Needless to say, the demand for SMBs to find a reputation management platform to watch their online business reviews is at its peak, and while fee-based services are easy to find, not every company can afford them or is convinced yet they need it.
Enter the free business review monitoring sites, like the widely publicized http://www.freereviewmonitoring.com. As you might have guessed however – free isn’t always free – even with FreeReviewMonitoring.com.
The hidden cost of FREE business review monitoring services
In a recent MarketWired article, FreeReviewMonitoring.com CEO Julius Kurushko was quoted as saying: “We are here to let SMBs quickly and easily monitor their reviews for free. Our focus is to help them successfully activate their happy clients to improve and keep up their overall reputation; that portion of the service will be a paid feature.”
The pitch is that SMBs can monitor their reviews for free and only pay for paid improvement and upkeep (whatever upkeep means).
The catch – it’s only free for a single location. 
A fact that is not written anywhere on their website as of this
writing and for which their namesake certainly doesn’t convey. In fact – they seem to intentionally avoid the cost question altogether.
So, if your business has multiple locations – it’s not free. Have a satellite location –not free again. Want to manage different businesses (say, an interior design company and a law firm that you own) on the same account – nope, can’t do that either.
According to Jim, the helpful and concise customer service rep who lives inside the website chat box: “It’s one free location”. Doesn’t say that anywhere – but that’s what it is.
The documentation on the site doesn’t mention any limitations, but there you have it – free business review monitoring that isn’t free for all.
By Chris Sheehy | Sidewalk Branding Company – a SMB focused local SEO company in Rhode Island 41.840831 -71.349663
