How Much Does Reputation Management Cost?
Reputation management costs $197 a month per location through Ziwi's reviews and reputation service, month to month. Software-only tools start around $75 a month per location, and most named platforms will not show a price at all. Here is what each one buys, plus the thing nobody can sell you: removal of a real review.
One price, per location
- $197/moReviews and reputation, per location
vsNamed platformsNo price published; software alone $75 to $125 per location
Review asks, responses, monitoring and profile cleanup. Your profiles stay in your name.
See how we compareAbout 710 people a month search the cost of reputation management in the US, most of them on "reputation management cost" at around 590 a month (our September 2026 pull). They are usually one bad review into a bad week. This page gives the number first, then the part that matters more: what a monthly fee can legitimately do about a review, and what it cannot do at any price.
See the full reviews and reputation page
How much does reputation management cost per month?
Ziwi charges $197 a month per location, published, month to month. Software you run yourself starts near $75 a month per location, and the better known managed platforms do not publish a price at all. The gap between those numbers is not features, it is who does the work: software sends the requests and shows you a dashboard, a managed service asks the customers, watches the profiles and writes the replies.
| What you are buying | Published market price, September 2026 | Ziwi's published price |
|---|---|---|
| Managed review program, one location | Birdeye, Podium and BrightLocal publish no plan price; each asks for your details first (checked 3 September 2026) | $197 a month per location, printed on the site |
| Review software only, one location | NiceJob Reviews $75 a month per location, NiceJob Pro $125 a month per location (get.nicejob.com pricing) | Included in the $197, no separate software bill |
| A second or third location | Priced per location by most platforms, with a sales call to find out the rate | $197 per location, the same published rate |
| Review "removal" | Sold as a service by removal firms. Google removes only reviews that break its content policies, and Google decides | Not sold. It cannot be delivered honestly, so we do not take money for it |
| Billing terms | Not published by Birdeye, Podium or BrightLocal as of September 2026 | Month to month, and the Google Business Profile stays in your name |
We checked those pricing pages ourselves on 3 September 2026. Birdeye's pricing page asks for your location count and mobile number before showing anything. Podium's says plans are tailored and points you to sales. BrightLocal lists Track, Manage and Grow as "price on request". NiceJob is the outlier that prints its numbers, at $75 and $125 a month per location, which is a fair marker for what the software layer alone costs.
Can you pay someone to remove a bad review?
No, not a legitimate one.
Google removes reviews that violate its content policies, and Google alone decides, which no vendor can change with a fee. Google's own guidance is blunt about it: "Do not report a review just because you disagree with it or dislike it," and "Google doesn't get involved in conflict between businesses and customers." Flagging a policy-violating review is free, takes a few days, and you can appeal once.
- What a removal service can actually do. Flag reviews that break platform policy, using the same free tools you already have in your profile.
- What it cannot do. Delete an accurate review from an unhappy customer. If a vendor promises that, ask them to put the promise in the contract.
- Buying reviews is now a federal matter. The FTC's final rule on fake reviews, announced 14 August 2024 on a unanimous 5 to 0 vote and effective 60 days after Federal Register publication, bans creating, selling or knowingly buying fake reviews, including AI-generated ones.
- Suppressing reviews is banned too. The same rule prohibits using unfounded legal threats, physical threats or intimidation to get a negative review taken down, and prohibits implying the reviews you display are all the reviews you received.
- So is paying for sentiment. Compensation conditioned on a review being positive, or negative, is prohibited, which rules out the discount-for-a-five-star tactic entirely.
Reply to every Google review in ten minutes a week
Eight pages: the weekly routine, five copy-paste AI prompts by star rating that we tested against ChatGPT and Gemini, and the line a reply can never cross.
Read the guideWhat does $197 a month per location include?
It covers the recurring work that produces a rating: asking every customer at the right moment, in a way that complies with the FTC rule, monitoring the profiles where people look, and replying to what comes in. The fee is per location, so a two-office practice is $394 a month, and it is month to month like every Ziwi plan.
- 01
Review requests to every customer, not just the happy ones. Sentiment-neutral asks, no gating, no incentive, which is both the compliant way and the way that produces a believable rating.
- 02
Monitoring across the profiles that matter. Starting with your Google Business Profile, because that is the one attached to the map result.
- 03
Replies written for you. Including the difficult ones, where a calm public answer does more for the next reader than the review does against you.
- 04
Reporting in plain numbers. New reviews, average rating, and where they landed, monthly.
- 05
The software cost, included. No separate platform bill on top of the $197.
Want the review loop run for you?
$197 a month per location: the asking, the monitoring and the replies, done for you. Month to month, and your profiles stay yours.
Do reviews affect your Google ranking?
Reviews are one of the signals Google uses to rank local results, and they are plainly the tiebreaker for the person reading the map pack. People scan the count and the dates as much as the score, so 180 reviews with replies from this month reads differently from 11 reviews last touched in 2022. That is why the review program and the local SEO program are usually bought together rather than in sequence.
Neither can be promised as a ranking, and we do not promise one.
Is reputation management worth $197 a month?
It is worth it if a tenth of a star changes who gets called in your market, which in dentistry, home services and med spa it usually does. Compare the $197 against one job: if your average job is $4,000, the plan covers its own annual cost the moment it produces one extra customer. It is not worth it if nobody is leaving reviews and nobody is asking, because then you are paying for monitoring instead of production. Fix the asking first.
- 01
Count your reviews from the last 90 days. If the answer is under five, the problem is asking, not managing.
- 02
Read your last three one-star reviews. If nobody replied, you are losing the next reader, not the one who wrote it.
- 03
Check the rate. Reviews per month is the number that compounds, not the total.
- 04
Fix the ask before buying software. A $75 tool sending requests nobody opens is worse than a front desk that asks well.
- 05
Then decide. Run it yourself with software, or hand the whole loop over at $197 a month per location.
The head term "reputation management services" is locked up by Reputation.com, Gartner and Reddit as of our 3 September 2026 check, and none of those pages will tell you what a local business actually pays. Ziwi's number is $197 a month per location, month to month, with your profiles in your name. See what is inside the plan on Ziwi's reviews and reputation service, read the longer reviews and reputation guide, or check every plan on the published pricing page.