tracksies

Your customers have been saying good things about you. Trustie is a free reviews plugin that helps you bring all of it — customer testimonials, Google Business reviews, and WooCommerce product reviews — onto your own website, stored in your own database, displayed the way you want them. Tested with Elementor, Divi, and Bricks. Free, self-hosted, and yours to keep.
<h4>What makes Trustie different</h4>
Three things, mostly:
<ul>
<li>Your reviews live in your database. Not ours. Not a third party’s. They’re WordPress posts and comments, stored alongside the rest of your site’s content. If you ever want to export them, move them somewhere else, or just peek at what’s in there — they’re yours.</li>
<li>WooCommerce is optional. Trustie works on service sites, portfolios, bakeries, accountants — anywhere with happy customers and a WordPress install. When WooCommerce is there, Trustie leans in and handles product reviews too.</li>
<li>The free version is a whole plugin. Testimonials, Google reviews, product reviews, import tools, the floating widget, the reviews page, the visual designer — all included. If you never need more, brilliant. If you do, the rest of the Tracksies family is there when you’re ready.</li>
<li>Plays nice with the rest of the family. If you add Tracksies HQ, Helpie, Packsie, Perkie, Squizzie, or Pipesie alongside Trustie, the admin menus merge automatically — one shared “Tracksies” parent in the WordPress sidebar, not many. No setup; Trustie detects the siblings and adjusts.</li>
</ul>
<h4>On any WordPress site</h4>
No WooCommerce needed for any of these.
<ul>
<li>Google Business reviews on your own site — pull in your real Google reviews with star ratings, reviewer names, and a “View on Google” link. JSON-LD schema travels with them, so search engines can surface them in rich results.</li>
<li>Testimonials you collect yourself — a proper submission form, with grid, list, masonry, and slider layouts for display. Auto-approve above a rating threshold, or moderate manually.</li>
<li>A floating reviews widget — a slide-out panel showing your latest reviews on every page. Think of it as the polite version of those pop-ups that chase you around the internet.</li>
<li>A dedicated reviews page — a <code>/reviews/</code> page with tabs, filtering, and pagination. Works automatically. No WooCommerce required.</li>
<li>Visual Designer — colours, star styles, card edges, and branding from one settings page. Auto-detects your theme’s fonts and colours on first run (we tried to be clever about it).</li>
</ul>
<h4>Even better with WooCommerce</h4>
Everything above, plus:
<ul>
<li>Better-looking product reviews — Trustie’s review cards include star summaries, rating breakdowns, and layouts designed to show your reviews off.</li>
<li>Star ratings anywhere — shortcodes for average ratings on any page, plus lightweight “loop stars” optimised for archive pages, so your category listings stay quick.</li>
<li>Automatic review request emails — we email customers after purchase asking for a review (because they’re not going to remember on their own). Smart cancellation: if the order is refunded, cancelled, returned, or already reviewed, the email quietly doesn’t go out.</li>
<li>Turn old comments into reviews — if you turned WooCommerce reviews on after already having product comments, one click converts those comments into star-rated reviews with a default rating you choose. You can tidy up individual ratings afterwards.</li>
<li>Catalogue-wide rating sync — recalculates average ratings and review counts across every product (handy after imports, migrations, or general database fiddling).</li>
</ul>
<h4>Tested with the page builders people actually use</h4>
Elementor, Divi, and Bricks are all tested. Oxygen is currently in active testing — we’ll update here once we’re happy with it. If you use a different builder and something looks off, please tell us. We’d much rather hear it from you than find out from a one-star review (ouch).
<h4>Moving from another plugin? We’ll meet you halfway</h4>
<ul>
<li>Testimonials — auto-detects and imports from Strong Testimonials, Easy Testimonials, and Starter Templates. Keep the originals or clear them out once you’re settled — your call.</li>
<li>Old product comments — as mentioned above: one click, pick a default rating, done.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Built to be accessible</h4>
Trustie is tested against WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines and we keep improving: keyboard navigation, visible focus indicators, screen reader announcements for form submissions and content loading, and descriptive labels on interactive controls. If something doesn’t work the way it should for you, tell us — accessibility is a commitment, not a checkbox.
<h4>Shortcodes</h4>
Without WooCommerce
<ul>
<li><code>[trustie_google_reviews]</code> — your Google Business reviews with aggregate rating and schema. Needs a Google API key and Place ID in Settings > Google Reviews.</li>
<li><code>[trustie_testimonials]</code> — testimonials in grid, list, or masonry.</li>
<li><code>[trustie_testimonial_form]</code> — the submission form.</li>
<li><code>[trustie_testimonial_slider]</code> — auto-advancing carousel.</li>
<li><code>[trustie_testimonial_grid]</code> — grid layout wrapper (convenience shortcut).</li>
</ul>
With WooCommerce
<ul>
<li><code>[trustie_reviews]</code> — reviews for a specific product, with optional form and summary.</li>
<li><code>[trustie_all_reviews]</code> — all reviews, from all products, in a grid.</li>
<li><code>[trustie_reviews_page]</code> — full reviews page with pagination.</li>
<li><code>[trustie_review_form]</code> — standalone review submission form.</li>
<li><code>[trustie_rating]</code> — average star rating for a product.</li>
<li><code>[trustie_rating_badge]</code> — compact stars-plus-count badge.</li>
<li><code>[trustie_loop_stars]</code> — lightweight stars optimised for archive loops.</li>
</ul>
Every shortcode takes optional attributes for customisation. See the <a href="https://doc.tracksies.com/docs/trustie-free/shortcode-reference/" rel="nofollow ugc">full shortcode reference</a> for details.
<h4>When you’re ready for more</h4>
If your site grows and you’d like more, the Tracksies family plays nicely together:
<ul>
<li>Trustie Pro — photo reviews, custom review forms, advanced filtering, enhanced widget controls.</li>
<li>Tracksies HQ — the operational layer for WooCommerce stores: customer intelligence, order management, tags, branded email templates, returns workflow, packing workflow.</li>
</ul>
Visit <a href="https://tracksies.com" rel="nofollow ugc">tracksies.com</a> if that sounds like your sort of thing.
<h4>Privacy & external services (in brief)</h4>
Trustie can connect to two external services. Full details are in the External Services section below.
<ul>
<li>Google Places API — used only when you’ve added your own API key and Place ID to display your own Google reviews. No visitor data is sent to Google.</li>
<li>Appsero — optional, opt-in diagnostic telemetry. Off by default. Nothing is sent unless you explicitly allow it.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Privacy Policy</h3>
Trustie uses <a href="https://appsero.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Appsero</a> SDK to collect some telemetry data upon user’s confirmation. This helps us to troubleshoot problems faster & make product improvements.
Appsero SDK does not gather any data by default. The SDK only starts gathering basic telemetry data when a user allows it via the admin notice. We collect the data to ensure a great user experience for all our users.
Integrating Appsero SDK DOES NOT IMMEDIATELY start gathering data, without confirmation from users in any case.
Learn more about how <a href="https://appsero.com/privacy-policy/" rel="nofollow ugc">Appsero collects and uses this data</a>.
<h3>External Services</h3>
This plugin connects to the following external services:
<h4>Google Places API</h4>
Trustie uses the <a href="https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service" rel="nofollow ugc">Google Places API</a> to retrieve your Google Business reviews for display on your site.
<ul>
<li>What data is sent: Your Google API key and Place ID (both configured by you in plugin settings).</li>
<li>When: When a page containing the <code>[trustie_google_reviews]</code> shortcode is loaded, or when you test the connection from Settings > Google Reviews. Results are cached for 24 hours to minimize requests.</li>
<li>No visitor data is sent to Google — only your business credentials are used to fetch your own reviews.</li>
<li><a href="https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/terms" rel="nofollow ugc">Google Terms of Service</a></li>
<li><a href="https://policies.google.com/privacy" rel="nofollow ugc">Google Privacy Policy</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>Appsero</h4>
Trustie uses the <a href="https://appsero.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Appsero</a> SDK for optional, opt-in diagnostic data collection. This helps us troubleshoot issues and improve the plugin.
<ul>
<li>Tracking is disabled by default. Data is only collected after you explicitly allow it via the admin notice shown on plugin activation.</li>
<li>What data is sent (when opted in): Site URL, admin email, WordPress version, PHP version, server environment details, active plugin/theme information, and plugin version.</li>
<li>When: Once per week via a scheduled event, only if you have opted in.</li>
<li>You can opt out at any time from the admin notice or plugin settings.</li>
<li><a href="https://appsero.com/terms-conditions/" rel="nofollow ugc">Appsero Terms of Service</a></li>
<li><a href="https://appsero.com/privacy-policy/" rel="nofollow ugc">Appsero Privacy Policy</a></li>
</ul>
<h4>icanhazip.com (Cloudflare)</h4>
When you opt in to Appsero diagnostic tracking (see above), Trustie uses <a href="https://icanhazip.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">icanhazip.com</a> to determine your server’s public IP address for environment diagnostics. This service is operated by <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Cloudflare, Inc.</a>.
<ul>
<li>What data is sent: A simple HTTP GET request with no payload.</li>
<li>When: Only when you have opted into Appsero tracking. Not called if tracking is disabled (the default).</li>
<li>What is returned: Your server’s public IP address, which is included in the Appsero diagnostic data.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/" rel="nofollow ugc">Cloudflare Terms of Use</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/" rel="nofollow ugc">Cloudflare Privacy Policy</a></li>
</ul>

Trustie — Reviews, Testimonials & Google Reviews

Free reviews plugin for WordPress — customer reviews, product reviews, testimonials, and Google reviews in one. Works with or without WooCommerce.

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.

Trustie — Reviews, Testimonials & Google Reviews vs Stars Rating