83% of Americans say that word-of-mouth recommendations influence them to purchase certain products or services, making it one of the top sales strategies for businesses.
In the era of Google reviews, your brand trust and reputation are built and spread online.
Therefore, the reviews you get and how you handle those reviews play a crucial role in your business's success.
There are numerous ways of addressing customer reviews online — from manual replies to choosing a response software or even asking your community to moderate the online review platforms.
In this article, we will guide you through the eight best software solutions for review response and reputation management, their pros, cons, and price range. By the end of this article, you will find your perfect fit for responding to online reviews.
We will use the following criteria when reviewing and comparing eight different review management software:
ResponseScribe is a people-powered review response service for local businesses. We connect with over 50 review sites small businesses use and provide personalized, professional responses to customer reviews within 24 hours. We’re always open to adding more industry-specific websites per your request.
Our US-based team of expert responders has been responding to positive and negative feedback across different websites for over ten years. Nowadays, we have adopted AI as well, so we offer a combination of AI and human responders to provide high-quality responses to customer reviews.
The way we work is simple — our software monitors each new review your customers submit, and our team or artificial intelligence (or both) write a reply.
Response time varies from 1 hour (AI-generated) to 24 hours (human-generated), ensuring that your customers get a prompt response.
With ResponseScribe, businesses can decide which types of responses are forwarded to them and their team, and they can edit, request a revision, or post the response live directly from their account.
Our team doesn’t write generic responses but takes the time to familiarize themselves with your brand’s values and voice before responding.
If you opt-in for the AI service, we train the algorithm on your previous responses to meet the tone and style and never miss important brand details in the auto-generated responses you get.
ResponseScribe is best suited for small local businesses that will benefit from nurturing positive two-way communication with their customers online.
Pros
Cons
Price
ResponseScribe offers flexible payment options that vary depending on two factors: how many reviews you receive per month (up to 25, 50, 100, or 200) and whether you want AI-powered, human-powered, or combined responses.
If you have up to 25 reviews per month, the price goes as follows:
Mara Solutions is a response-generating software, integrated with AI to reply to any type of review, and provide you with an unlimited number of different versions of replies, until you are satisfied with the outcome.
This software supports reputation managers responding to dozens of reviews daily (e.g. hotel managers or social media managers of catering services).
Mara Solution offers API Key that enables you to integrate it within your own website. With its implementation, you can use their software as an assistant in responding to your customers directly from your website.
For every other review site, such as TripAdvisor, Google, or your Facebook Page, you would need to copy-paste the review into Mara for it to create a response. Therefore, this solution takes a lot of time to go back and forth when your listing is available on other platforms.
This tool is created for generating responses only, and the text it generates is quite generic rather than industry-specific. As for the review management part, you are still required to collect, copy, and administer the reviews by yourself across all the platforms.
Overall, if you need an AI integration for writing prompt responses for reviews on your website, Mara Solutions can be a good fit. Otherwise, you can use free AI software such as ChatGPT to generate a response and copy-paste it onto other websites.
Pros
Cons
Price
Mara Solutions offers four different payment plans. You can pay per use, 0.40€ per answer, or select one of the monthly plans with a limited response number:
ReviewReply is a monitoring and review management software that connects with your online listings and handles your reviews on Facebook and Google. Each new review gets collected, read, and replied to by an AI in your name.
The tool is an AI-based one only, they do not offer human-written responses. However, there is a final human check before submitting any answers, which is the service they provide on top of the reputation management software itself.
ReviewReply offers tailored responses to match your brand voice for an additional fee. This review management software has a team that will collect reviews and your responses from the past and train their tool to create new answers on your behalf.
Moreover, their offer involves statistics and insights into customer engagement and other metrics relevant to your reputation management.
However, not all of these features are available in each plan. The Lite plan includes copy-paste response-generating software, such as the one in Mara Solutions.
The Pro plan comes with the automated posting of replies, while other features, such as branded answers, are only available in a Custom plan. Both plans are limited to Facebook and Google only, so the software might not be convenient for businesses with listings on industry-specific sites (e.g. niches such as home services, real estate, or automotive).
Pros
Cons
Price
ReviewReply has three different plans available:
Reviews.io is an online review management software that helps businesses manage reviews and gather social proof for the products they sell online. This tool allows you to collect customer feedback along with attached photos and videos across social media to boost your online reputation.
Managing customer reviews with Reviews.io essentially means gathering every positive customer experience and creating a review collection you can use for your marketing campaign. It is a good marketing tool for an online business looking to establish a strong name and connect with local customers.
Reviews.io is a review management software designed to help you boost your sales. Besides social media platforms, the app also allows you to collect reviews through surveys and SMS and feature your most loyal customers on your site.
Its primary purpose is to intrigue potential customers to convert and make a purchase. It does not offer a direct communication channel with current and new customers, so you would still have to type responses to each review manually.
For online review management software, it offers a large set of features useful for a brand looking to establish a positive online presence.
However, the downside remains that you would have to monitor new reviews and create original and branded answers on your own.
Pros
Cons
Price
Reviews.io offers three pricing plans:
Jounce.ai is a copywriting tool powered by AI, that supports generating original copy for responding to customer feedback. Furthermore, their artificial intelligence can help you turn your reviews into:
With 70+ templates available, this AI tool can serve as reputation management software by turning your best products and services into content that gets noticed online. For example, it can create a newsletter that promotes your best-selling products by highlighting positive reviews delivered by happy customers.
You can use this AI software to write unlimited copy for everything you might need for an online marketing campaign. However, it is not specialized for responding to online reviews, but it is rather a marketing tool such as Reviews.io with a primary goal of attracting new customers rather than building relationships with old ones.
Pros
Cons
Price
It is free to create an account with Jounce.ai, however, it is only available for generating a small number of words (e.g. one blog post). The price range goes from:
Podium is an all-in-one tool for nurturing your relationships with clients – from scheduling appointments to requesting a review and responding to them. It is a review management software that sends automatic review invites and responds to delivered reviews with AI-generated content.
Besides managing customer reviews, it offers a set of other features:
Podium is a lot more than just an online review management tool – it comes with a variety of options to follow up and communicate with your regular clients. The idea is to manage your whole business within one app – from scheduling appointments to invoicing clients and asking for reviews.
It is a good reputation management software considering the full service it provides, but not a classic review management software that monitors the reviews you receive on different platforms. This solution is not ideal if you need software that will scan across industry-specific sites. It is rather an SMS tool tied to your Google listing. Read more about it in the Podium vs Responsescribe article.
Another downside is the lack of human responses – the app fully relies on AI to manage the entire conversation. Due to the numerous features available, and the high price range, Podium might not be the best solution for small local businesses. Check out this article if you are looking for Podium alternatives.
Pros
Cons
Price
Podium offers three different options to choose from:
Birdeye offers a review management tool that has you covered on Google, Facebook, and 200+ sites. It manages your listings, and online reviews, by responding to positive and negative feedback.
The tool enables you to automate review requests and manage all reviews you receive in a single inbox, no matter where they have been posted. The app does not actually write the reviews for you, but it offers the ability to save pre-written templates or automate responses based on the source of the review.
Besides the ability to manage customer reviews, you can also explore mass texting, webchat, gather customer feedback through surveys, manage appointments and payments.
Birdeye covers all customer interactions crucial for a service business, enabling you to post on social media within the app, and have all reputation management aspects in one place.
The ultimate goal of integrating this customer review management platform is to improve your SOE and increase local search traffic for your business.
However, when it comes to interactions with customers, even though receiving all reviews in one inbox is handy, you would still have to type the responses by yourself, which can be quite time-consuming.
Even though this solution is designed to accommodate different business scales, it is best suited for services that are spread across multiple locations. You can get the most out of its advanced features if you grow beyond your local business. Check out Birdeye competitors for a detailed comparison.
Pros
Cons
Price
The total cost varies depending on the set of products you purchase and the number of locations. The price for each plan is:
NiceJob advertises as a review management software that uses positive reviews to boost customer engagement and improve the online reputation of local businesses. It uses reputation marketing strategies to generate new reviews, and then the review management process to strengthen brand trust and loyalty online.
This tool allows you to send automated review requests via SMS and email, collecting more reviews faster and then distributing them on your social media account to attract potential new customers.
The online review management that NiceJob provides includes gathering new feedback and improving your marketing strategy, but it doesn’t offer a solution for responses and managing negative reviews.
When it comes to responding to reviews, whether to thank your most loyal customers and invite them to visit again or to do damage control over bad feedback, you are on your own. You need to get additional software for monitoring and typing the answers or respond to each feedback manually. Check out this Nicejob review for more information.
Pros
Cons
Price
NiceJob offers a free plan and two paid options:
An ideal review response software should do just that – respond to reviews. The best solution covers your review management completely – monitors reviews across all relevant platforms, creates original and branded responses, and posts them on time. Cutting-edge AI technology gives you an advantage when delivering prompt responses, as long as the software is trained on quality content written by a team of expert responders.
ResponseScribe offers just that – an efficient blend of professionals and AI that has you covered throughout the whole process of review management.
Leave your reviews with us, and focus your time and creativity for your business to thrive.
Start your free trial and enter a new stage of quality customer relationships. Our team of experts is here to help you establish the online reputation your services deserve.
Done-for-you review response service for local businesses.
Part of the Shout About Us family.
