The 10 Best Testimonial Plugins for WordPress in 2024

Testimonials are one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. 92% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase, and 72% say positive reviews make them trust a business more (BigCommerce).

If you have a WordPress site, testimonial plugins make it easy to showcase glowing reviews from your happy customers. The best testimonial plugins let you beautifully display reviews as well as gather new ones.

But with so many options, which ones deliver the best results? In this post, we‘ll dive deep into the top 10 WordPress testimonial plugins for 2024.

Whether you‘re a small business, ecommerce store, freelancer, or marketer, these plugins will help you harness the power of social proof to drive more sales. Let‘s get into it!

What to Look for in a WordPress Testimonial Plugin

The right testimonial plugin can make a huge difference in your conversion rates. Displaying reviews can increase conversions by 270% (Spiegel Research Center).

Here are the key features to look for in a testimonial plugin that‘s optimized for marketing results:

• Multiple attractive display options – Look for a plugin with stylish, conversion-focused designs like testimonial sliders, grids, and single review boxes. Bonus points for customization options.

• Submission forms – Make it effortless for customers to submit reviews with user-friendly front-end forms. The ability to customize the form fields is ideal.

• Review funnels – Some top plugins can automatically solicit reviews from customers via email and then feed the best ones to your site. This helps you build up a steady stream of fresh testimonials.

• Rich snippets – Plugins that output reviews with valid schema markup can help your pages show up with star ratings and review data in Google search results. This can lead to higher click-through rates.

• Imports from external platforms – Have great reviews on sites like Google, Facebook, or Yelp? Plugins that can sync and import them to your site save you time and maximize social proof.

With these high-impact features in mind, let‘s take an in-depth look at the top WordPress testimonial plugins available today.

1. Thrive Ovation

Thrive Ovation is an all-in-one testimonial plugin from the renowned Thrive Themes. It‘s designed to help you capture and beautifully display testimonials for maximum marketing impact.

One standout feature is the ability to automatically pull in reviews from platforms like Facebook, Google My Business, and YouTube. You can also create custom review capture forms and start automated email campaigns asking customers for testimonials.

When it comes to display, Thrive Ovation offers stylish templates designed to maximize conversions. You can further customize them with a drag-and-drop editor.

Other notable features include:

• A/B testing to optimize your testimonial designs
• Detailed filters to display the most relevant reviews
• Content scraping to automatically fill in testimonial fields

Pricing: Plans start at $39/month paid annually

Best for: Businesses wanting an all-in-one platform to capture and optimize testimonials

2. Strong Testimonials

Strong Testimonials is a robust free plugin used by over 100,000 sites. It offers just about all the essential features you need to showcase testimonials.

The free version supports unlimited testimonials with slideshow, grid, and single review displays. You can reorder testimonials by simply dragging and dropping.

Testimonial collection is handled through customizable front-end forms. The plugin also adds proper schema markup to help your pages rank in search results.

If you need more advanced features, the pro version adds:

• Video testimonial support
• Carousel sliders
• Review forms with custom fields
• Star ratings
• Priority support

Pricing: Free; Pro version starts at $99/year

Best for: Sites on a budget needing a flexible and reliable free testimonial solution

3. Easy Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is a user-friendly freemium plugin that aims to make displaying and collecting reviews as simple as possible. The interface is clean and intuitive.

The free version offers unlimited testimonials and several stylish templates. You can display testimonials using Gutenberg blocks, shortcodes, or widgets.

The pro version unlocks more advanced display options like:

• Testimonial sliders
• Grid layouts
• Masonry style layouts

It also adds submission forms, star ratings, schema support, and CSV import/export. With pro, you can even let visitors filter testimonials by rating.

Pricing: Free; Pro starts at $29 for one site

Best for: Users who want an easy to use plugin with stylish pro layouts

4. Testimonial Rotator

As the name implies, Testimonial Rotator specializes in sleek slideshow testimonial displays. Even the free version is packed with options for customizing your sliders.

You can set your testimonial slideshows to autoplay, have paginated dots, and add timed transitions. The plugin also supports video testimonials with embed codes.

The sliders are fully responsive and adapt to any screen size. You can insert them anywhere via shortcode or PHP.

The premium version adds:

• More slideshow templates
• Submission forms
• Star ratings
• Priority support

Pricing: Free; Premium starts at $19.99

Best for: Users mainly interested in testimonial sliders

5. Testimonial Slider and Showcase

This plugin from SliderVilla is great for creating attention-grabbing testimonial displays. It offers multiple slider and grid layouts with various styling options.

The slider displays have advanced features like pause on hover, auto-height adjustment, and touch swipe navigation. You can showcase testimonials in a particular order or have them sorted randomly.

Testimonial Slider and Showcase also makes it easy to display reviews from different categories on specific pages. For example, you could have a slider with reviews mentioning a specific product or service.

Some other notable features include:

• 25+ slider and grid templates
• Schema markup support
• Front-end submission forms
• Image and video support

Pricing: Starts at $29 for a single site license

Best for: Users wanting tons of stylish slider and grid designs

6. Smash Balloon Social Post Feed

Smash Balloon Social Post Feed is a unique freemium option that lets you sync and combine reviews from multiple social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

All your social reviews are aggregated in one place. From there, you can hand-pick the best ones to display on your site in an attractive masonry grid layout.

While it‘s not a dedicated testimonial plugin, Social Post Feed is a great tool if you have lots of positive customer feedback scattered across different social networks.

Features include:

• Unlimited social review feeds
• Light and dark display themes
• Moderation panel to approve/hide reviews
• Smart caching for fast loading times

Pricing: Free; Pro version starts at $49/year for one site

Best for: Businesses with reviews spread across social platforms

7. AP Custom Testimonial

AP Custom Testimonial is a straightforward free plugin that covers the basics of displaying and collecting reviews. If you don‘t need fancy features, it gets the job done.

The free version supports unlimited testimonials. You can display them in grid or list view with simple customization options like colors, font sizes, and image shapes.

Customers can submit reviews through a no-frills front-end submission form. You can then approve or hide testimonials before they go live.

While there‘s no pro version, AP Custom Testimonial does support star ratings and schema microdata out of the box. So even the free version can help you get those coveted star ratings in search snippets.

Pricing: 100% free

Best for: Users who just need a basic free testimonial solution

8. Testimonial

Testimonial is another highly-rated free plugin built around a simple grid layout. The default design is clean and elegant, reminiscent of product review boxes you might see on an ecommerce site.

You can further customize your testimonial grid by choosing from preset themes or adding your own custom CSS. Other options include grid columns, spacing, background color, and more.

Testimonial also includes a submission form with custom fields. Displaying submission forms is as easy as adding a shortcode to any post or page.

While the free version covers the essentials, Testimonial also has a premium version that adds some useful features like:

• Star ratings
• AJAX-powered infinite scroll
• Photo and video testimonials
• Priority support

Pricing: Free; Premium starts at $39.99/year for one site

Best for: Users who like the clean grid layout and want a few extra features

9. Wp Testimonial with rotator widget

This free plugin from wblinfotech focuses on two main display formats: list view and a slideshow rotator. The list view displays all your testimonials on one page, while the rotator cycles through them individually.

The rotator widget can be configured with custom animation effects and timing. You can insert it in your sidebar or any widget-ready area.

Other features include:

• Drag-and-drop testimonial reordering
• Star ratings
• Featured images
• Shortcodes

The output markup is clean and compatible with most WordPress themes out of the box. If you need more control, you can supply your own custom CSS.

Pricing: 100% free

Best for: Users who want a simple rotator widget to display testimonials in their sidebar

10. Easy Testimonials Rotator

Easy Testimonials Rotator is a free add-on for the Easy Testimonials plugin (number 3 on our list). Once you have Easy Testimonials installed, this extension lets you create slick testimonial sliders.

The rotators are fully responsive and adapt to any container size. You can customize the slide duration, transition speed, and navigation style (arrows or dots).

To display your rotator, you simply generate a shortcode and paste it anywhere. You can insert multiple rotators with different testimonials on the same page.

The premium version of Easy Testimonials Rotator adds some nice extras like:

• More theme and layout options
• Ability to insert testimonials from specific categories
• Thumbnail pagination

Pricing: Free; Pro version starts at $10/year for one site

Best for: Easy Testimonials users who want to add sliders

How to Maximize Testimonials for Marketing

Choosing the right WordPress testimonial plugin is a great start. But to get the most marketing mileage out of your testimonials, you‘ll want to be strategic about how you deploy them.

Here are some testimonial marketing best practices to consider:

• Showcase reviews from your ideal customers – Use testimonials from buyers who reflect the key audience you‘re trying to reach. This helps new visitors see themselves in your happy customers.

• Pepper testimonials throughout your site – In addition to a dedicated testimonials page, strategically place reviews on your homepage, product pages, pricing page, and other high-intent pages. A well-placed testimonial can be the nudge a visitor needs to convert.

• Include photos for added credibility – Testimonials paired with customer photos are more believable. Include headshots with reviews when possible (with permission). Some plugins can even pull in photos automatically when importing testimonials from social media.

• Prioritize video testimonials – Video reviews are even more impactful than text or photos. Reach out to your best customers and ask if they‘ll record a quick video talking about their experience. Offer an incentive like a gift card or discount.

• Add an aggregate star rating – If your plugin supports it, enable an aggregate star rating that averages together all your individual review scores. This acts as compelling social proof, especially when placed prominently in your site header or sidebar.

• Gate negative reviews behind a form – Some WordPress testimonial plugins have a smart feature where all positive reviews are automatically approved, while negative ones get sent to a moderation queue. You can then follow up with unhappy customers privately.

By combining a powerful testimonial plugin with smart marketing practices, you can turn customer reviews into one of your most effective sales tools.

Start Harnessing the Power of Social Proof

There you have it – the 10 best testimonial plugins for WordPress in 2024. Whether you‘re a small business, ecommerce store, blogger, or marketer, these plugins make it easy to leverage the power of social proof.

To recap our top picks:

• For an all-in-one testimonial platform, Thrive Ovation is worth the investment
• Strong Testimonials is the most robust free option for most sites
• Easy Testimonials hits the sweet spot of affordability and features
• Testimonial Slider and Showcase has the most stylish templates
• Smash Balloon is great for aggregating reviews from social media

Now it‘s your turn – install one of these and plugins and start harnessing the marketing benefits of testimonials. Add reviews to your key pages, enable star ratings, and watch your conversions soar.

Here‘s to letting your customer‘s sing your praises!