Freemius

designplug

ReviewStars displays a Google Places star rating and total review count via a shortcode: <code>[reviewstars]</code>.
It is built as a design tool: you can style the output in the admin and use Preview Mode to design without an API key or Place ID, which is useful for staging sites, page builders, and client approval.
<h3>Free build features</h3>
<ul>
<li>Shortcode: <code>[reviewstars]</code></li>
<li>Google Places rating and review count using your own API key</li>
<li>Caching via WordPress transients</li>
<li>Configurable front-end auto-refresh</li>
<li>Preview Mode with custom preview rating and review count</li>
<li>On-click behavior: open your Google listing or “Write a review”</li>
<li>Optional language parameter for the Google Places API</li>
<li>Style controls for spacing, typography, review count background, Google icon placement, and separators</li>
</ul>
The WordPress.org build includes only the free functionality listed here. Additional paid functionality is delivered in a separate plugin package outside WordPress.org and is not included in this package.
<h4>Style editor</h4>
Control spacing, typography and icon placement without custom CSS:
<ul>
<li>Toggle: show/hide review count and review text</li>
<li>Stars font size</li>
<li>Review text font size and font weight</li>
<li>Optional review text color</li>
<li>Number spacing: padding, margin, and vertical adjustment</li>
<li>Number typography: font size, font weight, and optional color</li>
<li>Optional number background: solid or gradient background, padding, radius, and border width</li>
<li>Google icon: show/hide, position, gap, icon size, and separator styling</li>
</ul>
<h3>External Services</h3>
This plugin connects to the following third-party services:
1) Google Places API (Google Maps Platform) 
Used to retrieve the rating and review count for the configured Place ID. Requests are made when the shortcode is rendered, when the admin “Test API settings” button is used, and when live refresh is enabled. 
Service: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/overview 
Terms: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms 
Privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
2) Freemius SDK (optional) 
The plugin bundles the Freemius SDK for optional account, opt-in, and commercial upgrade flows. The free plugin functionality works without opting in to Freemius. If you opt in or use Freemius account features, data may be processed by Freemius according to their policies. 
Privacy: https://freemius.com/privacy/ 
Terms: https://freemius.com/terms/
<h3>Shortcodes</h3>
<pre><code>[reviewstars]
</code></pre>
Optional attributes:
<ul>
<li><code>refresh_ms="300000"</code> – override refresh interval in milliseconds</li>
<li><code>preview="1"</code> – force preview output without API calls</li>
<li><code>rating="4.8"</code> – preview rating</li>
<li><code>reviews="1250"</code> – preview review count</li>
</ul>

ReviewStars

Displays a modern Google Places rating badge with style controls, caching, auto refresh, and optional preview mode.

Fahid Javid

Stars Rating transforms WordPress comments into a fully featured review system. It is simple to set up, highly configurable, and designed to keep your Media Library and admin clean no matter how many reviews come in.
Its main features are as follows:
Star Ratings 
* Turns posts, pages and custom post types comments into star-rated reviews. 
* Choose which post types have ratings enabled, globally and per post. 
* Option to require a star selection before a comment can be submitted. 
* Choose from two star styles (regular outline or solid filled) with a custom colour picker. 
* Display the average rating above the comments section. 
* Offers a shortcode [stars_rating_avg] to display the average rating anywhere. 
* Hide the average rating text: [stars_rating_avg show_text=”no”]. 
* Hide an empty average rating: [stars_rating_avg show_empty_rating=”no”]. 
* See each review’s star rating on the WordPress comments screen (backend).
Review Photos 
* Allow reviewers to attach photos to their comments. 
* Photos are stored in a dedicated folder (wp-content/uploads/sr-reviews/) — completely separate from the WordPress Media Library to keep it clean. 
* Photos open in a per-review lightbox gallery on the front end. 
* Manage and delete individual review photos from the comment edit screen in the admin. 
* Configure max number of photos, max file size, and max image dimension per upload. 
* Restrict photo uploads to logged-in users or allow everyone.
Likes & Dislikes 
* Add thumbs-up / thumbs-down buttons to posts on any post type. 
* Show or hide vote counts next to each button. 
* Restrict voting to logged-in users or allow everyone. 
* SVG icons ensure consistent rendering across all browsers and devices.
Negative Rating Alert 
* Show a popup when a reviewer selects a low star rating, giving them a chance to reach out before posting. 
* Set the rating threshold that triggers the alert. 
* Configure a direct link to your contact page inside the alert.
Google Rich Snippets 
* Output JSON-LD structured data so star ratings can appear directly in Google search results. 
* Set the review type (Product, Recipe, Book, Course, etc.) to match your content.
Labels & Messages 
* Customise every user-facing string — prompts, button labels, alert text, error messages — directly from the settings page without editing any code.
Settings 
* Organised settings page with tabbed navigation (Stars & Reviews, Likes & Dislikes, Labels & Messages) for quick access to each feature area.

Stars Rating

So i was looking for some simple star rating system, that would support schema and had as least bloat as possible. I thought i found what i was looking for, unfortunely this is not the case.

For simple usage it's ok, but there's two major drawbacks:
* Can't use it outside specified post/page/cpt, i.e. you wanna list ratings on loop somewhere? Too bad. 
* WHOLE Font Awesome library for simple star icon and it's added to plugin TWICE! Who does that? Without all that FA bloat plugin weight goes down to ~170kb from almost 2MB.

Also i'm not sure that author of the plugin understands support enquiries, but that might be just my speculation.

Acceptable quality at most

Very Good

Does what it says. I tried 3 other Plugins to get my CPT ratings, but due to heavy customization in the comments template (and form) none of them worked. This one integrates without any problems.

The only thing I'd like to see is an option to hide or customize the average rating text - for now it's not possible to only show the average number without additional text.

Hiding all text with CSS doesn't work too, because the text is in plain HTML without a class. I would like to have it like this:

<div class="stars-avg-rating">
 ...
 3.5 based on 2 reviews
</div>




Would enable more options for styling.

Works great!

A complete review plugin — star ratings, photo uploads, likes & dislikes, and Google rich snippets, all from one place.

ReviewStars vs Stars Rating