The best Loox review alternatives on Shopify

Look, we get it.

You decided that Loox isn’t the right review app for you.

Maybe because of the pricing, maybe because of lack of features.

I don’t know your reasons. But I’m sure they’re legit.

Thus, we’ve decided to look at Loox Shopify Reviews, its direct competitors, and the best alternatives to help you make the best decision possible.

We’ve tested each of these tools:

1. Loox Product Reviews Referrals
2. Vitals | 40+ Shopify apps-in-one
3. Shopify Product Reviews app
4. Reviews.io
5. Ryviu: Product Reviews App

For better understanding and comparison, we’ll rate the tools based on the following criteria:

1. Ease of Use
2. Feature Score (How feature-rich some platforms are compared to the others)
3. Customer Support
4. Pricing
5. Aesthetic

TL;DR

Choose Vitals if:

You want to take advantage of 40+ apps in one offered at a cost-effective price with a significant speed boost to your store ⚡.

Choose Shopify Product Reviews if:

You don’t have any money to spend on a product reviews app ? Keep in mind that it will take a severe hit on the overall quality of design and functionality, as it doesn’t even allow posting photo reviews.

Choose Reviews.io if:

You are ready to pay a hefty premium on a Shopify reviews app with robust quality, a ton of functionality, and reviews are all you’re looking for.

Choose Ryviu if:

You’re looking for an affordable solution with the essential features of a product reviews app and without the extra fancy stuff.

Additionally, if you don’t have time to read our in-depth feedback on all the tools, you can check our quick overview section below.

Start a 30-day free trial of Vitals now.

Overview of Loox Shopify Reviews App

Loox Shopify Reviews app is currently one of the most popular options on the market. It’s essentially a Shopify app that helps you increase social proof by collecting reviews with photos and sharing them - on autopilot.

Loved by 100,000+ Shopify merchants, some found issues with it and have switched or are considering switching to something different, more tailored to their business’s needs.

That’s precisely why we’ll cover the pros and cons and suggest better alternatives to suit your business needs.

Advantages of using Loox Shopify Reviews App

• It’s straightforward to set up and use - Getting started only takes a couple of minutes, through which you’re carefully guided, so you don’t miss an essential step in the process.

• Compatible with pretty much all Shopify themes and is mobile-friendly - You don't need to worry about your Shopify theme not running correctly with Loox.
• Easy to import Aliexpress reviews and Amazon reviews (CSV) to your product reviews - This feature is quite handy for Dropshippers. Additionally, you can select which reviews to import and which not. This way, you can pick the reviews that speak most directly to your target audience.
• Support for multiple languages - Currently, it supports 17 languages, covering a large chunk of the world. This language support enables you to Send review requests and reminder emails in your native language. As well as translate all Loox widgets to your preferred language.
• Good customer support - Users reported never having issues with their customer support.
• Social sharing - The reviews you create are instantly social media ready to grab anyone’s attention.
• It doesn’t slow your website - You won’t have to worry about it slowing down your website and creating an unnecessary increase in page load time.
• It offers a free trial version - This is great because it allows you to test the tool out before committing yourself to use it.
• Fully customizable review request emails - Essentially, Loox will automatically send emails to customers requesting their thoughts on the products. Once the customers respond, the response is automatically saved and can later be published on the website.

• Customer discounts - Loox allows you to give discounts to customers that provide a review/testimonial.

Shortcomings of Loox Shopify Reviews App

• Pricey - Starting at $9.99 per month, with the most foundational features and the most expensive package is $100 per month. As you’ll read soon, there are more affordable alternatives.
• Lack of customization - Loox doesn’t offer you plenty of possibilities to customize your reviews.
• You can’t edit reviews - It doesn’t allow you to edit out grammar mistakes and wording of reviews (this is debatable as it’s both a good and a bad thing)
• It has a signature look - It’s recognizable on Shopify websites, even if you decide to customize it. Some scammy stores have used it, and sometimes it creates a bad feeling.
• Review request emails are not everyone’s taste - Some don’t like the look of emails for requesting reviews of the product. It can appear rather generic and dull.

• Loox branding logos only get removed in the “Pro” package, at $65 per month - Many SMBs aren’t willing to pay that amount when it’s only a single app in their toolkit.

Loox pricing

While $9.99 per month might not be a lot, most of the cool features and integrations are in the more expensive packages. The basic model is quite limited and entirely aimed at beginner stores that don’t have too many sales.

Final notes

If you’re looking for cheaper alternatives with more customization and more useful features, then read on ahead. Other than that, Loox is a decent tool for a large number of people who are willing to overpay for a single app.

Now let’s compare some Loox Reviews Shopify alternatives.

Vitals - One App to Rule Them All

Start a 30-day free trial of Vitals now

Unlike Loox or other alternatives on the list, Vitals is much more than just a product reviews app.

Featuring 40+ apps in one, it aims to be a single powerful app that replaces the need for a list of other commonly used apps. From product reviews, currency conversion, wheel of fortune, to pop-ups, countdown timers, search options, and so much more.

The aim is to provide your store with everything necessary to have better conversion rates and crush your e-commerce sales goals while only paying a single fee per month.

Start a 30-day free trial of Vitals now

As for the Product Reviews aspect of it, Vitals doesn’t fall short. Packed with fast importing capabilities, great onboarding, and a user-friendly interface, let’s explore the features.

Start a 30-day free trial of Vitals now

Some of the main features are:

• Multi-Photo Reviews
• Review Replies
• Import & Export Reviews in .CSV
• 1-click Review Import Tool
• Featured Reviews on Homepage
• Curated & Translated Reviews
• Auto-Request Review Emails
• Review Rating Snippets
• Verified Reviews Badge
• Fully customizable

Getting started is super easy. Onboarding only takes a few minutes as you browse through a list of 40+ apps and customize any of your liking tools. It’s enjoyable and easy to set up.

Reasons to choose Vitals

• Cost-effective - Only $29.99 per month for all 40+ apps (based on usage)
• 40+ tools in one
• Free-trial - Useful to test the tool without committing to using it
• 24/7 stellar customer support - No, like really - Here's the average response time for December 2020.
• Importing existing reviews is effortless - By merely importing data from CSV files, you can easily switch from Loox, Growave, JudgeMe, Ryviu, Shopify Product Reviews, Stamped, Yotpo, and nearly every other product reviews tool as well.
• Frictionless review importing from AliExpress. You can import up to 200 reviews in a single click after customizing your options - here's a quick guide.
• Frequent product updates and a community eager to help
• Zero website bloat & lighting fast loading because of Cloudflare caching functionality

Start a 30-day free trial of Vitals now

• GDPR compliant.
• Zero-coding needed. None of the tools will need you to know code to set them up and have it live on your store from start to finish.
• Product Reviews app in VITALS is one of the most widely used review apps on Shopify. It allows you to import up to 200 reviews/products in a single click. The reviews themselves can also be translated during import from AliExpress into local languages (in fact, even names also.)
• Compatible with all themes. Never worry about any of the apps conflicting with your theme.

Reasons to not choose Vitals

• It doesn’t have video reviews yet. But it’s a feature that will arrive soon.
• It’s not yet ready for enterprise e-commerce stores as it does not have SOC2 and SLA compliance.

Check out this independent Vitals review to understand more.

Vitals pricing

Start a 30-day free trial of Vitals now

The pricing is straightforward, at $29.99 per month, usage-based (tracked orders per month or revenue or page views, etc.), with no hidden fees. Most of the paid plan features are unlimited, so you won’t have to worry about reaching the limit. On average, most people will save money using Vitals as opposed to using multiple apps instead.

Check out Vitals’s customer reviews below:

Try Vitals Now

Who should use Vitals Shopify app?

If you want an all-in-one solution without the hassle of managing multiple accounts and apps on Shopify and having standardized quality, it’s a fantastic tool (we promise you won’t regret it).

You’ll be able to optimize your store for a higher conversion rate in many ways and save money in the process. Getting this app for your store is a no-brainer, and you’ll only pay a single monthly fee for over 40 apps in one.

Try it out with a 30-day free trial

Shopify Product Reviews - Free Loox Shopify Reviews Alternative

Shopify built the Product Reviews app as a free solution to collecting reviews. As opposed to other Shopify apps on the list, this tool is free and doesn’t offer many features.

Reviews have to be added manually, and the UI is not nearly as fancy as paid alternatives on the list.

It essentially hopes to:

• Increase sales
• Improve SEO results
• Offer a high level of compatibility with Shopify themes.

But here are its pros and cons.

What are its advantages?

• It’s free.
• In the most basic sense, it does the job.
• It doesn’t create bloat.
• Easy to set up if you just follow the instructions.

What are the downfalls?

• Doesn’t support photo reviews. For many people, this is going to a deal-breaker. Companies that rely on visuals should skip this one.
• It doesn’t support automatic importing. This can already be a massive turn-off for many people because manual importing takes time and someone to do it.
• It’s visually unappealing.
• No method to limit reviews to verified customers, unless through manual publishing where you can assess each review.
• A considerable number of bugs. For example, it doesn’t sync or display all of your reviews on the website sometimes.
• Doesn’t always sync reviews to the website.
• There’s no option to email customers for product reviews automatically.
• Users reported frequent error messages.
• It’s not particularly user-friendly when it comes to the user interface.

Shopify Product Reviews pricing

It’s free, so there’s not much to talk about here.

Who should use Shopify Product Reviews?

We would only recommend this Shopify app if, for whatever reason, you’re unable to spend any money on a product review app and would otherwise not use an app for reviews/testimonials at all.

Other than that, we highly recommend going with any of the paid alternatives as they bring a lot to the table and will be worth investing in for any store.

Reviews.io - High-end Loox Reviews Shopify Alternative

Reviews.io is another cool product/service reviews app. It is Google Certified and provides a seamless importing of existing reviews as well as collecting new ones. Other than that, some of its GMB and Google Ads integrations are essential to boosting credibility and sales if you’re running Google Ads.

Some of its features include:

• Google Seller Ratings
• Reputation Management
• In-store Reviews
• Video Reviews
• Review Adverts
• Merchant Metrics
• E-commerce integration
• Reviews in Salesforce
• Review Publishing
• Social Proof
• SMS Reviews
• Competitor Analysis

Let’s dive a bit deeper into its pros and cons.

Strongest points

• Very easy to set up and use. In particular, adding products was simple enough and straightforward.
• Beautiful yet simple UI. Everything is clear yet packed with information.
• Great onboarding experience - It’s easier to get started.

• Decent looking email templates for when asking customers for a product/service review

Unlike some of its competitors, they allow for a higher level of customization, which we found cool.

• Plenty of integrations - Currently, they have 23 integrations available, and more are added every so often.
• It allows you to discover influencers who bought your product through Instagram.

It enables you to link your Instagram account with Reviews.io, which is useful for publishing a gallery on your website or even moderate and engage with your audience.

• They offer great analytics for reputation tracking, net promoter score, identifying keywords commonly used in all your customer reviews, and so much more.
• It allows you to send email requests to someone through email or SMS.

Shortcomings

• Expensive. Besides the cool features they have, they are costly. Starting at $125 (+ VAT) per month, many small businesses won’t afford something like this. Additionally, many other alternatives on this list are far less expensive than Review.io and offer similar functionality.
• Debatable: You cannot edit reviews, change them or delete them. Being a Google licensed partner, the software doesn’t support changing reviews to guarantee authenticity.
• Average customer support - generic answers, sometimes slow response rates (might be due to the covid-19 situation.) For the most part, the documentation should be more than enough to solve most of the obstacles you might experience if it’s not contradicting itself.

Review.io pricing

At $125 per month (+ VAT), just for the “Small Business” (entry) package, we’d only recommend it to someone who heavily relies on reviews to get sales and has enough business revenue to support it.

Who should use Reviews.io?

Review.io is an excellent Shopify app and a Loox alternative. If you’re confident you’ll take advantage of the features it offers and won’t be held back from its higher pricing packages, we don’t think you’ll find it a low investment. But again, if you’re aren’t 100% sure, you might want to opt for a more affordable alternative at first that does most of the work without breaking the bank.

Ryviu: Product Reviews App UGC

Like other apps on the list, Ryviu is a product review app that helps businesses grow their business faster through customers’ visual reviews. What makes this app different are two things:

1. It’s more affordable than the competition; thus, you’ll save money.

2. It works well, without many of the fancy features other more expensive apps offer.

Ryviu strengths

• The engaging welcome screen onboarding experience

• They offer a free plan (with no Ryviu branding logo)
• Decent customer support. We’ve had no issues and hadn’t had to wait long until we got in touch with someone that can help us. Keep in mind that their live chat (ran on Intercom) is available from 8 AM to 5:30 PM on GMT +7, Monday through Friday (Weekends are off.)
• More affordable than competitors. On average, all plans are more affordable than most other alternatives in general and on this list. With the most expensive plan being $20 per month, it’s something that many SMBs can afford and will be able to utilize on their website to boost sales.
• Reviews widget settings offer plenty of customization options.

Ryviu shortcomings

• Some features require a Chrome extension. Importing from sites like Aliexpress, Amazon, Etsy, and DHgate is possible relatively easy, but you will need to download their chrome extension. If that’s not something that you care about, then you have nothing to worry about.
• They offer analytics, but at a pretty basic level. These metrics will hardly help you improve your workflow and will only keep track of the growth curve.

• The UI is not as polished and friendly compared to Reviews.io and Loox.app. While it’s clean, it also lacks the user-friendly vibe and community aspect. While using the app, it left a feeling of not knowing what the next step is, and there were no instructions to guide me through the process, which left us in confusion.
• Some people have reported small bloat on their website, causing a slower page load speed. The support responded that their app loads after the Shopify page are fully loaded; thus, it shouldn’t affect overall page speed. Our suggestion is to test it out before fully committing to using it.
• It lacks many excellent features present in other alternatives, but it’s also cheaper than other options.

Ryviu pricing

The free plan is a fair offer for beginners who use AliExpress primarily and won’t need more than 20 reviews per product. On the other hand, if you’re planning to utilize other platforms and have much more reviews than that, you’ll have to go for more expensive packages, which are still far cheaper than other alternatives on the list.

Comparison of The 4 Best Loox Reviews Shopify Alternatives

So, what is the perfect Loox Reviews Alternative for you?

“It depends” would be a suitable answer. But we’ll still try to give you a proper choice.

Choose Shopify Product Reviews if:

1. Saving money is your #1 priority.
2. You just want to get reviews up-and-running on your store without much thought to the overall experience.

Choose Reviews.io if:

1. Money is not a concern to you, and you’re ready to shell out $125 (+ VAT) per month on the cheapest package and up to $560 (+ VAT) per month on the most expensive one.
2. You want most of the features available.
3. You’re okay with not being able to edit customer reviews at all.
4. You want a good user experience, from the onboarding to overall later usage.
5. You’re only looking for a product review solution.

Choose Ryviu: Product Reviews App UGC if:

1. You’re looking to save money.
2. You want to get the job done without compromising on quality.
3. You are okay without having fancy features.
4. You want decent customer support.

Choose Vitals if you want:

1. Fresh product review design.
2. Customer support with a swift response time.
3. An all-in-one app with over 40 different products (not just reviews)
4. To save money, but also work on many other aspects of your store experience.
5. Pay a single monthly fee for all 41 apps.

Try Vitals now, with a 30-day free trial

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