Guide
FTC testimonial compliance checklist
The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews and testimonials (16 CFR Part 465, in effect since October 2024) carries civil penalties of about $51,744 per violation. This checklist turns the rule’s main requirements into working habits. Get Testimonials is built to help you follow these rules. It cannot make you compliant, and this page is not legal advice.
Publish only testimonials from real customers, with their permission, labeled honestly, and never pay for praise or hide criticism. Keep the records that prove it.
Summary only. Read the full checklist below.
The checklist
- Real customers only. Never publish a testimonial from someone who did not actually buy or use your product. That includes AI-generated testimonials written to sound like real customers. The rule bans them outright.
- Get permission, and keep it. Collect a signed consent and video release at the moment of submission, and store it with the testimonial: who, when, and which release text they agreed to. If you cannot show permission, do not run the testimonial in ads.
- Disclose insiders. A testimonial from an employee, owner, investor or family member must be labeled as such. Undisclosed insider testimonials are a separate violation.
- Disclose incentives, never condition them on praise. You may offer a gift card or discount for giving a testimonial, but you may not require it to be positive, and the incentive must be disclosed wherever the testimonial appears.
- Do not suppress negative reviews. Threats, intimidation and selective display that distorts the overall picture are prohibited. Curating your best testimonials for a wall is normal advertising; burying or deleting negative reviews to mislead is not.
- Do not buy social proof. Purchasing followers, views or indicators of social influence that you know or should know are fake is banned, as is selling them.
- Label verification honestly. If you say a testimonial is verified, say what you verified: an email address, a matching purchase, an identity check. A badge that claims more than you checked is itself misleading.
- Keep records. Keep the original submission, the consent, and an audit trail of edits and approvals. If a testimonial is ever challenged, your records are your defense.
- Review old testimonials. Sweep your site, ads and landing pages for testimonials you collected before these habits existed. No consent on file and no way to confirm the customer? Retire it or re-collect it properly.
How Get Testimonials helps
Consent at submit
Every submission captures an e-signed consent and video release, with the release version and timestamp stored in the testimonial’s audit log.
Honest labels
Badges state the level that was actually checked: email-verified, or purchase-verified against Stripe or Shopify on Pro.
Audit log
An append-only record per testimonial covers submission, consent, edits and approval, so the history is inspectable.
Public verify page
Buyers can open the page behind any badge and see who gave the testimonial, when, how it was verified, and that consent is on file.
This page summarizes a US federal rule for general information. Rules differ by country and industry (health, finance and other regulated sectors have extra requirements), and none of this is legal advice. For a few hundred dollars, a lawyer can review your consent and release templates once and cover you for years. That is money well spent, and we recommend it.
Collect testimonials the defensible way
Consent capture, honest labels and an audit log are on every plan, including Free.