Grade.us vs NiceJob for getting more reviews

Spring is review season for most local businesses. Work picks up, customers are pleased with the first warm-weather jobs, and a profile that looked healthy in February suddenly sits below competitors with fresher reviews. Every owner knows they should ask each customer. Very few manage it by hand week after week, which is why review request software exists, and two names that come up often are Grade.us and NiceJob.

Both automate the ask. They come at it from different directions: one was built with marketing agencies in mind, the other for owners who want the whole thing to run in the background.

What a review tool has to get right now

Reviews are watched more closely than they were a few years ago. The FTC’s rule on fake reviews, in force since October 2024, bans fake reviews and rewards conditioned on a positive or negative review, and Google’s own policies do not allow a business to ask only its happy customers. Whatever tool you choose has to fit inside those lines. So the questions that decide it are:

• Does it ask everyone the same way? If there is a private feedback step, an unhappy customer must still be able to post a public review.
• Does it fit how customers reach you? Text, email or both, triggered from a system you already use.
• Does it help with replies? Answering every review is half the job, and the half most owners skip.
• Who is running it? You, your office manager or an agency.

Grade.us, built with agencies in mind

Grade.us is a review management platform aimed largely at marketing agencies, and it can run under an agency’s own brand. It sends review requests by email and text, provides review landing pages that point customers to the sites that matter for a particular business, monitors new reviews across a long list of review sites, and offers widgets for showing reviews on a website.

Its strength is control, and reach across many sites. An agency managing reviews for a roster of clients gets one place to run the campaigns and watch the results, presented as its own product. A business whose reviews are spread across Google, industry directories and social profiles can see them together and steer customers toward the sites where it needs them most.

What to ask: which review sites are monitored on your plan, how requests are triggered from your CRM or job software, and how any feedback step is set up so every customer can still reach a public review. Grade.us changed owners in December, when Insight Integrity bought it along with GatherUp, so it is also reasonable to ask what the product plan looks like for the year ahead.

NiceJob, built to run in the background

NiceJob is review and referral marketing software for small service businesses. It connects to the tools a company already uses for jobs and invoicing, sends review requests automatically by text and email after the work is done, follows up with reminders, and turns incoming reviews into social proof on the website and social accounts. It also runs referral campaigns that ask happy customers to send a friend.

Its strength is that it runs itself. Once it is connected, a cleaning company or an electrician does not have to remember to ask; the request goes out when the job is closed. The website widgets and social posts give each review a second life in the places new customers are looking.

What to ask: which of your systems it connects to directly, what is included in your plan, and who writes the message your customers will receive.

Grade.us and NiceJob compared

	Grade.us	NiceJob
Built for	Agencies, and businesses that want control across many review sites	Small service businesses that want requests to go out on their own
How requests go out	Email and text campaigns, sent by hand or triggered from other systems	Automatically after each job, from connected job or billing software
What you get	Requests, review landing pages, monitoring across sites, widgets	Requests, reminders, website widgets, social posts, referrals
Under an agency’s brand	Yes, it is a core part of the product	Ask whether its agency options fit your setup
Where the reviews live	On each review site; your account holds the requests	On each review site; your account holds the requests
Ask before signing	Sites monitored, triggers, feedback step settings	Integrations, plan features, message wording

What each does well, what to watch

Grade.us

• Pro: white-label from the ground up, which suits agencies.
• Pro: monitoring across many review sites in one view.
• Pro: flexible campaigns and landing pages for sending people to different sites.
• Con: more settings than a small business may ever need.
• Con: someone has to set up the triggers and keep the campaigns maintained.
• Con: any feedback step needs careful setup so every customer can still reach a public review.

NiceJob

• Pro: set it up once and requests go out after every job.
• Pro: puts reviews to work on your website and social accounts.
• Pro: referral campaigns built in alongside reviews.
• Con: works best when your job software is one it connects to.
• Con: designed around the owner, so an agency running many clients should confirm it fits the way they work.
• Con: automated messages still need a person reading the replies and the reviews.

Five businesses and the tool that suits each

• A marketing agency running reviews for many local clients. Grade.us, presented as the agency’s own.
• A cleaning or lawn care company that runs its jobs in field service software. NiceJob, connected to that software so every finished job sends a request; confirm your system is on its integration list first.
• A med spa that wants reviews on Google and a couple of industry sites. Either can work; ask each how you choose which site a given client is sent to.
• A remodeler with a handful of large jobs a year. Either tool, but ask in person at the final walkthrough too, because a few detailed reviews count for a lot.
• A restaurant with walk-in diners and no contact details. Automated requests need a phone number or email, so start with table cards, receipts and a well-kept profile.

The part software does not do

A review tool sends the request. Someone still has to decide who is asked and when, write a message that sounds like the business, reply to every review while it is still fresh, and notice when three complaints in a row about the same thing mean something needs fixing. That is the part Beyaoshy takes on.

We have run review programs for local businesses since 2015, as part of one team that also looks after the Business Profile, local SEO, ads, the website and the CRM, so requests go out from the same system that booked the job and every reply is written by someone who knows the account. Every customer is asked the same way, inside Google’s rules and the FTC’s. The profiles and the data belong to the owner from day one, and reporting ties reviews to calls and bookings. Other agencies white-label our review management and deliver it to their own clients under their own name.

Before the busy months

Whichever tool you choose, switch it on before the season peaks, ask every customer, and reply to every review. If you would rather it were handled for you, see how the pieces fit together on our page for business owners, and agencies can read how we deliver it under their brand on the partner page.