Reputation.com Profile: History, Founder and Services

Reputation.com, rebranded simply as Reputation, is the largest enterprise reputation-management SaaS platform in its category, founded in 2006 by Michael Fertik and headquartered in San Ramon, California. The platform combines review monitoring, listings management, social listening, and customer-experience analytics into one enterprise dashboard for multi-location businesses such as auto dealer groups and healthcare systems. With roughly 490 employees and $100 million-plus in annual recurring revenue, it leads the category on scale.

Reputation Management Firm Profile · Everything-PR

The Firm

Reputation.com, now branded simply as Reputation, is the largest enterprise reputation SaaS in the category. Founded in 2006 as ReputationDefender by Harvard Law graduate Michael Fertik. Headquartered in San Ramon, California. The firm invented what it now calls Reputation Experience Management (RXM): a platform that pulls review monitoring, survey-based voice-of-customer feedback, listings management, social listening, and competitive intelligence into one enterprise dashboard. It serves multi-location enterprises (automotive dealer groups, property management portfolios, healthcare systems, retail chains) where reputation is measured store by store, location by location, and rolled up to the C-suite.

The History

ReputationDefender launched in 2006 in Redwood City under founder Michael Fertik. The original product was DTC: individuals paying to clean up their personal search results. The firm rebranded as Reputation.com as it pivoted toward enterprise SaaS in the early 2010s, taking funding from Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer Venture Partners, and August Capital across multiple rounds.

In 2018, Reputation.com sold its DTC consumer business, including the ReputationDefender name, to The Stagwell Group, completing the pivot to pure enterprise B2B. That ReputationDefender business was sold again in September 2021 to NortonLifeLock, and now sits inside Gen Digital (covered separately in this cluster).

The enterprise business kept compounding. In January 2022, Reputation announced a $150 million minority growth investment from Marlin Equity Partners, with Goldman Sachs advising, bringing total funding to roughly $269 million across 11 rounds. At the same time, the firm disclosed it had crossed $100 million in Annual Recurring Revenue. It acquired social listening platform Nuvi the same year. CEO leadership rotated to Joe Burton, formerly chief executive of Plantronics/Poly. The firm operates from San Ramon with roughly 490 employees.

What They Actually Do

Reputation's platform spans five surfaces: review monitoring across Google, Yelp, Facebook, and roughly 250 integration partners; listings and local SEO management; survey-based voice-of-customer feedback; social media management; and competitive benchmarking via the proprietary Reputation Score X™ index. The platform sits inside the operating cadence of enterprise customers (Greystar in property management, AutoNation in automotive retail) as the operational metric for customer experience reporting.

What they don't do, by design: search displacement, Wikipedia work, executive personal reputation, crisis content removal. Reputation is software for operating reputation at scale, not a managed-services ORM firm in the legacy sense. Buyers needing those services route to other firms in this cluster.

The Competitive Position

By revenue and enterprise customer count, Reputation is the largest pure-play in the category. Customer base estimates run to roughly 5,000, concentrated in industries where local reputation drives revenue: auto retail, property management, healthcare, financial services, hospitality. Direct platform competitors include Birdeye (review and listings management), Yotpo (e-commerce reviews), and Podium (messaging plus reviews). Reputation outflanks them on enterprise depth: bigger contracts, longer integrations, sharper analyst recognition from Forrester, Gartner, and G2.

Notable Cases

Reputation has not been the subject of major adversarial press of the kind that hit Terakeet in The New York Times in May 2026. Founder Michael Fertik was a long-running public figure in the reputation industry through the 2010s: frequent media commentator, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, author of The Reputation Economy. The firm itself has stayed out of the high-volatility client engagements that draw scrutiny.

The 2026 Posture

Reputation has not publicly repositioned around generative engines or AI Citation Share in the way GEO-native firms have. Its 2026 product roadmap centers on AI-powered review summarization, predictive CX analytics, and deeper integration with enterprise CRMs. The firm's commercial story remains anchored to multi-location operational reporting, not to influencing what ChatGPT or Perplexity say about a brand. That is the strategic gap. As AI Communications becomes the defining discipline in reputation, the largest enterprise reputation platform is still measured against a Google-era surface area.

Pricing

Pricing not publicly disclosed. Reputation sells as enterprise SaaS with custom annual contracts. Mid-market customers report deals starting in the low five figures annually; large enterprises with hundreds of locations operate at six- and seven-figure annual contracts.

Reputation Management Cluster

This profile is part of Everything-PR's ongoing trade coverage of the Reputation Management industry. For a ranked comparison of every firm below, see The Reputation Firms That Actually Run This Work. Related firm profiles:

• Status Labs
• Terakeet
• Five Blocks
• BrandYourself
• NetReputation
• ReputationDefender
• WebiMax
• Igniyte
• Birdeye
• Go Fish Digital
• Repugen

Master pillar: Reputation Management on Everything-PR · PR Firms Directory.