Top Free and Premium WordPress Testimonial Plugins

If you want to sell a product or service with your WordPress website, customer testimonials are an essential marketing tool. The right testimonial can give your visitor’s all the information needed to prompt a sale. This is true whether you are a large corporation or a freelancer.

There are many plugins for WordPress to help you post testimonials on your site. So many that it can be hard to choose the right one. We have created a list of the best free and premium plugins for testimonials. Some of these are very basic. Some contain lots of options, including forms for your customers to add testimonials.

What can testimonials do for you?

There’s nothing wrong with bragging about how awesome you are when it comes to advertising. But why not let other people do it for you? Customer testimonials are an easy way to boost your credibility.

They demonstrate that you have a proven track record and show potential customers what they can expect. They also prove your ability to meet or exceed expectations. This helps people feel more at ease when doing business with you.

The most impressive customer testimonials are more than mere words, they carry some weight to them and convey an air of accomplishment. It’s important to use testimonials that will work the best, and to display them effectively. One approach is to find testimonials that provide details that explain your product or service. If a customer mentions any specific benefits about doing business with you, it is likely to induce sales. The key is to demonstrate how you can satisfy your customer’s needs.

It’s one thing to compile a few helpful testimonials, but it’s another putting them up on your site. Just plain text will work but it may not be as effective as testimonials with color pictures, contact info, rating systems and more. With the right plugin you can display your testimonials in an engaging manner that is sure to impress potential customers.

It’s a good idea to lookout for plugins that allow you to put up testimonials with other elements besides text. This includes things like rating systems, pictures, contact information, links and style options. More advanced features on some of the premium plugins offer features such as rich snippets, enhanced links and lots of style options.

Excited! Testimonial

Excited! Testimonials produces anything from basic to beautiful testimonials. Add them to any area on your site. It works great as a sidebar or widget. You can display your testimonials as single testimonials, grid, sliders, widgets or lists. It also provides a ratings summary. The plugin also creates a submission form for collecting new testimonials.

There is a free version of Excited! or a premium version. The premium version includes a submission form and approval system, rich snippets, average ratings, Visual Composer support, free updates and support from the developers.

This testimonials plugin works as a standalone plugin with the use of shortcodes or it integrates with Visual Composer. This is an extremely versatile plugin with a ton of options. It’s simple to use right out of the box, just configure the settings, turn blocks on or off, style it and place your shortcode on the page.

With Excited! Testimonials you can craft any look you can think of. There are also plenty of advanced features such as:

• Rich snippet compatibility
• 100% responsiveness
• Drag and drop functionality
• Cool animation effects
• Options for to collect and approve submissions
• Average scores
• Rating systems
• Multiple options for layouts and styles

Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget is a free plugin that lets you create basic testimonials on your site. It displays them randomly with slides or you can choose which ones to display. Use a combination of text, image or videos to show your testimonials. This plugin works via shortcode, theme functions or widgets.

There are some nice features that allow you to advertise with carousels, fades, transitions and more. Filter the content in slideshows by catagories, tags or post ID. The layout is determined by your theme, which makes things simple. Testimonials widget is a basic plugin that offers a bit more than just an average testimonial.

Testimonials Showcase

This plugin is flexible and offers useful features. Show your testimonials by reviews, quotes or other ways. Testimonials Showcase has two settings for display, grid or slider. The grid view display shows entries in columns defined by the user. The elements will align based on how you configure the settings. More options for grid view include the shape of the image, animation effects and pre-defined themes.

The slider display shows your entries in a slider with settings that you choose. You can control the effect, number of entries and the control that your visitors use. This plugin is super simple and offers WordPress users a no frills solution for showcasing their testimonials.

Testimonials WordPress Plugin

Testimonials WordPress Plugin is a paid testimonials plugin with lots of power. It’s shows a fully responsive testimonials showcase with lots of ways you can make it unique. Display your entries with a shortcode or by widgets.

This premium plugin has all the option you need to make an impressive display. Settings include item fields, random order, specified order, layout settings and style settings. Testimonials WordPress Plugin also provides a useful star rating system. You have a wide array of option to configure the font, transition effects and overall layout. This allows you to produce many different displays.
Learn More

Testimonials by WooThemes

This free plugin gives you a great way to prove that your customers are happy with your business. Show off your testimonials by using a shortcode, widget or tag. This is a super simple, clean plugin that covers all the basics you need. It’s very lean and lightweight. If you want further styling you can add your own custom CSS, otherwise your theme will dictate the display.

Testimonials Showcase for Visual Composer

This plugin works with Visual Composer. This is great for those who love VC. Drag and drop everything. You can add this plugin to display your testimonials without ever touching the code. All you have to do is select the options you want to display within the admin panel, pick a predefined theme and choose color options. This makes things very easy and fast.

Testimonials Showcase for Visual Composer is simple, yet flexible and powerful. There are advanced features included that can make your testimonials more effective as well including:

• Filters
• Fully responsive
• 10 themes
• 10 color schemes
• More layout options
• Animation effects
• Testimonials management
• Lots more

Testimonials Showcase WordPress Plugin

This is just like the previous plugin on the list, except it works as a standalone plugin as well. So you can add your testimonials without Visual Composer. Use shortcodes or the built-in widget to add entries to any place on your WordPress site. It’s responsive, allows for submissions and offers lots of options. This plugin makes it easy to create a variety of plugins and manage them from the WordPress dashboard.

Testimonials Rotator

Here’s another free one that makes things easy. This no-frills plugin is lightweight and super simple. It creates a testimonial and a rotator that automatically goes through your entries. It has admin fields for assigning and creating testimonials to add to the rotators. Add tesmonials via widget or shortcode. Testimonials Rotator has some essential options including star ratings, filters, hooks and the ability to make custom templates.

Testimonials basics

Like the name suggests, you will get all your basics covered with Testimonials Basics. No more, no less. Display your entries via shortcodes or widgets. For a basic plugin it has plenty of features that allow you to get your testimonials up. It has a standard 5 star rating system, backups for testimonials, rich snippet options, 9 web fonts, multiple layouts, submission and approvals, pagination, translation and more.

Clean Testimonials

Usually you don’t want to use plugins if they haven’t been updated in quite some time but this one is an exception to that rule. Clean testimonials is a stripped down plugin solution that works. It enables you to quickly add testimonials to your site via shortcode or widget. Use the WordPress dashboard to add testimonials without any hassle.

Creating, editing and managing testimonials is simple because you will be using the native WordPress backend to get things done. This free plugin gives you everything you need for a basic testimonial. There are a few simple ways to manage your entries. If you are developer you can use PHP to tweak this plugin to fit your liking.

Thrive Ovation

Thrive Ovation is a premium plugin with the widest range of features. The cost of using the plugin for one site is $39. For this cost, you get a multi-purpose tool that allows you to receive, process and display testimonials in almost any form.

One of the features of the plugin is integration with Facebook and Twitter. This integration allows you to generate feedback about your products or services directly from people’s statements on social networks. This is an excellent opportunity to take into account the opinions of each buyer of your products or services. Remember that people are much more free to express their thoughts in social networks, rather than on the websites of sellers.

Another interesting feature of Thrive Ovation is the conversion of ordinary user comments into testimonials. You must take into account the fact that not all users will search for a special section in order to leave a review. The majority will prefer to write their opinion in the first form they find. And most often this form will be just a comment on your WordPress site or blog. With this feature, you can turn comments into testimonials without losing the user name, his avatar and the posting date of the comment.

Thrive Ovation also offers an amazing synergy with your trigger newsletters. You can set up a written reminder to each buyer that they can leave a review and briefly talk about how important it is for you. In doing so, you can give a direct link to the testimonials section, so that the user does not look for it by himself. This automatic reminder will significantly increase the number of testimonials on your site.

This plugin provides access to a user-friendly admin panel where you can quickly view all new comments, approve or reject them. Any testimonial can be used as a built-in element for different areas of the site. This feature is available by providing a shortcode for each existing review on your site.

A set of styles for writing testimonials will also please any WordPress administrator. Here you can choose a ready template for almost any style of the site. Ready templates can also be customized on your own, if none of the ready-made options meet your needs.

Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is free in its basic version. The paid version of this plugin costs $59 for one site. The main feature of this plugin is the use of SEO optimized markup for all testimonials on your site. This allows testimonials to have the best performance in Google search results. The free basic version includes 4 ready-made templates for registering testimonials and the ability to independently edit CSS to visually customize the views of your users about purchased products or services.

The Premium version of Easy Testimonials significantly expands the set of features and ready-made templates for design. Paid version allows you to choose from more than 75 ready-made design solutions for the design of testimonials. Also, you will be able to change the colors and fonts for all elements of the design block with testimonials.

Reminders about the possibility to leave feedback on the site via e-mail are also available in the paid version of the plugin. You can also draw the attention of users to the need of leaving a feedback directly on the site, using various forms and pop-up messages that you can create using the Easy Testimonials plugin.

Testimonial carousel widget and various kinds of transitions effects are also available with the purchase of a premium version of the plugin. In general, the paid version will be liked by experienced WordPress administrators for the wide possibilities of customizing styles and a number of additional opportunities for increasing the effectiveness of the whole block of testimonials on the site.

WP Customer Reviews

WP Customer Reviews is a free plugin that can be improved to pro version. This plugin is designed for a very clear purpose: creating the perfect page with testimonials on your WordPress site. This means that the plugin concentrates its attention on all the features that will allow you to create comfortable conditions for users to send feedback and optimal design of ready-made estimates.

You can create a form to send feedback by the user to your taste. At the same time, you can include any fields for filling out the form, including protection from spam. This feature is extremely important if you want to get specific information about your customers` impressions, and not just enthusiastic praise.

WP Customer Reviews allows you to create testimonials that are perfectly optimized in terms of SEO. This means that potential buyers will see testimonials from your WordPress site already in the search engine’s results. This design of its position in the search engine results will attract more visitors to the site.

WP Customer Reviews makes extensive use of shortcodes. This technology allows you to post positive feedback in the form of widgets on the site. Thus, you will be able to additionally advertise your products or services with the help of positive feedback, which your customers have previously left.

Strong Testimonials

Strong Testimonials is the best tool for novice WordPress administrators. The main advantage of this plugin is its ease of installation and use. Also it is free, which is not the last factor when choosing a plugin for a beginner who is just testing various features of the WordPress platform.

Strong Testimonials allows you to display the ratings of your customers in various ways: as a list (with optional pagination), except with “read more” link, standard or masonry grid, star ratings, slideshow with transition effects and so on. You can also include images and videos in user testimonials.

Strong Testimonials also widely uses shortcodes for convenient placement of custom ratings in various places on your site. This can serve as a good advertisement of your service on those pages of the site that are not directly related to testimonials.

Handsome Testimonials

Handsome Testimonials is also an easy-to-use plugin that will be appreciated by beginners in the WordPress administration area. However, this tool has more possibilities for customizing the design of your customers’ testimonials. In this case, changing the styles will not get you any knowledge in CSS.

The plugin also has a paid version for $39 for one site. Premium version has advanced functionality: star ratings, auto-rotating testimonials, frontend submission form, customer support and so on. But the main advantage of Handsome Testimonials remains in ample opportunities to change styles for testimonials.

Final Word

With such a large selection of testimonial plugins, it’s hard to know where to start. This list will definitely help you find your footing. If you are looking for something simple, try one of the free plugins. Pro versions, like Excited! Testimonials have free versions as well as premium versions. So you can upgrade later if you want to get more out of the plugin. The price of a paid plugin is often worth the minimal cost if you are looking for a plugin that is smooth, integrates with your current setup and offers advanced options.

When it comes down to it selling your products is ultimately up to you. One of the biggest benefits of testimonial plugins for WordPress is increased sales and visibility. Using testimonials is by far one of the most cost effective ways of boosting sales. It puts people at ease, giving them the confidence to do business with you.

Don’t forget, using rich snippets is also a great way to increase your visibility through search engines. Aside from that more advanced features can allow you to easily collect more testimonials and create engaging displays to draw in customers.