How to Move Reviews Between Shopify Review Apps Without Losing Them

You can move them, with homework. Judge.me, Okendo, and Loox all support imports from major competitors, but verified badges, media, and custom attributes are what usually fray in transit.

Treat the switch as an export, an import, a schema cleanup, and only then an uninstall.

Can I transfer reviews between Judge.me, Okendo, and Loox?

Yes in the common directions, using each vendor's documented tools.

Public help docs and listings (checked against each vendor's own materials) describe importers covering the usual rivals:

• Judge.me documents imports from Loox, Yotpo, Stamped, Growave, and related sources.
• Loox documents imports from Judge.me and other major review apps.
• Okendo documents imports across the major competitors, including the other two.

Always export from the source app yourself before you rely on a destination's "pull" importer. Keep the file. If the import partially fails, the export is your recoverable history.

For how these three compare as products, not just as migration endpoints, see Judge.me, Okendo, and Loox, or the wider three-way comparison.

What usually survives a review app export?

The core review record usually makes it.

Expect a spreadsheet or JSON-like export with product identity (handle, SKU, or ID), star rating, review title and body, reviewer display name, date, and sometimes reply threads. That is enough to rebuild on-page history on the destination.

What is fragile:

• Verified purchase flags, which may reset or need re-validation.
• Photos and video, which depend on media URLs remaining reachable and on the destination accepting those fields.
• Attribute ratings (fit, quality, value), which are Okendo's strength and often lack a clean column mapping in simpler apps.
• Syndication state (Google Shopping eligibility thresholds, coupon incentives tied to the old app).

Plan a spot-check list of ten products before and after import: review count, average, one photo review, one video review if you use them, and one product with attribute ratings.

For the column-by-column version of this, including why dates and product references cause most of the damage and how to recover rows that arrive without a product, see the fields that break in a review migration.

How should I run the migration step by step?

A boring sequence beats a clever one.

1. Announce a freeze. Pause major review-request experiments for a day so counts stop moving mid-export.
2. Export from the old app. Download CSV/JSON and, if offered, media. Store it outside Shopify.
3. Install the new app without uninstalling the old one yet.
4. Import using the destination's importer. Map product identifiers carefully (handle mismatches are the usual silent miss).
5. Reconcile counts on your spot-check products. Investigate gaps before you delete anything.
6. Pick one schema emitter. Disable rich-snippet / JSON-LD output on the app that will not own markup. Duplicate review schema is the migration foot-gun.
7. Point the theme at the new widgets. Remove the old app block or embed.
8. Re-test Google's Rich Results Test and a view-source check so ratings remain machine-readable.
9. Uninstall the old app only after widgets, emails, and markup all come from the new owner.

What about review request emails and historical verified status?

Request flows reset; history is partial.

After the cutover, review request emails, reminders, and photo incentives come from the new app's templates and rules. Do not expect the old app's schedule to continue. On verified badges, assume some imported reviews show as unverified until the new app's rules say otherwise. That is annoying and normal; it is why exports matter more than screenshots.

If AI answer readability is part of why you are moving, remember that a new widget does not automatically fix client-side-only delivery. Rich snippets vs AI answers explains why Shopping stars and answer-engine citations are different success metrics.

Does switching apps change my rankings?

No. Not by itself.

Search ranking and AI recommendation are not toggles inside a review app installer. What you can break during a move is legibility: missing markup, duplicate AggregateRating, or ratings that only exist after JavaScript. Keep one clean rating story on the product page so assistants can read your ratings. That is eligibility and clarity, not a ranking upgrade.

AgentReady Reviews is aimed at the AEO side of that problem, readable ratings for answer engines, whether you collect with an incumbent or eventually with AgentReady. The migration discipline above stays the same either way.

Where should I start?

Export today, even if you are only thinking about switching. A current export is cheap insurance. Then decide the destination on product fit (Judge.me's generous free plan, Loox's visual widgets, Okendo's suite), run the import on a staging mindset with spot-checks, and clear duplicate schema before you celebrate. The free AI-readiness checker is a good post-cutover confirmation that rating data still leaves the page for machines.