Reviews are one of the most popular types of content on the web. In fact, they have literally changed the way people shop. But they have also changed the lives of content creators. Because of their popularity, reviews are something that content creators can target with confidence as a value-provider (provided the review actually provides value, of course).

There are a number of WordPress plugins out there that will help content creators deliver their reviews in a more attractive and engaging way. We’ve gone through all the best free ones we could find and whittled the list down to six plugins that we thought were the best.

Some of the plugins below take advantage of schema.org markup options. These markups allow search engines to read and then display things like ratings (stars, for example) in their results, as well as other information such a price (if applicable) and even the review’s author. We have indicated whether or not each plugin uses the schema.org markup options.

(Note: All of the plugins below are for reviews written by site authors, not visitors to a site.)

1. Benday Reviews System

The Benday Reviews System plugin offers a very easy-to-use yet fairly sophisticated review solution that gathers reviews from your site into one sortable table.

First you will need to set up your categories on the settings page. After that, you will see a new simple box for your review under the Write/Edit Screen.

You will need to insert the plugin’s shortcode on a Page. This is where a summary of your reviews will appear in a table.

Once that’s done, all your reviews will appear on that page. They will then be sortable within the table by title, category, rating, and date posted.

If you click on an individual category (at the top), you will see reviews only in that category.

Clicking on the title will take you to the actual post.

This plugin is very nice, but its one noticeable drawback seems to be that it does NOT place your review score on the post itself. Of course you could do that manually, or you could use another plugin to record the score and place it on the post.

Although there aren’t settings to change the appearance of the table, if you know CSS, you can dig into the plugin’s CSS file to change things the way you like.

(This plugin does NOT use schema.org markup options.)

2. Author hReview

The Author hReview plugin places an attractive summary box of your review on your Post page with star ratings and other information. It also takes advantage of schema.org markup options. These markups allow search engines to read and then display things like ratings (stars, for example) in their results.

This plugin taps into schema.org by using product markup options or general review markup options (good for most anything – restaurant reviews, movie reviews, etc.).

Here’s an example of a completed review for a DVD.

The settings on your Post page consist of the following options.

You can also control some basic options of the review boxes overall. Here’s a look at that settings page.

3. Author Product Review

As the name indicates, the Author Product Review plugin is is primarily designed for reviewing products; however, you could use it for other purposes if you really wanted to as well (that said, you might find more flexibility in other plugins if not reviewing products).  This plugin takes advantage of schema.org markup options. These markups allow search engines to read and then display things like ratings (stars, for example) in their results.

Here’s an example of how a post you create with this plugin may appear in the search engines. This image has been taken from the plugin’s info page.

After activating the plugin, you will see a review box on the sidebar of your Write/Edit Screen.

When published, the plugin shows only the rating that you’ve given the product. It does not show the price or the name of the product; however, this information is included in the code of your page, and so it can be read and displayed by search engines. (See the search engine image above and notice the information included there.)

By default, your rating (with stars) is automatically inserted at the end of your post; however, you can place it anywhere in the post you like by simply inserting {rating}.

In this example, I’ve placed it at the very top.

4. Review Schema

Like the Author Product Review plugin above, the Review Schema plugin is made to take advantage of schema.org markup options. These markups allow search engines to read and then display things like ratings (stars, for example) in their results, as well as other information.

Here’s a look at how your results might appear in the search engines (as demonstrated by the plugin author).

The review box for this plugin appears in the sidebar of your Write/Edit Screen.

Again, like the Author Product Review plugin, the only information that is displayed on your Post page is the star ratings, and you can place those stars where you like by inserting a {rating}tag. The other information is included in your code and can be read by search engines, but it won’t be visible to readers.

5. Easy Review Builder

Although not quite as “easy” as it might be, the Easy Review Builder plugin does provide a nice review platform that will allow you to add as many different elements to a review as you like, and it will also automatically calculate an overall rating for you based on the scores of the individual elements.

Here’s a look at an example of what it can do.

The reason why this plugin is not quite as easy as it might be is because all the information must be entered into shortcodes. The end result is impressive, but a more user-friendly system for entering information would help.

As a demonstration, here’s a look at the shortcode that created the example above.

But again, the result in the end is nice. In fact, you can even easily style the table to your liking in the settings. Here’s a look at how you might do that.

(This plugin does NOT use schema.org markup options.)

6. Review Ratings

The Review Ratings plugin is a simple plugin that lets you easily assign a rating to whatever you’d like with a shortcode. Here’s a look at it in action with a 4 out of 5 stars rating.

One of the nicer aspects of this plugin is that it lets you change the type of symbols to use for your ratings (stars, hearts, etc.), and it also lets you change the color. You can also determine the number of possible symbols for the highest rating via the settings page.

This plugin will also allow you include “related” posts with a shortcode; however, there is not much subtlety in this. The related posts are chosen from any other posts on your site that happen to have ratings, regardless of their topic. The plugin author indicates that the relationship is based on similar ratings. As well, it seems the plugin sometimes chooses the very same post as a related post.

That said, if you’re just looking to insert a quick rating into your posts, this plugin may be what you’re looking for.

(This plugin does NOT use schema.org markup options.)