business-review-trust-research

Business & software review research

Look up product launches, business reputation, verified startup revenue, software reviews, and crowdfunding campaigns across six platforms as normalized JSON from the Crawlora API — no scraping review-site pages.

When to use this skill

• "What did this product launch as on Product Hunt? Who made it?"
• "What are people saying about on Trustpilot?"
• "How much revenue does this startup actually make?" (TrustMRR — payment-provider-verified)
• "What are the reviews / alternatives for this software?" (Capterra)
• "Is this business BBB accredited? What's its rating, and any complaints or scam reports against it?" (BBB)
• "How's this Kickstarter campaign doing? What updates has the creator posted?"
• Vendor due-diligence before buying or partnering.

Setup (one-time)

• Get a free Crawlora API key (2,000 credits/mo, no card) at https://crawlora.net.
• Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY in the environment before running the helper.
• The helper reads CRAWLORA_API_KEY from the environment and sends requests to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Missing/invalid key → 401.

How it works

1. Product Hunt — /producthunt/search (query) to find a product id; /producthunt/product/{id} for detail (+ /about, /makers, /launches, /reviews, /alternatives, /customers). /producthunt/leaderboard and /producthunt/category/{slug}/products cover browsing/trending.
2. Trustpilot — /trustpilot/business-units/search (q) to find a business slug; /trustpilot/business/{slug} for the profile (+ /reviews, /related). /trustpilot/categories / /categories/search browse by industry.
3. TrustMRR — /trustmrr/startups to browse, or /trustmrr/startup/{slug} for one company's payment-provider-verified revenue profile (see also the crawlora-datasets skill's trustmrr dataset for bulk/aggregate queries). /trustmrr/leaderboard ranks by MRR; /trustmrr/categories browses by category.
4. Capterra — /capterra/search (q) to find a product_id, then /capterra/product for detail and /capterra/product/reviews for user reviews.
5. BBB (Better Business Bureau) — /bbb/search (q) to find a business profile URL, then /bbb/business for the profile (rating, accreditation) plus /bbb/business/reviews, /bbb/business/complaints, and /bbb/business/more-info for rating reasons and service area. /bbb/category browses by industry; /bbb/scamtracker/search and /bbb/scamtracker/{id} cover consumer-reported scam listings, with /bbb/scamtracker/state-stats for state/province aggregates.
6. Kickstarter — /kickstarter/discover (term free-text and/or category_id, plus state/sort/staff_pick_only) to browse or search campaigns, then /kickstarter/project (creator+slug, both the corresponding path segments of the campaign URL) for the funding snapshot (goal, pledged, percent funded, backers, status). /kickstarter/updates and /kickstarter/comments (same creator+slug) cover the creator's update feed and the campaign's comment thread.

Full endpoint list, methods, and params: reference/endpoints.md.

Calling the API

# Product Hunt:
scripts/crawlora.sh /producthunt/search query="AI coding assistant" | jq '.'

# Trustpilot:
scripts/crawlora.sh /trustpilot/business-units/search q="acmecorp.com" | jq '.'
scripts/crawlora.sh /trustpilot/business/acmecorp.com/reviews | jq '.'

# TrustMRR:
scripts/crawlora.sh /trustmrr/leaderboard | jq '.'

# Capterra:
scripts/crawlora.sh /capterra/search q="project management software" | jq '.'

# BBB:
scripts/crawlora.sh /bbb/search query="plumbing" location="Austin, TX" | jq '.'

# Kickstarter:
scripts/crawlora.sh /kickstarter/discover term="board game" | jq '.'
scripts/crawlora.sh /kickstarter/project creator=<creator-slug> slug=<project-slug> | jq '.'

Use scripts/crawlora.sh for all requests; it keeps the API key out of command-line arguments.

Endpoint reference

See reference/endpoints.md for every Product Hunt, Trustpilot, TrustMRR, Capterra, BBB, and Kickstarter endpoint this skill uses.

Examples

• Vendor due diligence: /trustpilot/business/{slug} (reputation) + /capterra/product + /capterra/product/reviews (feature-level feedback) before signing a software contract.
• Launch retrospective: /producthunt/product/{id} + /launches + /makers to see how a product performed and who built it.
• Bootstrapped-revenue research: /trustmrr/startup/{slug} for one company's verified MRR trend, or /trustmrr/leaderboard for the top earners in a category.
• Local-business trust check: /bbb/search + /bbb/business (rating, accreditation) + /bbb/business/complaints before hiring a contractor or vendor; cross-check /bbb/scamtracker/search for reported scams.
• Campaign due diligence: /kickstarter/project (funding snapshot) + /kickstarter/updates (has the creator been communicating?) before backing a campaign.

Notes & limits

• Credits / pay-on-success: billed only on 2xx; free tier 2,000 credits/mo. Key at https://crawlora.net.
• Public data only — public listing/review pages.
• Security: key lives in CRAWLORA_API_KEY only — never hardcode, query-param, or commit it.
• Trustpilot's slug is usually the business's domain (e.g. acmecorp.com), not a display name — resolve via /trustpilot/business-units/search if unsure.
• Kickstarter's creator+slug are the two path segments of a project URL (kickstarter.com/projects/{creator}/{slug}) — copy them directly from a campaign link or a /kickstarter/discover result rather than guessing.
• Reviews/lists are paginated — pass page to walk beyond the first page.