Trustpilot

Trustpilot was founded by the company’s current CEO, Peter Holten Mühlmann, in Denmark in 2007.[3] He started the company when his parents started shopping online. At the time, he was studying at Aarhus University, School of Business and Social Sciences and would later leave university to pursue Trustpilot.

After raising $3 million in early venture funding from 2008 to 2010, Trustpilot received an initial capital injection from SEED Capital Denmark and Northzone in November 2011.[4] One year later, Index Ventures, SEED Capital Denmark and Northzone invested $13 million in Series B funding in Trustpilot, which the company used for international growth.[5]

In 2013, Trustpilot opened offices in New York and London. In the same year, the company was named Danish Startup of the Year at Next Web’s European Startup Awards.[6] In 2014, Draper Esprit (formerly known as DFJ Esprit) invested $25 million in Trustpilot, along with support from the existing investors.[7] According to VentureBeat, the Series C funding round would help Trustpilot “bring its online retail reviews service to the U.S.”[8] At the end of 2014, Trustpilot employed 325 people and 400,000 new reviews were posted each month.[9] According to Website Magazine, “Trustpilot soared in 2014,” and experienced “record growth with an 80 percent year-over-year increase in revenue.[10]

In May 2015, Trustpilot received $73.5 million in Series D funding. The investment was led by Vitruvian Partners, with contributions from all existing investors.[11] In March, 2015, Google announced it was launching product ratings in Germany, the UK and France. In order to do this, “Google is aggregating data in Europe from different sources” including third party aggregators like Trustpilot.[12] Trustpilot has a licensing agreement with Google, allowing Trustpilot reviews to be listed as Google Seller Ratings, or “Google Stars.”[13] Trustpilot employs about 700 people and roughly 1,000,000 new reviews are posted each month.[1] Trustpilot has published 50 million reviews about more than 228,000 brands [14]

Anyone can post a review on Trustpilot. User account creation requires an email address or Facebook account. Trustpilot lets businesses collect and respond to reviews for free and offers specialized marketing and analytics features in their paid plans. Trustpilot generates income from subscribing companies who use its software to be reviewed by customers and gain business acumen from reviews.[15][16][17]

Trustpilot operates a freemium business model and earns most of its revenue from companies that subscribe to its services.[18] According to its annual report, Trustpilot’s revenue has grown an average 39% year on year since 2014.[19]

There are independent investigations that suggest that review websites such as Trustpilot may have fake reviews.[20][21][22] There is controversy about the legitimacy of some of Trustpilot's and other consumer review websites' reviews and the way that it deals with complaints about them, although Trustpilot insists that it strives to only include genuine reviews.[20][22][23][24][25] The firm allows businesses to selectively display reviews about them, which may violate certain laws or regulations.[23] Trustpilot featured fake reviews for Bizzyloans. Trustpilot deleted them after they were brought to light by KwikChex, an online investigations company.[26] Fake reviewers often steal the identities of real people to falsely build up reviewed companies' reputations. Trustpilot denies that it permits any known fraudulent reviews on its site.[27]

On 14 September 2017, Trustpilot issued an open letter clarifying its review policy following allegations concerning the 'validity of reviews of [online estate agent] Purplebricks by customers'.[28][29]

On 22 March 2019 The Times reported that estate agents Purplebricks and Foxtons are ‘gaming’ Trustpilot feedback by paying it to help gain better scores.[30][31]

Trustpilot reserves the right to remove reviews without any notice according to their policy. It insists that it always makes a bona fide effort to obey the law and its published policies to ensure that only authentic reviews remain on the website.[2]

Companies are allowed to respond publicly to reviews, or report a review if they believe it violates Trustpilot's user guidelines or they have no record of the reviewer as a customer. When a company reports a review, it is automatically replaced with a message indicating that it is being assessed. If the reviewer does not provide the requested information to Trustpilot (e.g. proof of purchase) within seven days, Trustpilot removes the review.[32]

Trustpilot may take "some time"[33] to investigate a reported review, so even if after investigation the review is reinstated, if more reviews have been submitted to the company's satisfaction in the meantime, the reinstated review will be substantially less prominent than when it was first posted.

Proof of purchase is not required to post a new review[34] so there is little incentive for a company to report positive reviews. Given the company will prefer to report negative reviews,[35] this has the potential to skew reviews in favour of the company.[2]