Software review platforms are websites where people who use business software rate and review it, and where the platform sells the reviews, and data about who is reading them, to the software companies. They are also called peer review sites for business software. This page uses the United States as its example, because it is the largest market both for business software and for these sites.
For buyers, the site is free. A company that is choosing payroll software, a CRM or an accounting product reads reviews from people in similar companies. Each product has a page with ratings for ease of use, support and value, and comparisons with rival products. To keep the reviews honest, the platform checks that each reviewer really uses the product, for example by asking for a screenshot of it or a work email address. It also marks the reviews whose writers received a gift card for writing them.
The platform earns from the software companies in two ways. First, a company can pay for a fuller product page, and for the right to use its ratings in its own advertisements, such as a badge saying it was rated a leader in its category. Second, and more valuable, the platform sells buyer intent data. A visit to a category page or a comparison page is a sign that a company may be about to buy. The platform works out the visitor's company, usually from the network address of the office, without naming the person. It then tells each vendor which companies are researching its category.
Say an HR manager at a logistics company in Texas, with 250 employees, starts looking for new payroll software. Over two weeks, she and two colleagues read eight payroll product pages and compare two products side by side. One of those two vendors buys the platform's intent data. On Monday, its sales team sees that the logistics company has been comparing it with its main rival. A salesperson sends a short message, and the logistics company enters the vendor's CRM as a lead, which means a company that may be about to buy.
This data is combined with other sales data. Intent data providers combine signals from many websites. Technographics record which software each company already runs, so a vendor can find the companies that use a rival's product. The reviews are a dataset in themselves too: a vendor reads its rivals' reviews to see what their customers dislike. Selling reviews and visitor data in this way is an example of data as a service (DaaS).
How is it different from an analyst firm? An analyst firm sells the judgement of its own experts about a market. A review platform sells the views of thousands of users, and data about who is reading them.