A review vs testimonial question comes down to who holds the words. A review is posted by your customer on a platform you do not control, such as Google. A testimonial is given to you, with their permission, so you can display it. That one difference decides what you are allowed to do with each.
ReviewMix handles both, and it treats them differently on purpose: Google reviews are imported read-only, and testimonials arrive through a collection page that records the customer's consent field by field.
What's the difference between a review and a testimonial?
The difference between a review and a testimonial is ownership and permission. A Google review belongs to the platform and its author: the business can reply, but it cannot edit or delete the review. A testimonial is a statement the customer gives the business for display, and it can only be shown in the way the customer agreed to.
- Review: public on the platform, unprompted or prompted, star-rated, visible whether you like it or not.
- Testimonial: given to you, chosen by you for display, shown only with the customer's permission.
Who owns a Google review, and can you use it on your site?
A Google review is the reviewer's words published on Google, under Google's terms. A business can show its Google reviews on its own website through a reviews widget, which displays them as Google reviews, with their stars and author names as they appear on Google.
What a business should not do is copy a review's text into its own marketing as if it were a testimonial given to the business. ReviewMix imports Google reviews through the Google Business Profile API and shows them unchanged. ReviewMix never edits or deletes a Google review.
What a testimonial needs before you publish it
A testimonial needs the customer's consent for every detail you show. Under GDPR, a customer's name, photo and company are personal data, and agreeing to share the words does not mean agreeing to share all of those.
On a ReviewMix collection page, the customer chooses separately whether their name, photo and company may be shown, and whether the testimonial may be used in paid advertising. Each choice is stored with its time and the version of the wording the customer saw. The customer also receives a private link to view, edit, withdraw or export their testimonial later, on every plan including Free.
A testimonial without a record of consent is hard to defend if the customer later asks why their name is on your homepage.
How to collect testimonials with consent walks through the customer's side of that page.
Review vs testimonial: when to show each, or both
Show Google reviews when a visitor wants independent proof, and testimonials when they want detail about a specific kind of work. Reviews carry weight because the business cannot choose them. Testimonials carry detail because the business can ask the right question.
- A café or salon: Google reviews do most of the work; volume and recency are what visitors check.
- A trade or agency: a testimonial that names the job and the result answers questions a star rating cannot.
- Most businesses: both, side by side, labelled for what they are.
The ReviewMix widget shows Google reviews and approved testimonials in one place, in a grid, list or Marquee layout (a continuously scrolling strip). How to show Google reviews on your website covers the embed step.
