If you run a small or niche B2B SaaS company, review collection feels like a high-wire act. You need reviews to win deals and build credibility. You also need to stay on the right side of FTC enforcement, which has sharply accelerated, and respect each platform's specific rules. The problem is that G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot each have different policies on review incentives, and running the same campaign across all three will breach at least one of them.
This guide walks you through the real compliance rules on each platform, how to verify that reviews are genuine in an era of AI-generated submissions, and how to build a review strategy that actually holds up under scrutiny. You won't find generic advice here, just the practical details that protect your brand and your legal standing.
The three platform rulebooks and why they matter
Trustpilot bans monetary incentives outright. That means no gift cards, no discounts, no cash. You can request reviews, but you cannot offer anything of value in return. Violate this and you risk platform suspension and FTC liability.
Gartner (which owns both G2 and Capterra following the February 2026 acquisition) sets different caps on each. G2 allows incentive rewards up to 100 dollars per review, while Capterra caps incentives at 25 dollars. This structural split is important because many niche vendors now worry about over-reliance on G2-owned platforms. If you're trying to diversify your review footprint, you have to switch playbooks mid-campaign.
The FTC's core position is simple: disclose material connections. If you're incentivizing reviews, reviewers must know the incentive exists. The disclosure has to be clear, upfront, and conspicuous. Buried in fine print does not count. This applies across all three platforms, but how each platform enforces disclosure varies.
I recommend treating platform-specific caps as your ceiling, not as suggestions. Run one campaign per platform. Do not run a Trustpilot campaign that happens to also include G2. That guarantees compliance failure. Instead, build separate workflows for each platform with distinct messaging and incentive structures that align with each set of rules.
Detecting AI and verifying authentic customer reviews
Review platforms are now running AI detection at scale. Capterra verifies over 2.5 million reviews using human moderators paired with leading AI-detection technology to catch plagiarism and generative AI submissions. G2 runs similar checks. Both platforms reject reviews that fail authenticity checks before they ever go live.
This is good news for you. It means bad actors face real friction. But it also means you need to understand what makes a review look fake. AI-generated reviews tend to use certain phrasings, perfect grammar without personality, generic praise, and lack of specific detail about the reviewer's actual use case. Real reviews, by contrast, often include friction. They mention specific problems solved, timelines, team sizes, and sometimes criticism of particular features.
When you ask customers for reviews, push for specificity. Ask them to name one feature they use daily. Ask them to describe a problem they had before your software. Ask them how long it took to see ROI. These prompts naturally produce authentic, detailed reviews that pass AI detection and carry far more weight with prospects.
One hidden dynamic: Trustpilot has lower verification barriers than G2, which means it accepts more review volume but also means negative reviews hit harder. Since Trustpilot is less curated, a single bad review stands out more starkly. G2, by contrast, uses stricter verification, so negative reviews are rarer but also more contextual because readers see they come from verified purchasers. Understand this difference before you choose which platform to prioritize.
Building a compliant multi-platform review strategy
Start by choosing your primary platform. For niche SaaS, this is often the platform where your customers and competitors already congregate. Once you've chosen, build a separate workflow for that platform that respects its incentive rules and disclosure requirements.
Create a review request template that discloses the incentive upfront. Something like: 'We'd like to hear about your experience. If you post a review on G2, we'll send you a 50 dollar gift card as thanks for your time.' Make sure this language appears in the initial request, not buried later. Screenshots of this message protect you if anyone questions your compliance later.
For Trustpilot, remove the incentive entirely from your messaging. Instead, focus on the value of the review itself. 'Help other teams like yours discover what works' is a true statement and carries weight without triggering FTC violations.
Timing matters too. Request reviews when customers are most satisfied, typically after a successful onboarding or after they've hit a major milestone with your software. Early wins in the customer lifecycle produce more authentic, specific reviews than generic requests sent months later.
After your review goes live, resist the urge to game the system by deleting negative reviews or flooding platforms with requests. Platforms and the FTC both track patterns. Sudden spikes in review volume, especially from employees or contractors, raise red flags. Quality review growth over three to six months is far safer than a spike that collapses.
Responding to negative reviews without creating compliance problems
Negative reviews happen. Your response to them should acknowledge the feedback, offer a specific remedy, and move the conversation offline if needed. But do not offer compensation to reviewers who posted negative reviews in exchange for deletion or revision. That is textbook review manipulation and violates both platform policies and FTC guidelines.
A clean response takes two sentences: acknowledge what went wrong, and explain what you're doing to fix it. 'We hear you on the slow export times. Our engineering team is currently rebuilding that feature and we expect to ship an update by June. Reach out to us at support@yourcompany.com if you'd like to discuss this before then.' This shows other prospects that you take feedback seriously without trying to silence the reviewer.
If a review contains false claims about your software, you can flag it to the platform, but do this sparingly and with evidence. Most platforms will not remove a review just because you disagree with it. They remove reviews only when they violate their terms of service (like being completely off-topic or coming from a non-customer).
One framework to start with this week
Pick one platform. Write down its exact incentive rules. Draft your review request template with the incentive disclosed in the first sentence. Send it to your legal contact or your compliance person for a quick scan. Then launch a pilot with 20 customers and collect feedback on whether the request felt natural to them. Once you have five to ten reviews live, analyze what made each one specific and authentic. Use that pattern to refine your request for the next batch. This iterative approach builds compliance into your workflow rather than bolting it on afterward.