Software components need to be evaluated at several points during their life cycle, by different actors and for different purposes. Besides the quality assurance performed by component developers, there are two main activities which include evaluation of components: component selection (i.e. evaluation performed by the system developer in order to select the best fit component to use in a system) and an envisioned component certification (i.e. evaluation made by an independent actor in order to increase the trust in the component). This paper examines the fundamental similarities and differences between these two types of component evaluations and elaborates how these fit in the overall process views of component-based development for both COTS-based development and software product line development.