Review policy
Standards for genuine, useful, and independently moderated reviews.
Effective August 20, 2026. These standards govern user reviews submitted to and published by Commerce Stack Guide.
Who may submit a review
A reviewer must be legally able to accept the site terms, sign in through the approved Commerce Stack Guide account process, and personally have used or evaluated the software within the previous 12 months. The reviewer must accurately describe whether they participated as an operator, administrator, decision maker, evaluator, agency user, or implementation professional.
Who may not review a product
Current employees, owners, or officers of a vendor may not review that vendor's product. Direct competitors, review brokers, paid ghostwriters, and people submitting on someone else's behalf are also ineligible. Agency, consulting, affiliate, implementation, or other financial relationships must be disclosed and may require additional review or rejection.
Original, first-hand content
A review must be the reviewer's own work and reflect their honest first-hand experience. It may not be copied, purchased, written by a vendor or third party, or generated on the reviewer's behalf by an automated or generative-AI system. Review text may not include spam, promotional pitches, harassment, threats, personal information, credentials, confidential material, or unsupported accusations of unlawful conduct.
Identity and public display
Signing in establishes account control; it does not prove a purchase, every statement in a review, or product use. A reviewer may choose a public name or an anonymous label. Commerce Stack Guide keeps account identity and moderation information private and does not give vendors reviewer contact information or private verification material.
Human, rating-neutral moderation
Every submitted review receives a human moderation decision before publication. The same rules apply to positive, neutral, and critical reviews. Moderators may remove secrets, personal information, prohibited links, or mechanical formatting problems, but they may not change a rating or rewrite the review's meaning. If a submitted review cannot be approved without a substantive change, it may be rejected rather than rewritten.
Ratings and minimum sample sizes
An approved individual review may appear on its own. Overall averages, rating distributions, and dimension scores appear only after at least five eligible published reviews contribute to the relevant calculation. A subgroup comparison requires at least ten eligible reviews and no displayed subgroup smaller than five. Counts and applicable denominators are shown with the result.
Invitations, incentives, and relationships
Reviews are currently accepted as independent submissions. Commerce Stack Guide offers no incentive for a review. Any future invitation or incentive program must be disclosed and may never depend on a positive or negative rating. Material professional or financial relationships are disclosed with the review when publication is permitted.
Submitted reviews are final
A reviewer may edit or abandon a private draft before submission. After submission, the reviewer account shows only that reviewer's records and status, and the submission cannot be edited, deleted, withdrawn, or exported through self-service controls. A reviewer may use the contact process for a legally required privacy request or an account-security concern. Readers and vendors may report a published review for a specific policy reason; a report starts an investigation but does not guarantee removal.
Vendor responses
Vendor responses are not currently available. If they are introduced later, an authorized vendor representative must submit the response, it will be moderated and labeled, and it may not threaten, expose, or pressure a reviewer. Vendors cannot directly message reviewers or control the publication, ordering, or removal of reviews.
Editorial and affiliate independence
Affiliate availability, advertising, sponsorship, or a vendor relationship does not determine whether a review is accepted, how it is moderated, where it is ordered, or whether critical content is published. Review ratings do not determine inclusion in the directory or editorial comparisons.
Policy changes
The policy version accepted by a reviewer is recorded with the submission. Material changes receive an effective date and normally apply to later submissions. Earlier reviews may be re-examined when a documented safety, legal, privacy, or integrity issue requires it.