Terms and Conditions

Last updated: 15 September 2026

1. About these terms

StellarOpinion ("StellarOpinion", "we", "us", "our") operates the review platform at stellaropinion.com, including all of its subpages, the business portal, the widgets and the emails sent from the platform (together, the "Platform").

These terms and conditions (the "Terms") apply to everyone who uses the Platform: visitors who read reviews, consumers who write reviews and businesses that use the Platform. By accessing or using the Platform you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Platform.

The Platform is currently offered free of charge and is under active development. Features may be added, changed or removed.

2. Definitions

• Platform – the website stellaropinion.com and all related services.
• Reviewer – an individual who posts a review.
• Business – a company or organisation with a profile on the Platform.
• Business user – the person who signs in to the business portal on behalf of a Business.
• Review – a star rating with text and a name posted by a Reviewer.
• Response – a public reply from a Business to a Review.
• Content – any information a user posts on the Platform or sends to us.

3. Who may use the Platform

• You are at least 16 years old.
• You act truthfully and on your own behalf, or you are authorised to act on behalf of a Business.
• You have not previously been banned from the Platform.
• You use the Platform in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

4. What the Platform does

Through the Platform you can, among other things:

• read consumer reviews, search by business name and browse businesses by category;
• write a review about a business you have been a customer of;
• as a business, claim a profile for free, manage your business details, respond to reviews, report reviews, invite customers to write a review, set notification preferences and place widgets on your own website;
• view average scores and the distribution of star ratings per business.

We are a neutral host. We do not write reviews ourselves, we do not verify the substance of the experiences described, and we do not endorse, certify or advise on any business. A score on the Platform reflects the reviews received; it is not a judgement by StellarOpinion.

Businesses cannot pay for a higher ranking, a higher score, the hiding of reviews or the removal of accurate but negative reviews.

5. Rules for writing a review

A review you post must meet the following rules:

• Genuine experience. The review describes your own, recent and actual experience as a customer of the business. We may ask you to substantiate that experience, for example with an order confirmation or invoice.
• One review per business. You may post one review per business. The Platform allows one review per email address per business. Using multiple email addresses to get around this is not allowed.
• Valid email address. You use an email address that belongs to you. Your review is only published after you have confirmed it through the verification email and solved the captcha.
• No conflict of interest. You do not write about your own business, your employer, a competitor, or a business owned by a family member or friend.
• No reward. You receive no payment, discount, gift, prize draw entry or other consideration for posting, changing or removing your review.
• No untruths. You do not post false, misleading or defamatory statements, and you do not present assumptions as established fact.

Not allowed in reviews, responses or any other Content:

• unlawful, threatening, hateful, discriminatory, harassing or sexually explicit material;
• personal data of others, such as names of employees, phone numbers, addresses, customer or order numbers, licence plates or photos of individuals;
• accusations of criminal conduct presented as established fact;
• advertising, spam, references to other providers, affiliate or referral links;
• material that infringes the rights of others, including copyright and trade marks;
• confidential information or material covered by a non-disclosure agreement;
• harmful code, scripts or attempts to manipulate the Platform.

Please stay within the technical limits of the form (name and email address up to 100 characters, review text up to 500 characters). Longer input is rejected.

6. Publication, editing and removal of reviews

• Once verified, your review is published on the business profile and may appear on category and search pages, on the homepage, in widgets on business websites and in search engines.
• What is public: the name you provide, your star rating and your review text are public. We do not publish your email address or IP address. The reviewed business can see your email address in its portal so that it can recognise you as a customer and respond. See our privacy policy.
• You can edit or request removal of your own review through the link in the email you received at verification, or by contacting us.
• We may refuse, delay, unpublish or remove a review if it breaches these Terms, if there is a well-founded report, or if we are legally required to do so. We are not obliged to screen Content in advance.
• Unverified reviews are not published and may be cleared out after some time.

7. Reporting reviews

• Businesses can report a review through the portal. Other users can report a review through the contact form. Always give a specific reason.
• We assess every report and may leave the review in place, hide it or remove it. We may ask the Reviewer for further information and may temporarily take the review offline while we investigate.
• A report does not create a right to removal. A negative but honest opinion stays online.
• Reports that are structurally unfounded or made in bad faith may lead to restrictions on the business account.

8. Business profiles and business accounts

• Business profiles may be created by us from publicly available business information, may arise because a consumer writes a review, or may be created when a business registers.
• You claim a profile by registering with a business email address on the domain of the business and verifying that address. In doing so you confirm that you are authorised to act for the business.
• You are responsible for keeping your sign-in details confidential and for everything that happens through your account. If you suspect misuse, contact us immediately.
• Business details (name, address, website, phone number, description) must be accurate, current and not misleading. No third-party brand names, keyword stuffing, advertising copy or irrelevant content in the profile fields.
• We may merge, rename, split, correct, hide or delete profiles, for example in the case of duplicates or incorrect information.
• We may suspend or block a business account for breach of these Terms, including manipulation of reviews.

9. Responding to reviews

• A Business may post one public response per review.
• The same content rules that apply to reviews apply to responses.
• Do not include personal data of the customer in a response, such as full name, address, phone number, order number or details of the order that the customer did not mention themselves.
• Do not use responses for advertising, discount codes or to pressure the Reviewer.

10. Inviting customers to review

If you use the invitation feature or an invitation link:

• you invite only genuine customers who actually bought a product or service;
• you invite customers in a neutral way and do not pre-select only satisfied customers;
• you offer no reward, discount or other consideration for writing a review;
• you do not screen or filter reviews in advance and do not influence their content;
• you are responsible for having a valid legal basis under data protection law for using the customer data, and for informing your customers about it.

You are the data controller for the contact details you use for invitations. You indemnify us against claims from customers and supervisory authorities arising from that use.

11. Widgets

• We grant you a revocable, non-exclusive and non-transferable licence to display the StellarOpinion widget for your own claimed business on your own website.
• You do not modify the widget, do not remove the reference to StellarOpinion, and do not display scores or reviews that are not current or not sourced from the Platform.
• You do not use the widget in a way that suggests StellarOpinion endorses, sponsors or certifies your business.
• We may change, temporarily disable or discontinue widgets, and may withdraw the licence in case of misuse or on termination of your account.

12. Intellectual property and licence to your Content

• The Platform, the software, the design, the database and the StellarOpinion name and logo belong to StellarOpinion or to our licensors. Nothing in these Terms transfers those rights to you.
• You keep your own rights in the Content you post. You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, transferable and sublicensable licence to store, publish, display, reproduce, translate, technically adapt and distribute that Content through widgets and search engines, and to use it to promote the Platform.
• You warrant that you hold the necessary rights and that your Content does not infringe the rights of third parties.
• After a review is removed, anonymised or aggregated statistics may be retained.

13. Acceptable use

You may not:

• access, scrape, crawl or bulk-copy the Platform by automated means, other than regular search engines acting in accordance with our robots.txt;
• use data from the Platform to build a competing database, to send spam, or to approach businesses or reviewers;
• circumvent captchas, email verification, duplicate detection or other security measures;
• buy, sell, trade or otherwise manipulate reviews;
• impersonate another person or another business;
• test the Platform for vulnerabilities without our prior written permission, or introduce malicious code;
• overload the Platform or disrupt its availability.

Found a security issue? Report it through the contact form and give us a reasonable period to fix it before making it public.

14. Third-party content

Reviews, responses and business details come from users. We do not warrant their accuracy, completeness or currency and we are not responsible for decisions you make on the basis of them. The Platform contains links to third-party websites over which we have no control and for which we accept no liability.

15. Availability and changes

We make reasonable efforts to keep the Platform available but do not guarantee uninterrupted operation. We may change the Platform or any part of it at any time, take it offline temporarily for maintenance, or discontinue it. Because the service is provided free of charge, no service level agreement applies.

16. No warranties

To the extent permitted by law, the Platform is provided "as is", without any express or implied warranty as to availability, accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose, or uninterrupted and error-free operation. Statutory consumer rights remain unaffected.

17. Liability

• We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profit or revenue, reputational harm, lost savings or loss of data.
• Our total liability per event and per calendar year is limited to the amount you paid us for the relevant service in the preceding twelve months, and to EUR 100 where the service was provided free of charge.
• These limitations do not apply in case of intent or wilful recklessness on the part of StellarOpinion, in case of death or personal injury, or to the extent mandatory law, including consumer law, provides otherwise.

18. Indemnity

If you use the Platform in the course of a profession or business, you indemnify StellarOpinion against third-party claims, including reasonable legal costs, arising from your Content, your use of the Platform, your review invitations or your breach of these Terms.

19. Suspension and termination

• We may restrict, suspend or terminate your access to the Platform for breach of these Terms or for misuse. Where reasonable we will tell you and explain why.
• You may stop using the Platform at any time. Request deletion of your data through the contact form; see the privacy policy for your rights.
• Provisions that by their nature are intended to survive, such as those on intellectual property, liability, indemnity and governing law, remain in force after termination.

20. Privacy

How we handle personal data is described in our privacy policy, which forms an integral part of these Terms.

21. Changes to these Terms

We may amend these Terms, for example because of new functionality or changed regulation. The current version is always on this page, with the date of the last change at the top. For significant changes we will notify registered business users by email. If you continue to use the Platform after a change, that counts as acceptance.

22. Complaints and disputes

If you have a complaint, please contact us first; we respond within 48 hours and will try to resolve it together. As a consumer you may also submit a dispute through the European ODR platform at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr.

23. Governing law

These Terms and your use of the Platform are governed by Dutch law. Disputes will be submitted to the competent court in the Netherlands. As a consumer you keep the protection of the mandatory law of the country where you live, and you may also bring a dispute before the courts of that country.

24. Miscellaneous

• If any provision of these Terms is void or voidable, the remaining provisions stay in force and the provision concerned is replaced by a valid provision that comes as close as possible to its intent.
• If we do not immediately enforce a right under these Terms, we do not thereby waive that right.
• We may transfer our rights and obligations to a legal successor, for example in the case of an acquisition; you may do so only with our written consent.
• These Terms are available in Dutch, English and French. In case of any discrepancy between the versions, the Dutch text prevails.

25. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Use the contact form or email support@stellaropinion.com.

See also: Privacy policy