Saaskly study finds wide trust gap in business software reviews

Saaskly has published a review-scores study of 162 business software products, ranking 98 of them after reading public profiles on 25 September 2026. The report finds that one in four ranked products scores under 2 out of 5 with customers, and that companies inviting reviews tend to score much higher.

Why it matters: - Saaskly’s study highlights a sharp gap between how business software performs in product reviews and how customers rate their experience after purchase. - The findings suggest that buyers may face much weaker customer sentiment than public marketing or product positioning implies. - The report also shows that review-inviting companies and non-inviting companies have materially different customer scores.

What happened: - Saaskly published The Trust Gap, a study covering the public customer review scores of 162 business software products. - The company read every profile on a major public customer review platform on 25 September 2026. - Saaskly ranked the 98 products with 50 or more reviews. - Across those 98 products, the median customer review score is 3.8 across 782,016 reviews. - Twenty-three ranked products score under 2.0, 33 score under 3.0 and 43 score 4.0 or above. - The highest score in the ranking is 4.9 and the lowest is 1.1.

The details: - Two of the 10 lowest-scoring products have more than 5,000 reviews. - Three of the 10 highest-scoring products come from companies with fewer than 3,000 reviews. - The study uses the score shown on each company’s public profile on the date read. - Saaskly links every product entry to its source profile. - The platform marks each profile by whether the company invites customers to leave reviews. - The 47 ranked products whose companies invite reviews have a median score of 4.0. - The 51 ranked products whose companies do not invite reviews have a median score of 2.7. - Among categories with more than one ranked product, domain registrars have the highest median at 4.5. - Antivirus ranks next at 4.3, followed by VPN at 4.2. - Customer relationship management software has the lowest median among multi-product categories at 2.1. - SEO tools follow at 2.4, and social media management sits at 2.8. - Saaskly also publishes its own verdict on each product, scored on function, pricing, reliability and vendor conduct. - The study places the customer review score and the Saaskly verdict side by side. - The correlation between the two scores across ranked products is 0.18. - The study lists the largest differences in both directions and explains what each gap is about. - The Trust Gap includes an interactive chart of every ranked product by category, a sortable table with a link to each profile and a description of the method. - Profiles that cover a whole corporation rather than a product are shown separately. - Products with fewer than 50 reviews are listed but not ranked.

Between the lines: - The low correlation between Saaskly’s verdicts and public customer scores suggests that product quality and customer experience after sale do not always move together. - The review-invite gap points to a possible relationship between customer outreach and score outcomes, though the study does not claim causation. - The category spread shows that some software markets face much harsher customer sentiment than others. - Saaskly says the dataset is available to journalists on request, which could allow outside scrutiny of the method and rankings.

What's next: - Saaskly will re-read all 162 profiles every quarter and publish changes. - The company will update the rankings as new review data appears. - Journalists can request the dataset for additional analysis.

The bottom line: - Saaskly’s study argues that public customer sentiment and product evaluation are often far apart, and buyers should treat that gap as a warning sign. - Tim Meredith, founder of Saaskly, said: "We test what a product does and what it costs. Customers report how the company treats them after the sale. When those two scores disagree, that is the warning a buyer needs." - Saaskly publishes independent reviews and rankings across fifteen categories. - Saaskly says there is no pay-to-rank and vendors cannot buy a placement or a score. - Saaskly is a trading name of Next Generation ICT Ltd, registered in England and Wales (company 08641452), 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE. - More information is available on Saaskly's LinkedIn page and Saaskly's Facebook page.