The claim process itself is not complicated — Trustpilot has kept the flow deliberately short. What trips businesses up is what to do after claiming: which invitation channel to enable first, which free-tier features are worth using, and which paid features are worth paying for at what revenue level. This walkthrough covers the full claim and the first-week configuration.
I am Robiul, head of research at BGR Review. Our team has onboarded 200+ businesses onto Trustpilot and audits the setup step every week. The walkthrough below is drawn from Trustpilot's current Business Portal documentation and the setup mistakes we see repeated most often on new profiles.
Before you start: two things to check
Two checks save a lot of time if you get them right up front.
- Does a profile already exist? Search your domain on trustpilot.com. Any brand with even one organic review will already have an unclaimed profile — you claim rather than create. Creating a duplicate profile splits your reviews and requires a manual merge request that takes 2-3 weeks.
- Do you have a work email on the same domain as your website? Trustpilot verifies claims against the domain, not the person. A gmail.com or company-owner's-personal-domain email will not verify. Set up hello@yourdomain.com or reviews@yourdomain.com before starting if you do not already have one.
The 5-step claim walkthrough
Step 1 — Sign up on the Business Portal
Go to business.trustpilot.com and click Sign Up Free. Enter your company name, work email address on your website domain, and a strong password. Trustpilot sends a confirmation email; click the link inside 24 hours to activate. If the email does not arrive, check spam and add noreply@trustpilot.com to your allowlist before requesting resend.
Step 2 — Find and claim your profile
Once logged in, use the Search field to find your existing profile by domain. Every domain with a Trustpilot presence has a profile whether you have claimed it or not. Click Claim Profile on the match. If no profile exists, click Create Profile and enter your primary company URL — the URL you enter becomes the canonical domain and cannot be changed later without a manual merge request.
Step 3 — Verify domain ownership
Trustpilot offers two verification methods and either works. Email verification sends a code to admin@, webmaster@ or a domain-registered address; enter the code in the Portal. DNS verification requires adding a TXT record to your domain's DNS zone (Trustpilot provides the exact string); propagation usually completes within 15 minutes and the Portal auto-detects. Use DNS verification if you cannot access admin@ mail; use email verification if you do not have DNS access.
Step 4 — Configure your public profile
Once verified, fill in company name (exactly as it appears on your website), a 2-3 sentence business description, primary category, a high-resolution square logo (minimum 512x512), and your company address if you are a physical-location business. This is the metadata consumers see on your profile card and in Trustpilot search results — under-filling it materially hurts profile-to-conversion rate.
Step 5 — Enable at least one invitation channel
Do this in the first 24 hours. A claimed profile with no invitation channel enabled collects no new reviews and drifts. The three channels are Automatic Feedback Service (AFS), BCC invitations and the Invitations API — full comparison and picking guide in our invitation channel playbook. Pick one, configure it, and fire a test invitation to your own address to confirm the flow works before enabling on live customers.
Which free-tier features to actually use
The free tier is more useful than most articles imply. These five features are available on the free tier and worth configuring on day one.
- Profile claim and public metadata management — free forever, no limits.
- Public replies to reviews — reply to every review, positive or negative, unlimited. Full response playbook in our negative-review reply guide.
- Guideline-based flagging of reviews for removal — unlimited flags, standard 5-7 business day review window. Escalation path in our defamation removal guide.
- Basic BCC invitations — send unlimited invitations via BCC without engineering integration.
- Basic profile analytics — page views, review-invitation response rate, TrustScore history over time.
Which paid features are worth paying for and when
Trustpilot's paid tiers start around £199/month for Standard and scale to £799+/month for Advanced with a typical 12-month commitment. Four features move the needle enough to justify the paywall — the rest are marginal. Decide based on revenue and use case, not on feature-list length.
- TrustBox on-site widget: worth it above £500k revenue for any business where consumers land on a purchase page before completing checkout. Landing pages with a live TrustBox typically convert 2-8% higher in our client A/B tests.
- Google Seller Ratings integration: worth it for any business running paid search. Star-rating badges on paid ads lift CTR 10-30% at no incremental ad spend.
- Automatic Feedback Service (AFS) beyond the free-tier volume cap: worth it once you exceed roughly 500 monthly invitations, purely on the response-rate lift from Trustpilot-branded email versus BCC.
- Advanced invitation templating and lifecycle triggers: worth it for SaaS and subscription businesses where inviting at first-value-milestone materially outperforms inviting at signup.
The single most common Trustpilot onboarding mistake we see is a claimed profile that sits idle for six months because no invitation channel was enabled during setup. The second is a business paying for the Standard tier without ever installing the TrustBox widget — the feature that alone justifies most of the tier's cost.
First 30 days: what to actually do
A structured first month gets a claimed profile into a compliant, growing state. Skip any of these steps and the profile drifts.
- Week 1 — claim, verify, configure metadata, enable invitations, send test invite, confirm flow.
- Week 2 — reply to every existing review on the profile using structured templates; flag any reviews that violate Guidelines with evidence attached.
- Week 3 — audit invitation response rate; if under 6%, review timing (should be 3-7 days post-purchase) and subject line (should name the specific product/service).
- Week 4 — review the first month's TrustScore movement, review sentiment breakdown, and category-benchmark comparison in profile analytics. Adjust invitation cadence if needed.
Q.How do I claim my Trustpilot business profile?
Go to business.trustpilot.com, sign up with a work email on your website's domain, search for your existing profile by domain, click Claim Profile, then verify domain ownership via email code or DNS TXT record. Total time is about 15 minutes. Configure at least one invitation channel — AFS, BCC or Invitations API — in the first 24 hours after claiming.
Q.Is claiming a Trustpilot business profile free?
Yes. Claiming, verifying, public metadata management, unlimited replies, unlimited Guideline flags, basic BCC invitations, and basic profile analytics are all free forever. Paid tiers start around £199/month for the TrustBox on-site widget, Google Seller Ratings integration, higher-volume AFS invitations and advanced templating.
Q.What do I need to verify my Trustpilot business account?
A work email address on the same domain as your website (e.g. hello@yourdomain.com, not a gmail address), plus either access to admin@/webmaster@/domain-registered email for email verification, or DNS zone access to add a TXT record for DNS verification. Personal-email addresses will not verify a domain claim.
Q.Can I claim a Trustpilot profile that already has reviews?
Yes, that is the standard case. Any brand with even one organic review already has an unclaimed profile. You claim it rather than creating a duplicate. Creating a duplicate splits your reviews and requires a manual merge request that takes 2-3 weeks — always search for the existing profile first.
Q.How long does Trustpilot business verification take?
Email verification is typically instant — the code arrives within seconds and is entered in the Portal. DNS verification propagates within 15 minutes in most cases and up to 24 hours in the worst case; the Portal auto-detects the TXT record and confirms verification. If verification fails, most common causes are typos in the TXT string or verification codes entered after the 24-hour expiry.
Q.What should I do after claiming my Trustpilot profile?
In the first 24 hours: complete public profile metadata, enable at least one invitation channel, and fire a test invitation. In week one: reply to every existing review. In weeks two to four: monitor response rate, adjust timing and subject lines, and file Guideline flags on any violating existing reviews. Do not leave the profile idle after claiming — it drifts fast.
The honest bottom line
Claiming is a 15-minute job. Configuring is a 4-week job. The businesses that get real value out of Trustpilot are the ones that treat the claim as the start of an operational programme — invitation channels wired up, replies structured, flags filed on violations, analytics reviewed monthly — not as a one-off admin task. Follow the four-week structure and the profile compounds from month two onward.
