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Review reply cost calculator
Answering reviews is unpaid work that still has to be paid for.
Answering a customer review takes about nine minutes once you count reading it, checking what happened and writing something you are willing to have in public. At 40 reviews a month that is six hours — roughly $142 a month, or $1,700 a year, of somebody’s time.
How this is calculated
Reviews per month × minutes per review ÷ 60 × hourly cost. The default minutes are our estimate; the default hourly cost is the published labour-cost figure for your market. Both are set out in the Cost of Work Index.
Put this calculator on your own site
Copy and paste. Works on WordPress, Shopify, Wix or plain HTML — it resizes itself to fit.
Who does this work
NickIn training
Answers every review in your voice within the hour — and wakes you only for real trouble.
$0.40 per handled review — Planned price — not charged yet.
Questions
How long does it take to answer a review properly?
Longer than it looks, because the writing is the short part. Most of the nine minutes goes on working out what actually happened with that customer before you commit to a public answer. A reply written without checking is how a small complaint becomes a large one.
Should a small business answer every review?
Answering the negative ones matters most, since that is what the next reader is looking for. The cost in this calculator is per review answered, so if you only reply to some of them, put that number in rather than your total review count.
What does it cost to have reviews handled for you?
We charge per handled review rather than per month, so the comparison here is the same volume at a per-unit price. Anything that needs a refund decision goes back to the owner instead — that is a judgement call, not an answer.