How SaaS.Vote verifies B2B software reviews

Anyone can type a few sentences about a product. What makes a review useful is what stands behind it: who wrote it, whether that person actually used the software, and whether they have a reason to be biased. Too often, a single “verified” badge is expected to answer all of these questions at once. We think that hides too much.

On SaaS.Vote, verification works in layers, and every layer has its own label. Each label answers one narrow question and nothing more. This post walks through them, explains how each one is earned, and is honest about what it does not prove.

Layer 1: a real LinkedIn account behind every review

You cannot write a review on SaaS.Vote without signing in with LinkedIn. There are no anonymous accounts and no email-and-password sign-ups for reviewers. On product pages, every published review carries the Verified User label, which simply means the author signed in with LinkedIn.

A few rules sit on top of that:

• One review per product per account. If your opinion changes, you edit your review instead of writing a second one, and the edit history stays public.
• The author’s name is shown on the review. The author decides whether to link their LinkedIn profile and whether their SaaS.Vote profile is public. When the profile is public, their current position and company from LinkedIn appear under the name.
• Verified on LinkedIn. Some reviews show this extra label. It appears when LinkedIn reports that the member has verified their identity there.

What it proves: a real LinkedIn account stands behind the review, and it is the only review of this product from that account.

What it does not prove: that the person used the product, or that their job title is accurate. LinkedIn profiles are written by their owners.

Layer 2: proof that the author is a customer

The Verified customer label is the strongest one, and it can only be earned in three ways. All three depend on the product’s own records or the product team, not on what the reviewer says about themselves.

1. Customer list. The product team uploads a list of customer email addresses. SaaS.Vote keeps only SHA-256 hashes of the addresses, never the addresses themselves. If the reviewer’s address matches an entry, the review gets the label automatically.
2. Product API. The team connects a verification endpoint on its own servers. SaaS.Vote sends it one email address and gets back a yes or a no, so the customer list never leaves the vendor. This option only works for teams that have proven they control the product’s domain.
3. Confirmation by the product team. A team member can confirm a reviewer as a customer by hand. This cannot be undone, and it appears in the product’s public moderation log as “Author confirmed as a customer”.

In the review feed, the label also names the method: “Verified via customer list”, “Verified via product API” or “Verified by product owner”. That matters, because the third method rests on the vendor’s word rather than on a record check.

Which email address gets checked

Automatic checks only ever use one of two addresses: the email of the reviewer’s account, which comes from LinkedIn, or an address the reviewer confirmed with a one-time code on the product’s review form. An address someone merely typed into the form is never checked against a customer list or an API. Otherwise anyone could enter a known customer’s address and borrow their status.

“Customer verification pending” is not a verdict

If no check has confirmed the author yet, the feed shows “Customer verification pending”. Often that only means the product team has not uploaded a customer list or connected an API. Checks are retried in the background, and when a team uploads a list, reviews still waiting for verification are checked against it again.

What it proves: the vendor’s own records, or the vendor’s team, recognize this person as a customer.

What it does not prove: how long or how deeply they used the product, whether they still use it, or that their opinion is fair.

Layer 3: an email for the product team

When writing a review, an author can add the email they use in the product. SaaS.Vote does not verify that address and never publishes it. Only the product’s team sees it, so they can find the author among their customers and confirm them manually, which makes the review Verified customer. Because anyone could type any address, it is never checked automatically against a customer list or an API.

Some older reviews carry the Email confirmed label: their authors confirmed such an address with a one-time code while SaaS.Vote still offered that. Personal mail services such as Gmail never got it.

What it proves: at the moment of confirmation, the author controlled the address they say they use in the product.

What it does not prove: that the author is a customer. That is why “Email confirmed” is a separate label and is not included by the “Verified customers only” filter on product pages.

Context label: Invited

This label does not measure proof at all. It tells you about the circumstances of a review.

Invited. The author came through the product team’s invite link, QR code or email invitation. The label is set by the link the reviewer followed, never by the team: a team cannot add it, remove it or choose which reviews get it. Invited reviews publish immediately under the same rules as other reviews. The label is worth noticing because vendors tend to invite customers they already have a good relationship with.

Who cannot review a product

Product owners, members of the product team and people whose LinkedIn workplace is the product cannot submit a review of that product at all. A connection can also appear after a review is published: the author may later take over the product’s profile or start working at the company. Such a review stays up, but its author can no longer edit it. Individual reviews cannot be deleted after submission.

Detection relies on who manages the product page and on the workplace LinkedIn shows. It can miss a connection, which is one more reason to look at the reviewer’s context yourself.

All labels at a glance

What no label can tell you

Labels describe the author, not the truth of the text. A verified customer can still be unfair, and an unverified reviewer can still be right. The optional details authors add, such as company size, role and how long they have used the product, help you find people like you, but they are self-reported and not checked. SaaS.Vote does not grade opinions. It shows you what is known about the person behind each one, and moderation removes reviews that break the rules.

That is also why labels sit next to other public context: the reviewer’s history on SaaS.Vote, the vendor’s reply, the review’s edit history and the product’s moderation log. Our guide on how to read B2B software reviews shows how to put these pieces together, and Transparent moderation: what the public log shows explains what happens to a review before and after it goes live.

For the short version, see How it works. If you run a SaaS product and want your customers’ reviews to carry these labels, read our guide to collecting honest reviews and see SaaS.Vote for business.