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Merit - Photo & Video Reviews

Customer photos and videos, shown where shoppers decide. Four theme-matched layouts, a live customiser, and review requests that send themselves.

Coming soon to the Shopify App Store

Last updated: August 4, 2026

Overview

Text reviews all look the same. A photo of the product on someone's kitchen table does not - it is the thing a shopper actually checks before deciding, and it is the thing most review apps charge you extra to collect. Merit treats photo and video as the point rather than the upsell: unlimited uploads, no cap on reviews, no cap on orders, on every plan.

The widget is built to disappear into your theme. Pick one of four product page layouts - photo wall, editorial, masonry or story carousel - then tune colour, typography, spacing, corners and which elements show in a live customiser, or write your own scoped CSS if you would rather. Star ratings appear on collection pages too, and the review schema feeds Google's rich results, so the ratings show up in search.

Collecting is automatic. When an order is fulfilled Merit schedules a request email, sends it after a delay you choose, and can follow up once if the shopper has not written anything yet. Reviews that arrive through that email are marked as verified purchases, and you can offer a discount code for the ones that come with a photo or a video.

Everything a shopper submits lands in a moderation queue first, and publishing is never conditional on the star rating - by design, and not configurable. Filtering reviews by how flattering they are is illegal in several of the markets Shopify merchants sell into, and an app that makes it easy is a liability rather than a feature.

Features

Collecting Reviews

  • Photo & Video:Unlimited uploads on every plan, with no per-review or per-order limits
  • Automated Requests:A request email goes out a set number of days after fulfilment
  • Reminders:One optional follow-up, sent only to shoppers who have not reviewed yet
  • Photo & Video Rewards:Offer a single-use discount code for reviews that include media
  • Verified Purchases:Reviews collected through a request email are badged as verified
  • Test Sends:Email yourself the exact message your buyers get, before a single order ships

Showing Them Off

  • Four Layouts:Photo wall, editorial, masonry and story carousel, switchable in the theme editor
  • Live Customiser:Colour, typography, spacing, corner radius, density and element toggles
  • Custom CSS:A scoped override panel for anything the controls do not reach
  • Media Galleries:Customer photos and videos open in a lightbox
  • Collection Stars:Star ratings under every product card, as a theme app embed
  • All Reviews Page:A dedicated page listing every published review across the store

Search & SEO

  • Rich Results:Product and AggregateRating JSON-LD, so ratings can appear in Google
  • Rating Metafields:Written back to Shopify, so your theme and other apps can read them

Moderation

  • Queue First:Nothing publishes without your say-so, unless you turn auto-publish on
  • Bulk Actions:Publish, hide or mark as spam across a whole page of reviews at once
  • Tags & Internal Notes:Private working notes that never reach the storefront
  • Rating-Blind Publishing:Publishing is never conditional on the star rating, by design

Migrating In & Out

  • CSV Import:Bring reviews across from another app, with column mapping and a preview
  • CSV Export:Take them out again - the same columns the importer maps, so files round-trip
  • Product Matching:Match by handle, SKU, product ID or title when importing

Pricing

Free

$0/month

  • Unlimited product reviews with photos and videos
  • All four widget layouts and the full customiser
  • Custom CSS
  • Star ratings on product and collection pages
  • Google rich results via review schema
  • 100 review request emails per month
  • CSV import and the moderation queue
  • Email support

Pro

$9.99/month

  • Unlimited review request emails
  • Automatic reminders
  • Discount rewards for photo and video reviews
  • Remove Merit branding from the widget
  • CSV export
  • Reviews analytics: ratings, trends, media rate and request funnel
  • Everything in Free

All charges are billed in USD. Pro includes a 7-day free trial, and annual billing is $99/year. Widgets carry a small "Reviews by Merit" badge on the free plan. Final pricing may change before launch.

Data Access

Merit only requests the Shopify permissions it needs to collect and show reviews:

Store data

  • Products - to match reviews to the right product and write rating metafields your theme can read
  • Orders - to know when an order has been fulfilled, and to reach the buyer with a review request
  • Discounts - to create the single-use codes offered as a reward for photo and video reviews

Customer data

Sending a review request means reading the buyer's name and email from the order, so Merit requests Protected Customer Data access at Level 2 and carries the stricter retention and encryption commitments that come with it. Buyer email addresses are stored lowercased, are never returned in any storefront response, and are never written to a log.

Every request email carries a one-click unsubscribe, and an address that opts out or hard-bounces goes on a suppression list that the send path checks before every message - including the test sends you trigger yourself.

The `customers/data_request`, `customers/redact` and `shop/redact` compliance webhooks are implemented, because review bodies contain reviewer personal data. Uninstalling revokes access immediately, and remaining data is purged when Shopify confirms the uninstall.

Learn more about data usage in our privacy policy below.

Developer

Developer Information

Developed by Codersy

About Codersy

Codersy is a specialized Shopify development agency focused on creating high-performance e-commerce solutions. We build custom Shopify stores, apps, and integrations that help businesses scale their online presence.

Our Expertise

  • Custom Shopify theme development
  • Shopify app development
  • Headless commerce solutions
  • Performance optimization
  • SEO implementation

Contact Information

  • Website: https://codersy.com
  • Email: support@codersy.com
  • Support: Available through app dashboard and email

Support & Resources

App Support

App support provided by Codersy.

Available Support Channels

  • Email Support:support@codersy.com
  • Migration Help:Free CSV migration from your current reviews app
  • Documentation:Setup and usage guides

Support Levels by Plan

  • Email support on every plan, including Free
  • Priority response on Pro

Early Access

Merit is launching soon on the Shopify App Store. If you want early access or a walkthrough before launch, email support@codersy.com and we will set you up.

Frequently Asked Questions

(01)

Are photo and video reviews really unlimited on the free plan?

Yes. There is no cap on reviews, no cap on orders, and no cap on uploads. The only metered thing in Merit is outbound email, because that is the only part with a real marginal cost - media is stored on object storage with no egress charges, so unlimited photo and video is genuinely affordable to give away rather than a loss leader we claw back later.

(02)

Can I hide reviews below a certain star rating?

No, and this is deliberate rather than an omission. Publishing in Merit is never conditional on the star rating - not in the moderation queue, not in auto-publish, not in the reminder emails. Suppressing unflattering reviews while presenting the rest as a complete picture is unlawful in several of the markets Shopify merchants sell into. You can hide an individual review that breaks your policy, and that decision is recorded, but there is no rating filter to switch on.

(03)

Can I move my existing reviews over?

Yes. Merit imports a CSV exported from another reviews app: you upload the file, map the columns, preview the parsed rows and confirm. Products are matched by handle, SKU, product ID or title. Export works the same way in reverse and uses the same column names the importer maps, so a file exported from one store re-imports into another unchanged - your reviews are not locked in.

(04)

Will the widget match my theme?

That is what the customiser is for. Colour, typography, spacing, corner radius, density and which elements appear are all adjustable with a live preview, on top of four different layouts. If the controls do not reach something, there is a scoped custom CSS panel. The widget is added as a theme app block, so it sits inside your product page template where you put it rather than being injected over the top.

(05)

What stops the request emails from landing in spam?

Merit sends from an authenticated subdomain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC published, and every message carries both a visible unsubscribe link and the one-click List-Unsubscribe headers Gmail and Yahoo require of bulk senders. Bounces and spam complaints are fed back automatically and suppress the address, and there is a per-shop send cap so a backlog can never turn into a sudden blast. The delivery log shows the state of every single request, so a deliverability problem is visible rather than silent.

(06)

Do the star ratings show up in Google?

Merit emits Product and AggregateRating JSON-LD on product pages, which is what Google reads to decide whether to show a review snippet. Whether the snippet actually appears is always Google's call - no app can promise that - but the structured data is valid and testable in Google's Rich Results Test. Ratings also appear under product cards on collection pages via a separate theme app embed.

(07)

What does the analytics page show?

Your rating distribution, how review volume is trending month by month, what share of your published reviews arrive with a photo or video, how many are verified purchases, and what your request emails actually do - how many were sent, opened, and turned into a review. It also ranks your most reviewed products. There is no per-shopper tracking and no invented revenue figure: Merit does not read your order values, so it does not pretend to know what reviews earned you.