Stamped's Auto-Publish feature lets you control when eligible reviews are automatically published to your storefront and ensures the process is FTC-compliant. This guide explains how Auto-Publish works, how verification and star-rating settings affect publishing, and how reviews from the Shop App are handled separately.
Important: Shop App reviews do not follow your Auto-Publish settings. Reviews collected through the Shopify Shop App syndication are published automatically and independently of your Stamped Auto-Publish setting. Turning Auto-Publish off will not stop them.
You can identify a Shop App review by the grey Verified by Shop badge and the View review in Shop channel link in the review detail panel. You can still manually unpublish an individual Shop App review from your Reviews dashboard.
To stop them syncing in altogether, go to Settings > Syndication > Shop App, toggle it off, and Save. Allow up to 48 hours for the change to take full effect.
In This Guide
- Best Practices for Publishing Reviews
- Responding to Negative Reviews
- The Do's and Don'ts of Collecting and Publishing Reviews
- How Auto-Publish Works
- Enabling Auto-Publish
- Disabling Auto-Publish
- Managing Pending and Archived
- Common Misconceptions
- FTC and review-publishing guidance
Best Practices for Publishing Reviews
We encourage you to publish all of your reviews (positive and negative) unless the review content is offensive or not relevant to your products or brand. By doing so, you can provide your customers with a genuine and broad understanding of customer sentiment about your products. You can publish with confidence as Stamped’s auto-publishing rules align with FTC guidance on review moderation.
Stamped’s auto-publish rules are aligned with Shopify’s Governance & Compliance, ensuring your brand is well protected.
Responding to Negative Reviews
If you do receive a negative review, we recommend that you respond to the review by thanking the customer for their feedback and asking how you can help improve their shopping experience. 95% of customers are suspicious of a brand’s credibility if it doesn’t have any negative reviews and 82% of customers actively seek out negative reviews. Learn more ways to manage negative reviews here.
The Do's and Don'ts of Collecting and Publishing Reviews
We strongly recommend that you follow these guidelines when collecting and publishing your reviews:
- Do collect and publish reviews only from verified customers and buyers
- Don't discourage your customers from submitting negative reviews
- Don't publish fake reviews on your store's website
- Don't publish reviews that you don't have the ownership rights to
The FTC advises not asking for reviews only from people you think will leave positive ones and, if you offer an incentive to consumers for leaving a review, don’t condition it, explicitly or implicitly, on the review being positive. Learn more about FTC guidelines here.
How Auto-Publish works
When Auto-Publish is enabled, Stamped evaluates reviews based on their verification status, star rating, and the publishing delay configured in your settings.
The minimum star rating determines which verified reviews can be published immediately.
Reviews that do not qualify for immediate publishing are placed in Pending. The configured delay is a countdown, not a permanent publishing block. Unless a review is moderated or archived before the delay expires, it can be automatically published when the delay elapses.
Enabling Auto-Publish
- Go to Settings → Customize → Reviews → Publish Reviews (this section is sometimes referred to as Auto-Publish)
- Toggle ON Enable Auto-Publish
- Select the minimum star rating needed for verified reviews to be published automatically
Note: Only verified reviews are eligible for immediate publishing via the minimum star rating. Unverified reviews are never published immediately, regardless of star rating.- They go to Pending and are published once the configured delay elapses, unless you moderate or archive them first. A review is verified only when the reviewer's email matches an order, and the reviewed product matches a product in that order.
Reviews submitted through the general Write-a-Review page are never verified by design.
- Select the number of days until all reviews that do not meet the above star-rating criteria are published
Note: 14 days (including weekends) is the maximum delay permitted, after which all reviews that have not been moderated in the Pending tab will be published - Click Save when you're done
Disabling Auto-Publish
Note: When Auto-Publish is disabled, new reviews are sent to Reviews → Pending and are not shown on your storefront. To keep a review off your site permanently, Archive it. Archived reviews are excluded from all Auto-Publish rules and never publish.
Unmoderated reviews left in Pending are still subject to the maximum 14-day publishing window, which exists so stores stay compliant with the FTC Final Rule on reviews. Archiving is the intended action for a review you do not want to publish.
- Go to Settings → Customize → Reviews → Publish Reviews (this section is sometimes referred to as Auto-Publish)
- Toggle OFF Enable Auto-Publish
- Click Save when you're done
Important: Auto-Publish does not control reviews collected or syndicated through the Shopify Shop App.
Managing Pending and Archived
Pending reviews require moderation when you want to control whether they remain unpublished.
If you do not want a review to be published through Stamped's Auto-Publish process, Archive the review rather than leaving it in Pending.
Archived reviews are excluded from Auto-Publish rules and remain unpublished.
Use Publish when you want a review to appear on your storefront, and Archive when you want to permanently keep a review out of the Auto-Publish workflow.
Examples
Assume the following Auto-Publish settings:
- Minimum star rating: 4 stars
- Publishing delay: 10 days
| Review | Verified? | Rating | Review Status | What Happens to the Review? |
| Review A | Yes | 5 | Auto-published | Published Immediately |
| Review B | Yes | 4 | Auto-published | Published Immediately |
| Review C | Yes | 3 | Pending | Published after 14 days if not moderated |
| Review D | No | 2 | Pending | Published after 14 days if not moderated |
Note: 14 days (including weekends) is the maximum delay permitted, after which all reviews that have not been moderated in the Pending tab will be published
Common misconceptions
If I set the minimum rating to 4 stars, 3-star reviews will never publish.
No. The minimum star rating determines which verified reviews are eligible for immediate publishing. Reviews below that rating can remain Pending and may be automatically published after the configured delay if they are not moderated or archived.
If I turn Auto-Publish off, no review can go live automatically.
Auto-Publish only controls Stamped's Auto-Publish workflow. Other review channels, such as the Shopify Shop App, have their own syndication and moderation behavior.
I can use Auto-Publish to permanently hide reviews below a certain rating.
No. The minimum star rating is not a permanent suppression filter. Stamped does not provide a setting to automatically suppress reviews simply because they have a low rating. If a review needs to remain unpublished within Stamped, use Archive.
Imported reviews follow the same Auto-Publish rules.
Imported reviews should be treated according to the applicable review source and Stamped's publishing workflow. If an imported review is subject to Auto-Publish, its verification status, rating, and configured delay determine how it is handled.
FTC and review-publishing guidance
Stamped recommends publishing genuine positive and negative reviews rather than suppressing them solely because they are negative.
Do not condition incentives on receiving a positive review, discourage customers from submitting negative reviews, or publish fake reviews. For current regulatory guidance, see the FTC Final Rule on Reviews and Testimonials and Stamped's related compliance documentation.