stop being visible.

We do this work for clients through our Trustpilot review removal service, and the price per removed review is published. It is $475 to $600 per confirmed removal, with nothing paid up front.

For what a healthy review mix looks like in one category, see our telehealth page. It sets out the complaints these brands get and which of them stay online.