How to Move Your Reviews to a New Review App

Short answer: Export your reviews as a CSV, check which columns the new app can actually import, bring them in and publish before you touch anything else, confirm your site is pulling stars from the new app, and only then uninstall the old one.

What actually travels in a CSV export

Most review apps export the same handful of columns: customer name, star rating, review text and the date it was left. That's the core of a review, and it's the part every import tool is built to read.

Check the file before you trust it. Open it in a spreadsheet and look at the actual rows, not just the header. A review with a blank rating, or a name field that's actually an email address, will import wrong — you want to catch that before 200 reviews go live with the wrong stars.

If you're pulling reviews from Google, Facebook or Yelp rather than another review app, the export mechanics are different — see how to export reviews from Google, Facebook and Yelp for that path.

What almost never makes the trip

Photos and videos. A CSV is text. If a customer attached a photo to their review, the export usually gives you a broken link or nothing at all — the image itself lives on the old app's servers and doesn't move with the spreadsheet.

Your replies. If you wrote something back to a customer, that reply is a separate record in most systems, and most exports don't include it. Expect to re-answer your most important reviews by hand after the move, or accept that the replies are gone.

The verified-buyer badge. A review that shows as coming from a real order usually earned that badge by being matched against your store's order data at the time it was collected. A spreadsheet doesn't carry that proof with it — the new app has no order to check the review against, so the badge is one of the first things to disappear.

The link to a specific product. If a review was about one product on your site, that connection often doesn't survive either. Some exports include a product ID or URL column; plenty don't, and the review lands as a general review with nothing pointing at what it was actually about.

None of this is a reason not to move. It's a reason to decide, before you start, which of these you can live without and which are worth manually recreating for your best reviews.

The order that keeps your star rating from breaking

Export first, from the app you're leaving. Get the CSV down before you do anything else — cancelling a subscription can cut off your access to the export tool.

Open it and check the columns against what the new app asks for. Every import tool wants its columns in a specific shape. Fix mismatches in the spreadsheet before you upload it, not after.

Import into the new app, but don't publish yet. Most import tools land reviews in a queue or a draft state first. Use that pause to spot-check a sample against the original reviews.

Publish, then confirm the new app is what your site is actually showing. Load your live site and look at the star rating on a product page. If it hasn't moved, your theme or storefront is still pulling from the old source. If you're also swapping the on-site widget itself, not just where the reviews live, see what to look for in a review widget before you settle on one.

Only then uninstall the old app. Not before. If the new import turns out to be missing rows, or the ratings look wrong, you want the old app still there as your source of truth while you fix it.

Why running two apps at once can undo the whole migration

If you're on Shopify, this is the step people skip and regret. Many review apps write your star rating and review count onto two standard fields on the product — the same two fields your theme reads to draw stars on the product page. That's convenient when only one app is writing to them, and it's a problem when two are.

With both apps installed and both active, whichever one synced most recently is the one your theme shows. The number can drift between the two for hours or days while you're mid-move, and a shopper who refreshes the page twice can see two different ratings.

The fix isn't complicated: leave the old app installed but stop it from writing anything, confirm the new app is drawing the correct numbers, and only remove the old app once you've watched the live page hold steady for a day.

Should you switch mid-sale?

Not if you can help it. A product page that briefly shows no rating, or the wrong one, costs you more during a sale than any other week of the year — that's when the most new visitors are looking at that page for the first time and deciding whether to trust it.

If the move can't wait, do it on your quietest day of the week, and check the site again a few hours later, not just right after you finish.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will my star rating disappear while I migrate?
Only if you uninstall the old app before the new one is confirmed working. Keep both installed — one active, one silent — until you've checked the live page.

Do photos and videos come across in the CSV?
Usually not. A CSV is text, and images typically stay on the old app's servers. Check your new app's import documentation for whether it supports a separate media import.

What happens to my replies to reviews?
Most CSV exports don't include them. Plan to re-answer the reviews that matter most by hand after the move.

Can I keep both apps running afterward, just in case?
You can, but turn off writing on one of them if they touch the same rating fields on your site — otherwise the number your customers see can flip depending on which app last synced.

Do I lose the connection between a review and the product it's about?
Often, yes, unless the export includes a product ID or URL and the new app can match on it. Check a few rows before you import the whole file.

The Two-Minute Version

If Kudo is the app you're moving to, the review import screen takes that CSV directly — customer name, rating, review text and date — with no cap on how many you bring in, on the free plan, so testing the import costs nothing before you decide to switch for good.

Start free at getkudo.co.