A candle-maker on Etsy ships fifteen scents and quietly tracks complaints in a Notes file. Three months in, the Notes file is unreadable and the "weak scent throw" complaint is starting to show up across multiple listings. Star Seller is on the line. The site filter only shows the latest reviews, and the shop dashboard doesn't pivot by item variation — and the personalization complaints are the worst kind, because they cost the buyer money and the seller a refund. The fix isn't reading harder. It's getting every review off Etsy and into a spreadsheet where you can pivot by item, by variation, by month. This guide walks you through using the ExportComments Etsy Reviews exporter to pull the full review history for any listing or shop into Excel, CSV, or JSON.

Why export Etsy reviews

Etsy reviews are short, sharp, and unusually visual. Buyers love photo reviews, and Etsy actively rewards shops with high review volume and shop-reply rates through Star Seller. Reviews are also the single best signal a handmade seller has — there's no support ticket flow, no formal returns API, no analytics integration. The reviews are the analytics. Once they're offline you can do the things the seller dashboard quietly refuses to:

  • Star Seller flag pivot — pivot review counts and average rating by week, watch for the dip that costs you the badge before Etsy emails you about it.
  • Shop-level pivot via item_title — pass a shop URL instead of a single listing and you get every review for every active item, with item_title as the column you pivot on.
  • Photo review extraction — buyer photos are gold on Etsy. Sample the photo URLs from 5-star rows for marketing, sample the photo URLs from 1-star rows to see what actually arrived.
  • Variation-aware quality — Etsy lists size, color, and personalization choices in item_variation. The complaint about font choice on a personalized cutting board is a different fix than a complaint about wood quality.
  • Seasonal pattern detection — pivot on created_at by month. Holidays, Mother's Day, wedding season, back-to-school. Each one moves the complaint mix.
  • Shop-reply audit — pivot on shop_reply_text. Shops that never reply get hit harder by Etsy's algorithm than shops that reply consistently — even when the underlying ratings are similar.

How to export Etsy reviews — step by step

Step 1: Grab the Etsy URL

You have two options. A listing URL — https://www.etsy.com/listing/123456789/handmade-soy-candle — pulls every review for that one item. A shop URL — https://www.etsy.com/shop/YourShopName — pulls every review across every active listing in that shop. The second one is what you want for shop-wide audits, complaint clustering, and Star Seller monitoring.

Step 2: Paste the URL into the exporter

Open the Etsy Reviews exporter and paste the URL. Pulling competitor shops or your full Etsy portfolio? Switch to bulk mode and paste one URL per line. Bulk runs return one Excel file per URL, bundled together in a single ZIP at the end of the job — each shop or listing stays cleanly separated.

Step 3: Pick a format

Excel (.xlsx), CSV, or JSON. Excel is the right pick if you're going to pivot and chart in the next ten minutes. CSV for BI imports. JSON for notebooks, clustering, or LLM theme summarization on the review text.

Step 4: Start the export

Hit Export. The job paginates through Etsy's review feed for the listing or shop, capturing the buyer name, the rating, the full review body, the item variation, the photo URLs, and the shop's reply when one exists. Bigger shops with thousands of reviews take a few minutes — close the tab if you want, the file lands in your dashboard and your inbox when it's ready.

Step 5: Open the file

Open the .xlsx in Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets. Each row is one review, with the columns described next.

Inside the export — what fields you get

Each row is a single Etsy review. You get columns for:

  • buyer_name — the displayed buyer name (Etsy uses first name + last initial by default).
  • buyer_profile_url — link to the buyer's public Etsy profile.
  • rating — the 1–5 star score.
  • review_text — the full review body.
  • item_title — the listing title — essential when you pulled a shop URL and need to pivot per item.
  • item_url — the listing URL.
  • item_variation — size, color, or personalization the buyer chose, when present.
  • photos — list of buyer-submitted photo URLs.
  • shop_reply_text — the seller's reply, when one exists.
  • shop_reply_at — when the seller replied.
  • permalink — direct link to the individual review.
  • created_at — review date.

Common workflows

  • Star Seller monitoring — pull the full shop, pivot reviews by week, plot the rolling 30-day average. The dip that costs you Star Seller usually shows up two weeks before Etsy emails you about it. A bad photo review wave on a hero listing is the classic trigger.
  • Complaint clustering for product iteration — paste the review_text column from your 2- and 3-star rows into ChatGPT and ask for the recurring themes. Candle-makers consistently surface "weak scent throw" in cold-pour seasons; jewelry-makers find "clasp came undone" clusters; print-on-demand sellers find personalization-spelling complaints. All of these are fixable. None of them show up clearly in the seller dashboard.
  • Variation-level quality — pivot on item_variation. The complaint that the "Vanilla Bean — 8oz" variant is too weak doesn't mean the product line is broken; it means one variant needs a tweak. The dashboard doesn't show you that pivot. Your spreadsheet does.
  • Photo review harvest — sort by rating = 5 and skim the photos column. Buyer photos with high-quality lighting and styling are some of the best free ad creative you'll get. Ask for permission before reusing.
  • Shop-reply audit — filter to rows where shop_reply_text is empty. If your no-reply rate on negative reviews is over 30%, that's an easy lift — replying tells Etsy's algorithm you're an active shop, and tells future buyers you handle complaints.
  • Seasonal pattern detection — pivot on created_at by month. Wedding season puts personalization-spelling complaints in your top theme; the December rush puts shipping-time complaints there. Knowing which is which lets you set buyer expectations in the listing copy before the season starts.

Plan limits and API access

The Free tier returns up to 100 reviews per export — enough to evaluate the format on a single listing. Personal scales to 5,000 results per export, Premium to 50,000, and Business to 250,000 — enough to capture the full review history of the largest Etsy shops. The same job is available through the REST API and via webhooks for scheduled or pipeline-triggered runs. See pricing for the full breakdown.

FAQ

  • Can I export reviews for an entire shop?
    Yes. Paste a shop URL (etsy.com/shop/YourShopName) instead of a listing URL and the export pulls every review across every active listing, with item_title as the column you pivot on for shop-wide analysis.
  • Do I get buyer photos?
    The photos column carries the URLs of every buyer-submitted photo on each review. The exporter doesn't download the image files — keeps the export fast and the sheet small. Open the URLs when you need to verify a complaint or harvest social-ready images.
  • Can I see the variation the buyer chose?
    Yes. item_variation carries the size, color, or personalization choice when the listing has variants. Pivot on it to spot the variant that's dragging your average down.
  • Are seller replies included?
    Yes. shop_reply_text and shop_reply_at capture the seller's reply and timestamp. Filter to rows with no reply to find the negative reviews you haven't responded to yet.
  • Can I schedule a weekly export?
    Yes, on Premium and Business. Pair it with webhook delivery to push new reviews into Slack or BigQuery — useful for catching a Star Seller-threatening dip early.
  • What if I have a lot of listings or competitor shops to export?
    Use bulk mode. Paste one URL per line and the run returns one file per URL packaged in a single ZIP, so each listing or shop's data stays cleanly separated for downstream analysis.