Moderation Settings
Understand review approval, questions, photo intake, automatic filters, notifications, and the settings your plan can activate.
Screen: Settings → Moderation in both classic (v1) and new (v2) admin. You can also open Moderation → Reviews, Questions, or Customer photos and select Moderation settings. The screen title is Moderation settings.
Use the saved policy
Save settings must return Settings saved and reloaded. before you rely on a changed policy. If another admin has saved since your last load, reload and reconcile the values before saving again. A failed save does not confirm that the draft is active.
Load, change, and save settings
Open your store's settings
Check the loaded values and any plan upgrade message. Only an owner or admin can change settings; other users see Only an owner or admin can change moderation settings.
Edit the relevant section
The sections are Reviews, Questions, Photos, Filters, Notifications, and Review requests. Whole-number fields reject negative values; the pending publication deadline requires at least one day.
Check the save result
Save settings is disabled during loading/saving, without an editable configuration, for invalid numbers, or without owner/admin access. If the screen says some changes may already be saved, use Retry to reload before retrying. Do not assume an error means the store now uses the draft.
Reviews
| Visible control | Effect of the effective policy |
|---|---|
| Review approval → Automatic | New reviews are approved unless an active content filter holds them. This is the fallback for a store with no saved policy. |
| Review approval → Manual review | New reviews wait in Pending. Requires moderation.rules. |
| Review approval → Auto-approve 4+ stars | Four- and five-star reviews approve automatically; lower ratings wait. Requires moderation.rules. |
| Require a verified purchase | On/default requires a fulfilled purchase; Off permits signed-in store customers to write and submit unverified product-page reviews. It does not enable guest reviews or direct photo uploads. |
| Allow review photos | Controls the review-photo allowance; changing this field is gated by moderation.photo_intake in the settings screen. |
| Minimum review length | Sets the minimum comment length; zero means no additional minimum. |
| Auto-publish pending reviews after N days | Turns the pending deadline on/off. It defaults on at 14 days; switching off removes the deadline. |
| Days before auto-publishing | Changes the enabled deadline; disabled when the switch is off. |
To change purchase eligibility, open Settings → Moderation → Reviews, set Require a verified purchase, and select Save settings. Check Settings saved and reloaded. A fulfilled purchase remains verified even with the switch off; an unverified review receives no Verified Purchase badge and still follows approval/filter policy. For the signed-in non-buyer flow and eligibility troubleshooting, see Set who may review. Existing review attachments remain supported by the basic backend policy; the paid photo-intake entitlement governs the new gallery/direct contribution paths.
If you change Manual review to Automatic and pending reviews exist, Pending reviews offers Approve all, Keep reviewing, and Cancel. Approve all approves the pending set before saving the policy; Keep reviewing preserves that set while saving; Cancel cancels the decision. If the settings save then fails, already-approved reviews are not rolled back. Check the queue and reload settings before retrying. Changing approval by itself affects future submissions, not every existing pending review.
Questions
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Question approval → Manual review / Automatic | Controls whether new questions wait or publish. The selector is gated by moderation.rules. |
| Allow customer answers | Allows the signed-in customer answer composer when the public store capability enables it. |
| Customer answer approval → Manual review / Automatic | Controls whether submitted customer answers wait for approval. The selector is gated by moderation.rules. |
Q&A is a basic feature. A locked approval selector is different from having no Q&A support. See Questions & answers for the separate question and answer queues.
Photos
Send review photos to the gallery and Allow direct photo uploads from verified purchasers are independent switches, both off by default and gated by moderation.photo_intake. The first is for gallery intake from review attachments; the second is for the product-page Share your photo flow.
Save the enabled intake setting before expecting new contributions. Review attachments produce separate pending gallery candidates; approving the review is not approval of each gallery entry. See Customer photos.
Filters
These controls require moderation.filters.
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Flag links | Holds and flags content that matches the link filter. |
| Flag contact information | Holds and flags content matching contact-information checks. |
| Blocked words (one per line) | Supplies your blocklist; words are normalized and blank/duplicate lines are removed at save. |
| Duplicate detection window (days) | Checks repeated normalized text within the configured window; zero disables duplicate checking. |
| Reports before automatic hiding | Sets the required distinct qualifying reports before automatic hiding; reporting is available on free plans. Automatic hiding preserves featured state. See report troubleshooting for restored reviews and counts. |
A filter match holds a review in Pending and records a flag reason even under automatic review approval. Filters should target abuse rather than a particular star rating.
Notifications and review requests
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Merchant email digest → Instant / Daily digest / Off | Selects the requested merchant-email mode. |
| Email recipients (one per line) | Stores digest recipients; save normalizes, trims, and removes duplicates/blank lines. |
| Send customer email notifications | Opts into customer notifications; requires moderation.customer_emails. |
| Send review-request emails after delivery | Opts into requests; requires moderation.review_requests. |
| Request delay (days) | Sets the delay for requests; the default is seven days. |
| Send one reminder | Requests one reminder. |
| Reminder delay (days) | Sets the reminder delay; the default is seven days. |
Customer notification emails cover eligible public merchant replies, the first published answer to a subscribed question, and approved customer photos. Request emails use their separate request setting and entitlement. A preview or visible request card is not an email delivery confirmation. See Review requests for timing, opt-outs, and sending limits.
Instant sends merchant moderation updates to the saved recipient list; Daily digest groups them for the 9 a.m. hour in the store's timezone. Off stops merchant digest emails without turning off the separate customer-email setting or bell notifications. Customer reply/answer/photo messages are queued with a per-store limit of 60 per minute; additional eligible messages wait for a later run. A daily digest is separate from a review-request reminder.
Free and paid settings
| Entitlement key | Advanced feature |
|---|---|
| moderation.rules | Manual/four-plus review rules and the gated approval selectors. |
| moderation.filters | Automatic content filters. |
| moderation.photo_intake | Gallery and verified-purchaser photo intake. |
| moderation.review_requests | Request emails, funnel, and the review-request recipe. |
| moderation.customer_emails | Customer moderation emails. |
| moderation.import_export | Review CSV import/export. |
| moderation.audit_history | Review history. |
FREE retains basic auto approval, moderation decisions, merchant replies, helpful votes, reporting, and Q&A; the advanced keys above are locked. The intended availability for STARTER, GROWTH, PRO, and MAX enables those advanced keys, including events/history and request statistics. A custom zero price does not turn a paid tier into FREE.
If the events/history or review-request statistics card shows an error or a plan lock on an eligible paid tier, see troubleshooting. An access or load error does not establish that the tier lacks the feature or that your store has no events. If the reviews analytics card shows an error, check the review queue before relying on its counts.
After a downgrade, saved advanced values can remain greyed and disabled with Saved value — inactive on your current plan. and an upgrade prompt. The effective review approval falls back to automatic; advanced filters and new photo intake stop, requests turn off, and customer emails turn off. Existing pending reviews can still be approved or rejected individually.
Coming soon
Coming soon
Image safety scan, AI reply suggestions, Sentiment tags, AI review summary, and WhatsApp review requests have Coming soon badges and disabled Not available yet controls. They do not scan images, generate replies, classify sentiment, summarize reviews, or send WhatsApp requests.
Why don't customers see the expected result?
- If an events/history or request-statistics card shows a plan lock on STARTER, GROWTH, PRO, or MAX, ask support to check the store's entitlement access. These paid tiers are intended to include the feature; FREE remains locked.
- If the reviews analytics card shows an error, reload and inspect the review queue. Ask support about a persistent error rather than treating missing counts as an empty store.
- A draft is not a saved effective policy. Reload and check Settings saved and reloaded. after saving; a stale-save conflict needs a fresh load.
- A plan lock can leave a saved value visible but inactive.
- A new setting does not retroactively approve every old pending review.
- Turning Require a verified purchase off does not bypass sign-in, approval rules, or verified-purchase checks for Share your photo. If a non-buyer cannot open the form, reload the saved policy and product page, confirm sign-in, and check the eligibility message. An existing active review still requires My Reviews → Edit; unavailable eligibility needs a fresh load or support investigation.
- A photo contribution also needs eligible purchase data, enabled intake, consent, and gallery approval.
- A pending/rejected/hidden review or pending answer is not public.
- If Retry cannot reload settings, resolve the load or permissions error before relying on any changed policy.