Reviews
A review is your own experience of a tool you have used. It can be as positive or as negative as your experience was. We never remove a review because it is critical.
Reviews are not allowed when they:
- are fake, copied, or not based on your own use of the tool
- were paid for or rewarded in any way, by the vendor or anyone else
- are written by someone who works for, is paid by, or competes with the vendor
- are about something other than the tool
- are abusive, hateful, harassing or threatening
- share someone's personal information
- state as fact something false about a person or a company
- are spam, adverts or otherwise illegal
The same rules apply to questions, answers and vendor replies. Opinions are welcome. Statements of fact should be ones you can stand behind.
Vendors
Anyone who confirms an email at a tool's own domain can manage its profile. Vendors can reply to reviews, invite their customers to review, dispute a review they believe breaks this policy, and keep their tool's facts up to date.
- Vendors can never edit, hide or reorder reviews, or pay to change a rating or a position.
- Invites must go to customers whatever they think of the tool. Inviting only happy customers is not allowed.
- Nobody may offer anything for a review, or for changing or removing one.
- Replies must be civil and must not try to identify or pressure the reviewer.
- People who manage a tool can't review it. If they had, that review is hidden when they claim the tool.
- Facts a vendor changes must be plain facts their own website states, not claims like “the best”. Changes show as the vendor's, and we undo any that aren't facts.
Reviews from invites are labelled, and an invite counts as weaker proof of use than a confirmed work email or a screenshot. We may remove a vendor's access for breaking these rules.
Every tool links to its own website the same way, whether or not its vendor has claimed it, and nothing a vendor does changes that. We mark a link nofollow only when we can't vouch for the site.
Anyone signed in can suggest a tool by its website, and anyone can review it. A vendor can't stop a tool being listed or have it removed because of its reviews. We remove a listing only for a legal reason, or when the product no longer exists.
How we check content
Every review gets a trust score when it is posted. Proof of use (a confirmed work email or a screenshot checked by AI), an established account and specific detail raise it. Copied text, linked accounts and bursts of reviews lower it. Ratings are weighted by trust, so a few suspicious reviews can't move them much.
An automatic AI check reads each review, question, answer and vendor reply. Anything it finds is not genuine content, such as spam, adverts or abuse, is hidden, and a moderator looks at it. If the author edits it, it is checked again and published if it passes. Low-trust reviews stay visible but are left out of AI summaries and answers, and a moderator looks at them too.
Moderators are people. When they hide or remove something, they record why, and the author gets an email with the reason.
AI summaries and answers
Once a tool has 5 reviews, AI writes a summary of them. Anyone can ask a question that AI answers from reviews once a tool has 3. Both use only review text, are labelled as AI, and link to the reviews they came from. AI can get things wrong. If a summary says something the reviews don't, report it and we'll take it down.
Reports and disputes
Every review, question, answer, vendor reply and AI summary has a report link, and every tool has a way to suggest a correction to its facts. You don't need an account to report. A moderator reads every report and decides whether to take action. We never tell the author who reported them.
If you leave an email address or are signed in, we tell you what we decided. Vendors see the outcome of their disputes on their dashboard.
Legal complaints
If you believe something on askusers is unlawful, for example defamatory, report it with the link on the page, or email hello@askusers.org with:
- a link to the content
- what you believe is unlawful about it, and why
- your name and contact details
We look at legal complaints promptly and may hide the content while we do.
Disagreeing with a decision
Reply to the email we sent you, or email hello@askusers.org. You can also edit something that was held to fix the problem. If our automatic check held it, it is checked again straight away. If a moderator held it, a moderator looks at it again. See the terms of use for the rest of the rules.