Is your business startup struggling to build credibility and trust with your audience? Look no further than Strong Testimonials. This powerful plugin revolutionizes how you showcase customer feedback, reviews, and testimonials. As the premier testimonial plugin for WordPress, it empowers you to captivate your audience with authentic social proof. No longer do you need to waste your time on old-school testimonial management. Welcome this streamlined solution to amplify your online reputation.
This comprehensive review of Strong Testimonials will explore its key features, benefits, pricing, pros and cons, and more to help you decide if it is the testimonial plugin for you.
What Is Strong Testimonials?
Strong Testimonials is a WordPress plugin that allows website owners to collect and display customer testimonials. It provides a user-friendly form interface to collect user testimonials and offers various templates and layout styles to display via a widget or shortcode. The customization options allow you to match your website’s theme and style.
The Strong Testimonials Plugin has been refined over the years, making it beginner-friendly and feature-rich. You can import and display reviews from social media platforms like Facebook, Yelp, and Zomato. You can create forms with customizable form fields to collect visitors’ testimonials and manage all those entries on the backend.
How it Works: Getting Started with Strong Testimonials
Once you install and activate the Strong Testimonials plugin, you’ll be prompted to create your first testimonial. You can start by clicking the big green button or clicking “Add New” under “Testimonials” in your WordPress dashboard.
Fill in all the information to create your new testimonial, including the testimonial title, body content, and client details. You can even add a category to organize your testimonials.
Once you have created one or more testimonials, navigate to Testimonials > Views. This is where you have a range of options for managing the display options for your testimonials and forms. Choosing the Display mode will allow your view to display testimonials in a list or grid layout. You can also choose other modes, including Slideshow, Form, or Single Template.
You can even choose what custom fields you want to include in your testimonial view. If you want to display more testimonial information, add custom fields such as their name, company name, website, star rating, and more. These fields will display the content dynamically.
Afterward, you can personalize the appearance of your testimonial page by selecting from various templates, layouts, background styles, and font colors.
Once you’ve finished creating and customizing your testimonials, the next step is to integrate them into your WordPress page. Navigate to the ‘Views’ section, where you’ll see a field of shortcode designed for your testimonials.
Copy this shortcode and paste it onto any desired page within your WordPress site.
Here is an example of what it will look like with just a few simple settings in place.
Key Features of Strong Testimonials
From showcasing customer experiences to displaying feedback in eye-catching styles, this plugin offers an array of functionalities designed to help you shine a spotlight on your happy customers. Here is an overview of the key features surrounding this plugin.
1. Starter Templates
The Strong Testimonials Plugin provides a few pre-made templates with basic style options for background and font color. These templates include:
- Default: This is the default template that comes with the plugin. It is a simple and clean design that displays testimonials in a list format.
- Modern: This template is bold and modern, focusing on typography and whitespace. It displays testimonials in a grid format.
- Bold: This template is similar to the Modern template but with a bolder design. Just like the modern template, it displays testimonials in a grid format.
- Small Widget: This template is a compact design that displays testimonials in a widget format. It is ideal for sidebars or other small spaces.
- Simple: This template is a minimalist design that displays testimonials in a list format. It is ideal for those who want a simple look.
- Unstyled: This template is a bare-bones design that displays testimonials in a list format. It is ideal for those who want complete control over the styling of their testimonials.
Please note that the plugin provides only basic style options for these templates.
2. Multiple Testimonial Layouts
Strong Testimonial plugin offers several layouts to display your testimonials, including Normal, Masonry, Columns, and Grid. Here’s a brief overview:
- Normal: Testimonials are displayed one after another in a list format. It’s clean, easy to read, and works well for showcasing fewer testimonials.
- Columns: Testimonials are organized into multiple columns. You can choose the number of columns you want (typically 2, 3, or 4) to suit your website design and content best.
- Grid: Testimonials are displayed in a grid format, each representing a box. You can customize the number of columns and rows and the size of each box.
- Masonry: Similar to the Grid layout, testimonials are in a grid format but with varying box sizes. This layout is ideal for showcasing testimonials with varying lengths.
For example, I created a testimonial with the ‘columns’ layout.
Here’s how it appeared:
3. Ease of Form Submission and Management
Strong Testimonials offers a user-friendly interface for creating testimonial submission forms. You can customize these forms according to your requirements, including fields for name, email, message, and possibly other custom fields. 
Strong Testimonials provides a dashboard within the WordPress admin area where you can customize the incoming testimonials. The customization can include adding, removing, or rearranging fields to capture information such as name, email, or other pertinent details.
By customizing the fields, administrators ensure that the information collected is relevant to their objectives. For example, a business may want to collect additional details like a customer’s purchase history or their industry sector to provide context to testimonials.
Testimonials may be organized into categories or tags, allowing easy sorting and filtering based on different criteria. To maintain quality and relevance, make sure to organize testimonials by categories before publishing them on your website.
Anti-Spam Form Protection
The plugin provides two options for Captcha protection: JavaScript honeypots and Google reCAPTCHA. JavaScript honeypots are invisible fields added to the form bots will fill out, but humans won’t. The submission is rejected as spam if the honeypot field is filled out. Google reCAPTCHA is a more advanced Captcha system that uses risk analysis techniques to differentiate between humans and bots.
4. Color Customization Options
Strong Testimonials offers limited built-in color customization options. These options primarily affect the testimonials’ appearance. These options typically affect the appearance of elements such as text, background, borders, and buttons within the testimonial display.
Firstly, the plugin comes with a few pre-defined designs, but their color options are limited to basic elements like text color and background color. These options are not extensive and only provide a foundation for the testimonials’ visual style.
Although the plugin doesn’t provide extensive built-in color options, the plugin allows you to use custom CSS code to target specific elements within the testimonials and modify their colors in detail. You can change colors for various aspects like:
- Heading
- Testimonial Text
- Custom Fields
- Links
Hence, it gives you complete control over the colors displayed.
5. SEO-Friendly Review Markup
The Review Markup feature helps you get rich snippets for your business in Google search results. It is available in the paid version of the plugin. This is a nice bonus, especially if you don’t already have a schema plugin on your site. With this feature, you can easily use your testimonials to stand out in search engines.
You can customize the markup settings under the Review Markup tab. It supports markup for both individual and aggregate ratings.
Strong Testimonials Pricing
Strong Testimonials Plugin offers three pricing plans: Basic, Plus, and Business.
- The Basic plan costs $29 per year and includes features such as country selector, basic views, and regular support.
- The Plus plan costs $49 per year and includes all the features of the Basic plan, plus additional features such as custom post types, advanced views, and priority support.
- The Business plan costs $69 per year and includes all the features of the Plus plan, plus additional features such as custom form fields, multiple collection forms, and enhanced emails.
Pros and Cons of Strong Testimonials
When you choose a tool or a plugin for a specific cause, identifying its pros and cons is crucial to determine whether it coincides with your requirements. Hence, let’s dig into the offerings of Strong Testimonials.
Pros of Strong Testimonials
- It offers a variety of professionally designed templates to showcase your testimonials attractively and engagingly.
- The plugin provides different ways for customers to submit testimonials, making it easier to collect feedback.
- With the Schema Markup extension, your testimonials can be optimized for search engines, potentially increasing website traffic.
- It allows you to control various aspects of your testimonials, including custom properties for added control.
Cons of Strong Testimonials
- Many powerful features, like advanced templates and integrations, are locked behind the paid plans.
- While not overly complex, the plugin might have a steeper learning curve than others.
Strong Testimonials Alternatives
Looking for options beyond the Strong Testimonials Plugin? Several alternatives out there offer similar features for showcasing testimonials on your website. Whether you’re seeking different customization options, diverse display styles, or enhanced functionality, exploring alternative plugins can help you find the perfect fit for highlighting customer feedback and boosting credibility. Here are a few to consider:
1. Real Testimonials
Real Testimonials is $49 per year and offers unlimited testimonial addition, autoplay feature, and schema.org compliance. You can showcase testimonials in various formats across your website, including posts, pages, custom templates, widgets, and more.
2. Thrive Ovation
Thrive Ovation is $299 per year and offers automated testimonial requests, customizable feedback forms, and tools for managing feedback. It also provides a shortcode generator to display testimonials anywhere on your site.
3. WP Testimonials with Widget
WP Testimonials with Widget is $79.50 per year and allows you to add testimonials to your website using a shortcode or widget. It also provides various customization options, including changing the font size, color, and style of your testimonials.
The Verdict
The Strong Testimonials Plugin is a powerful tool for showcasing customer feedback on your website. Its user-friendly interface makes collecting, managing, and displaying testimonials easy. With features like customizable display options, star ratings, and versatile layouts, it allows you to highlight the positive experiences of your customers effectively. Overall, this plugin is valuable to any website looking to build trust and credibility through genuine customer reviews.
Looking for more? Check out our list of the best WordPress testimonial plugins. You can also explore more of the best overall WordPress plugins everyone needs.
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