Importing Etsy reviews into Shopify or Judge.me: what's free, what's legal, what breaks

Moving an Etsy shop to Shopify involves choosing the right method for importing reviews, as there are three options with varying coverage and legal considerations. The first option is Judge.me's free Etsy sync, which pulls reviews over if you already use Judge.me. This method is free and fast but has limitations. It only covers active listings with written reviews and doesn't provide a file for offline archiving.

The second option is Etsy's own review download, which is free but undocumented. It's buried in the Shop Manager settings and doesn't provide a schema, so you'll need to verify important columns like review body, date, seller replies, and listing identifiers. The third option is generating a structured CSV manually by collecting review data into a spreadsheet.

Regardless of the chosen method, it's crucial to verify that seller replies, original photo URLs, and listing identifiers are preserved during the migration.

The FTC's Rule on Consumer Reviews and Testimonials (16 CFR Part 465) prohibits the display of fake or deceptive reviews and requires that reviews be for the same product and come from your own customers. When importing reviews, it's essential to map product handles or IDs correctly to avoid losing reviews during the process. Importing reviews product-by-product and keeping an offline copy of your review history is recommended. Remember, review history is an asset you can't re-earn retroactively.