How to Build a Review Website Like Yelp or Trustpilot on WordPress (2026)
By Mark Fail ·
Yelp and Trustpilot are huge, but the idea behind them is simple. Businesses get a page, customers leave star ratings and written reviews, and good businesses rise to the top of search. A smaller version for one town, one trade or one industry is a realistic WordPress project. Think of a site that reviews wedding venues in Yorkshire, solar installers in Texas, or B2B software for dentists.
This guide covers the two common shapes of review site, four ways to build one on WordPress, and the legal and SEO rules that catch new owners out. We checked every product on 1 October 2026.
A quick note about our own range. We're building a dedicated review theme, but it isn't on sale yet. So the PremiumPress option below is our Directory Theme, which already has star reviews, business claiming and paid listing plans.
At a glance
| Route | Type | Price | Business claims | Review schema |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site Reviews | Plugin | Free, paid add-ons | No | Yes |
| Directorist | Plugin | Free core, paid extensions | Paid extension | Listing schema |
| Gazek | Theme | $56, Extended $3,000 | Yes | Not stated |
| PremiumPress Directory Theme | Theme | $99 one-time | Yes | No |
Pick a model
Before choosing software, decide which kind of site you're building. The two big names work quite differently.
Yelp-style local directory
Yelp is a directory first. Every business has a listing with photos, opening hours, a map and contact details, and reviews sit underneath. Visitors search by place and category, then sort by rating. Owners claim their listing so they can edit it and answer reviews. The money usually comes from businesses paying for better placement, extra photos or adverts.
Trustpilot-style company reviews
Trustpilot is built around companies more than places. There's no map to speak of. A company page shows a trust score, recent reviews and the company's replies, and businesses invite their own customers to write reviews after a purchase. Revenue comes from businesses paying for review invitations, widgets and analytics.
For a WordPress site of your own, the Yelp shape is easier to start. A directory gives visitors a reason to come back even before you have many reviews. The Trustpilot shape only works once businesses care enough about their score to send customers your way. That takes traffic you won't have in month one.
Whichever you pick, the site needs business pages, a review form with stars, moderation, a way for owners to take over their page, search with a rating filter, and some way to charge businesses. The four routes below cover different parts of that list.
Site Reviews
Site Reviews is the free plugin most WordPress developers reach for when they need reviews on any kind of page. It has 60,000 active installs and a 4.9 rating from 373 reviews on WordPress.org. Version 8.3.3 came out on the day we checked.
It only handles the reviews. You can assign them to posts, pages, custom post types or users. That means you can create a "Business" post type with another plugin and hang reviews off each one. It has rating summaries, replies to reviews, JSON-LD schema, a setting to approve reviews before they go live, and limits of one review per day by IP, email or username. Spam protection is unusually thorough. It supports a honeypot, Akismet, a blacklist and six CAPTCHA services.
What it doesn't give you is the directory. Business pages, search, maps, owner accounts and paid plans all come from somewhere else. Review photos and filters are in the paid add-ons.
Pros
- Free, very well rated and updated constantly
- Review replies and JSON-LD schema in the free version
- Strong spam controls and review limits
Cons
- No business listings, search or claiming
- Photos on reviews need a paid add-on
- You assemble the rest of the site yourself
Directorist
Directorist turns WordPress into a business directory, and listing reviews with star ratings are part of the free plugin. It has 20,000 active installs and a 4.6 rating from 698 reviews. It was also updated on 1 October 2026. The screenshot is OneListing, the free theme the same team makes for it.
Visitors can submit listings and reviews from the front end, even as guests if you allow it. There's a contact form for each listing owner, badges for new and featured listings, and maps. That gets you most of the Yelp shape for nothing.
Costs show up once you want to earn from it. Claiming a listing, pricing plans for paid listings and live chat are listed as extensions on the plugin page. So you'll be buying several add-ons once you want businesses to pay you. Price the full set before you commit.
Pros
- Free directory with reviews and ratings built in
- Front-end listing and review submission
- Large user base and frequent updates
Cons
- Claim listing and paid plans are separate extensions
- Reviews are one feature of a general directory
- Costs add up as you add extensions
Gazek
Gazek is one of the few ThemeForest themes made for a Trustpilot-style site rather than a review blog. The item page describes a business verification system where owners upload documents to claim their page, then reply to reviews. It also mentions ratings for individual employees and points for active reviewers.
It costs $56 with a Regular Licence and has 355 sales. The last update was on 13 November 2025. That's inside our 18-month limit, though it has now gone more than ten months without one.
The licence matters here. Envato's licence FAQ says a site where end users pay to use the product needs an Extended Licence. If businesses will pay you for plans or placement, check whether that applies before buying. For Gazek the Extended Licence is $3,000.
Pros
- Built around company reviews and owner verification
- Owners can reply to reviews
- Employee ratings, which few themes offer
Cons
- $3,000 Extended Licence if users pay
- Small sales base, so fewer people to ask for help
- Almost a year since its last update
PremiumPress (ours)
We make this one, so read it with that in mind. The PremiumPress Directory Theme is a directory first, which fits the Yelp shape. The design above, Vouch, is set up for a directory of agencies and consultants, and there are other designs for restaurants, trades, beauty salons and car services.
Each listing has a reviews section with a 1 to 5 star form, an average score and a breakdown bar for each star level. Reviews are stored as WordPress comments, so the normal approval queue applies. The listing's average only counts approved reviews and is recalculated when you approve, spam or delete one. Search can filter by minimum rating and sort by rating.
Claiming is built in. A signed-in member presses "Claim this business" on a listing you imported, and you get an email. You approve or deny it from a Claims tab, and approval moves the listing to that member and emails them a link to edit it. Several people can claim the same listing, and you decide. A separate Reports tab collects listings flagged by visitors.
To charge businesses, you create listing plans with a price, duration and features. A member who picks a paid plan goes to checkout before it applies. There are member messaging and reCAPTCHA on sign-up too.
There are gaps, and for a review site they matter. The theme outputs no review schema, so you won't get stars in Google without an SEO plugin or custom code. Owners can't post a public reply under a review. There's one overall score with no separate criteria, no photos on reviews and no check that a reviewer was a real customer. The theme costs $99 once for every site you own, with six months of updates included.
Pros
- Reviews, claiming and paid listing plans in one theme
- Rating filter and rating sort in search
- Claims and reports handled in their own admin tabs
Cons
- No review schema for Google stars
- No public owner replies to reviews
- No proof-of-purchase reviews or review photos
Fake reviews
A review site is only worth visiting if people trust it. Regulators in the US and UK now have specific rules on this, and some of them apply to whoever publishes the reviews.
United States
The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials took effect on 21 October 2024. It bans fake reviews, buying reviews that must be positive, undisclosed reviews by staff or relatives, and suppressing negative reviews through threats or false claims. Courts can impose civil penalties for knowing breaches.
There's an exception for a site that does nothing more than host consumer reviews. Be careful with that. If you write reviews yourself, seed the site with invented ones, or let paying businesses hide bad reviews, you're no longer just hosting.
United Kingdom
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 made fake reviews a banned practice from April 2025, and the CMA can now fine a business up to 10% of its global turnover. The CMA's guidance covers anyone who publishes consumer reviews, including reviews of other businesses.
In practice it expects a published policy that bans fake reviews and explains your stance on incentivised ones. It also expects a risk assessment, a way to detect and investigate suspect reviews, and sanctions such as warnings or bans for people who break the rules.
For a small site, that means a few habits from launch day. Approve every review by hand at first. Don't let businesses review themselves. Write a short review policy page, and remove reviews you can't stand behind.
Google stars
The gold stars under a search result come from review structured data. Google's documentation lists local business, product, software app and several other types as eligible.
Two rules matter for a review site. Reviews you mark up must be visible on the page itself. And you can't aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites, so imported Google or Facebook reviews don't count.
Third-party review sites have an advantage here. Google says pages for a local business or organization are ineligible for star snippets when the business controls its own reviews. Your site is independent of the businesses it lists, so its pages can qualify, while those businesses can't show stars for reviews on their own websites. Stars are never guaranteed, but without the markup you have no chance at all.
Final thoughts
If you already run a WordPress site and only want reviews on a few pages, use Site Reviews. It's free and its review handling is better than most paid tools.
For a free start on a local directory, Directorist covers listings and reviews, and you can buy its claim and pricing extensions once businesses show interest.
Gazek is the closest match to Trustpilot among the themes we found, with document-based verification and owner replies. Budget for the $3,000 Extended Licence if businesses will pay you.
The PremiumPress Directory Theme suits a Yelp-style site that will charge businesses for listings from the start, with claiming built in. Add an SEO plugin for review schema, since the theme doesn't output it.
The software is the easy part. The first few hundred honest reviews are what make the site work, so start with one town or one trade and collect them yourself.
FAQ
Sources
- WordPress.org plugin pages and API data for Site Reviews and Directorist.
- FTC: Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule, questions and answers.
- CMA: Fake reviews guidance (CMA208) and the short guide for businesses that publish consumer reviews.
- CMA press release: new consumer protection regime comes into force.
- Google Search Central: Review snippet structured data.
- PremiumPress Directory Theme. Features are described from the released 12.0.49 build.
Checked on 1 October 2026.
