Review sites not only get a lot of attention when targeting a particular service or product type but creating one on WordPress is super easy with powerful rating plugin options.
People trust reviews when it comes time to buy everything from clothing to a car and if you want to make a profit, rating WP plugins make it easier. Best of all, you can find easy-to-use and powerful ones for free.
Whether you operate an e-commerce shop or engage in product-based affiliate marketing, using a free WordPress rating plugin provides more interest, more content, and a higher chance of ranking on Google and other search engines.
How does it work? Reviews written by site visitors and customers provide text rich with keywords and associated terms automatically. You do not have to spend any precious time writing them yourself. They promote your products and help you build authority in a niche.
I know how much a free rating plugin can boost the possibility of profits for your WordPress site. Do not trust the SEO and content marketing power to just any random system you find, however. I have tested a lot of them to find the most effective and user-friendly options for both you, the website owner or manager, and the people coming to leave the reviews.
7 Best Free WordPress Rating Plugins:
Originally Published May 2019, updated Mar 22 2023
1. kk Star Ratings
Total downloads: 90,000+
Five Star Ratings: 160+
The plugin displays a user-defined amount of star ratings in your posts/pages. It has cool mouse over effects and animations such as fueling of stars.
Supports Google Rich Snippets. Now the ratings will be indexed in google search. Includes a widget so you can show top rated posts in your sidebar as well. Can also be filtered by category.
Custom template tag/function is available as well.
2. WP-PostRatings
Total downloads: 50,000+
Five Star Ratings: 170+
An AJAX-enabled rating system for WordPress.
3. Yet Another Stars Rating
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 300+
Yasr – Yet Another Stars Rating is a powerful way to add SEO-friendly user-generated reviews and testimonials to your website posts, pages and CPT, without affecting its speed.
4. Rate my Post – WP Rating System
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 130+
An easy and lightweight WordPress rating plugin that allows you to easily add responsive, SEO-friendly rating functionality to your WordPress website. Visitors can rate your posts/pages and send you private feedback after rating.
Features:
- Lightweight, responsive and free
- Add rating functionality to your website automatically or use shortcodes – no coding required!
- Option to show ratings visually before the content of each post (so-called results widget)
- Stats section where you can see how many votes each post/page received and what is its average rating.
- Analytics section with detailed information about each rating such as time, IP (optionally), username, title, time spent on page before rating etc.
- Easily change ratings in the admin panel
- Supports structured data for rich snippets according to the latest Google guidelines
- GDPR compliant
- Top rated posts widget
- Custom templates for complete customization
5. Reviews and Rating – Google My Business
Total downloads: 20,000+
Five Star Ratings: 130+
This plugin will collect this data using your unique Google Place ID and display a well-formatted list or column/blocks of reviews, and some associated links to reviews and Google map listing, plus point customers to post their own review and rating on Google. Don’t worry: there are no restrictions to the reviews collection and plenty of options to display it perfectly in your website.
Features:
- Shortcode and Widget for customer reviews on Google
- Very high level of customization with more added on request
- Insert a list of customers’ reviews with ratings range, review length range, offset, [unrestricted] limit, sorting, language and individual review(s) selection
- Fully responsive design with light styling to allow for your customizations; show/hide any element using shortcode parameters
- Customize appearance with columns, customize ordering within review items, hide or overwrite avatars, date formatting, name formatting, and much more
- Designed with SVG vector graphics for a crisp appearance across all devices
- 96 designs/themes
- Live preview in Dashboard→Settings
- Select your choice icon to replace Google’s generic icons
- Structured Data (Schema.org) support to present clear business and review data to search engines to assist with SEO
- Demo mode to help create your website before it goes live; without requiring Google API credentials
- Manage all retrieved reviews and selectively hide reviews
- See the latest formatted JSON data from Google’s API
- Retrieves reviews in the background, collecting more through Google’s API over time with a snapshot of valid data for stability
- Clear cache, reset retrieved reviews and overall reset to clear all plugin data
- Advanced capability to import all review data from Google’s review popup HTML or consolidated reviews HTML (inspecting the live HTML)
- A comprehensive and free plugin with no upgrades for additional functionality
6. Rating-Widget: Star Review System
Total downloads: 8,000+
Five Star Ratings: 880+
A GDPR compliant Five Star Review System on the web. User-friendly ratings for: posts, pages, comments, WooCommerce, BuddyPress and bbPress forums.
7. Like Button Rating
Total downloads: 6,000+
Five Star Ratings: 200+
The LikeBtn Like Button plugin allows you to effortlessly add customizable like and dislike buttons to your WordPress site, encouraging users to interact with your content, products, or services. With support for over 80 themes and 41 languages, this plugin offers a flexible and adaptable solution for websites with diverse audiences. LikeBtn Like Button is compatible with various post types, pages, comments, WooCommerce products, BuddyPress activities, and bbPress forum posts, making it an invaluable addition to any WordPress site.
Features:
- GDPR compliant.
- More than 80 parameters, 41 themes, 40 languages.
- Custom themes and images.
- Works on websites fully cached with WP Super Cache, WP Total Cache, CloudFlare, etc.
- Google Rich Snippets providing five star rating in Google search results.
- Sorting content by likes.
- Real-time reports.
- Voting statistics. (PRO/VIP/ULTRA)
- Multisite compatible.
- Email notifications on new votes for admin. (PRO)
- Tracking voters by IP+Device+Cookie or by users.
- Like box displaying users who liked an item.
- Compatible with myCRED and GamiPress.
- The list of the the most liked content using widget or
[likebtn_most_liked]shortcode. (PRO/VIP/ULTRA) - The list of the content liked by the current authenticated user using widget or
[likebtn_liked_by_user]shortcode. (PRO/VIP/ULTRA) - Shortcode
[likebtn]to display the Like button inside a post or page. - Shortcodes
[likebtn_likes]and[likebtn_dislikes]to display number of likes and dislikes. - Shortcode
[likebtn_off]to disable the Like button in a post or page. - Shortcode
[likebtn_category_likes]to display total number of likes for category. - BuddyPress notifications for authors when authenticated users like or dislike author’s content.
- Recording like & dislike actions in BuddyPress activity stream (votes in private groups are NOT displayed in the public activity stream).
- Custom templates for snippets in BuddyPress activity stream.
- WPML compatible.
- Changing number of likes or setting initial random number of likes (ULTRA).
- Customizable position and alignment.
- Full access to the Like button CSS.
- Custom Like & Dislike buttons texts.
- Right-to-left (RTL) support.
- Allows to collect donations by adding donate buttons to popup.
- Adds “Likes”, “Dislikes” and “Likes minus dislikes” custom fields to posts.
- Allows to add Open Graph meta tags to posts and pages.
Conclusion:
Establish trust by giving customers and site visitors the opportunity to make their opinions known about every product you offer. With comprehensive WP rating plugins, the whole process is simple.
Traffic increases automatically from the improved content on your pages, the natural inclusion of powerful SEO keyword phrases, and the dynamic power that reviewing brings. The best rating plugins for WordPress augment your other site creation, content marketing, and optimization practiced in a totally hands-off, user-friendly way.
