14 Best Social Proof Plugins for WordPress (2020)

Social Proof has become an essential part of eCommerce and digital retail because it helps customers make better decisions online. Displaying reviews and making customer activity visible helps you to build trust and increase your conversion rate. A WordPress Social Proof plugin adds Social Proof elements to your website without having to collect and code them yourself.

Social Proof plugins make invisible customers visible. Testimonials, ratings widgets and recent sales notifications (“Sales Pops“) show that people use and trust your website. That way, customers have more confidence in your business. Social Proof marketing is particularly important for products and services that face a lot of competition. Not only does it help to build trust in your business, it can also help to differentiate you from your competitors.

How To Add Social Proof To Your WordPress Website

There are some Social Proof elements that feature on almost all business websites. For example, most companies use testimonials, industry awards and social share buttons on their homepage. Other kinds of Social Proof are more specific to particular industries:

• Retail websites often use Recent Activity Nudges to create scarcity and FOMO
• eCommerce websites display customer reviews to promote their products
• SaaS businesses create Social Proof with client testimonials and logos
• Bloggers advertize their comment feeds to encourage readers to engage
• Startups use celebrities, experts and influencers to build credibility

With right WooCommerce theme, or by using a WordPress Social Proof plugin, any of these strategies can be applied to your website.

Displaying Customer Reviews and Testimonials

Customer reviews are the most powerful form of Social Proof for a business website. One way to add them to your site is to claim a listing with Trustpilot, Google Places or another industry-specific ratings platform. These sites help you to collect feedback and create a database of your reviews. They also provide an embeddable widget that you can add your site. Alternatively, you can collect your reviews manually. A form-building plugin like WPForms can help to automate the process of gathering feedback.

Turning Social Media Into Social Proof

Unless you are using Facebook advertising or a re-marketing app, Social Media is likely to play a minor role in your acquisition strategy. Despite this, Social Media can help to increase your conversion rate. Displaying social share buttons encourages user engagement, and gives your website added credibility. Not only that, but social share counts can have a big impact on your SEO. You can add share buttons with a plugin like Shared Counts, which also gives you options for customizing their appearance.

The Best WordPress Social Proof Plugins in 2020

Although all the plugins in this list add Social Proof to your WordPress website, there are a few key differences between them. Some are managed from within your WordPress account and others give you an external workspace. Additionally, only some of these plugins have specific integrations with WooCommerce. Perhaps most importantly, these apps have different ways of distinguishing between real customer activity and fake Social Proof.

There are over 200 plugins for WordPress designed to create Social Proof. Many of them offer a free trial and some even provide a freemium version. These are the best options for a WordPress Social Proof plugin in 2020, according to our CRO experts.

1. Nudgify Social Proof and FOMO for WordPress

Workspace: External Built by: Convertize Free Trial: Free Real/Fake Social Proof: Real

Nudgify is an unusual Social Proof solution, because it is built around the principle that a better customer experience will lead to a higher conversion rate. Rather than delivering simple sales notifications, Nudgify offers a full range of Social Proof, FOMO and Urgency notifications. It also provides Nudges designed to reduce Friction on your website. All the integrations you need to show recent sales and sign-ups with WooCommerce or WordPress are built-in, and there are also integrations with hundreds of apps.

Alongside notifications displaying your live data, Nudgify allows you to create your own Custom Nudges. That means you can announce a discount offer or new feature on any page (making it an ideal tool for SaaS businesses). You can also track how your Nudges are performing with the built-in analytics dashboard.

2. NotificationX

Workspace: Internal Built by: WPD Developer Free Trial: Money-back guarantee Real/Fake Social Proof: Real

NotificationX is a versatile and user-friendly Social Proof plugin designed especially for WordPress. The plugin is added to your site by uploading a zipped Installation File, giving you permanent access. That means it offers great value for high-traffic websites. And, because the plugin was produced by WPDeveloper, you can rely on the support and maintenance of the service.

Although NotificationX does not provide the widest range of messages, there are some features that make it particularly suitable for certain users. For example, there is a notification that is triggered when someone leaves a comment on one of your blog posts, making solution this ideal for bloggers. You also get integrations with a number of popular plugins and tools, including WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads and even Zapier.

3. Notification for WooCommerce

Workspace: Internal Built By: VillaTheme Free Trial: No Real/Fake Social Proof: Fake

Notification for WooCommerce is another one-time purchase plugin from a trusted WordPress developer. It gives you recent sales notifications in 22 different templates, all at a very reasonable price. However, it is a comparatively basic plugin, and it might not be the best VillaTheme plugin to pick if you can only choose one (other options include WooCommerce Lucky Wheel and WooCommerce Boost Sales).

The interface is a bit basic and there is a lot of technical fiddling required to get your notifications set up. Even so, this is a way to add unlimited Social Proof notifications to your website for the same price as other plugins charge per month. Unfortunately, the plugin does not have a way to distinguish between real and made-up sales, so you do run the risk of losing trust rather than building it.

4. WPFomify

Workspace: Internal Built By: WPfomify Free Trial: Money-back guarantee Real/Fake Social Proof: Fake

You won’t find WPFomify in the WordPress plugin listings. Instead, you have to purchase the plugin through the website (or via AppSumo) and upload it yourself. The plugin offers a user-friendly interface with plenty of advanced features, including multiple forms of location targeting, a long list of integrations, and sophisticated targeting rules. One of the plugin’s unexpected features is a notification bar which can be configured to work as a countdown timer.

Helpfully, WPFomify adds UTM tags to your notifications, so they can be traced in your analytics. However, the UTM tagging system does not quite match up to the full Google Analytics integration advertised on the plugin’s website. More concerning still, is the fact that this is another plugin that does not distinguish between real and fake Social Proof. Because of that, it is probably best for challenger brands and small businesses.

5. Provesource

Workspace: External Built By: Provesource Free Trial: Free Real/Fake Social Proof: Real

Provesource is a familiar name in the Social Proof market, and with good reason. The plugin has integrations with a huge number of 3rd party apps, which means you can display hundreds of different kinds of customer activity in your notifications. Your notifications can be customized and there are plenty of options for adjusting the settings (which makes it easy to choose what different visitors will see). One particular strength is the plugin’s review notifications, which display your best reviews on Facebook, Trustpilot, Google, Yotpo and Capterra.

Provesource supports over 20 different localizations and the comprehensive settings allow you to be precise with your content and targeting. For example, you can decide to hide anonymous conversions or exclude certain products from your notification stream.

6. Proof Factor – Social Proof Notifications

Workspace: External Built By: Proof Factor LLC Free Trial: Credit Card Required Real/Fake Social Proof: Real

Proof Factor combines recent activity notifications and live visitor counts with email capture pop-ups. These pop-ups are triggered as a visitor tries to leave your website, presenting them with a spin wheel. This gamification marketing strategy is proven to increase your sign-ups, but could also affect the quality of your leads.

Proof Factor does not have as many options for styling and content as other solutions, and the lack of integrations means there are forms of visitor activity that you can’t show. However, it is one of the only options on this list to include an exit-intent widget.

7. FOMO & Social Proof Notifications by TrustPulse – Best WordPress FOMO Plugin

Workspace: External Built By: Optinmonster Free Trial: Credit Card Required Real/Fake Social Proof: Real

Trustpulse has a beautifully-designed user-interface that guides you through the process of creating different kinds of Social Proof notifications. The notifications are limited to “Recent Activity” and “On-Fire” messages, but the targeting and styling of these messages is exceptionally flexible. Unlike other plugins, which have integrations with different tools, Trustpulse offers limited options for capturing user activity.

For WordPress and WooCommerce websites, you can use a basic form capture tool (called “Automagic”) or a Zapier integration (which may involve an extra purchase). This is a frustrating limitation considering what is advertised on the Trustpulse website.

8. WPSocialProof

Workspace: Internal Built By: WP Social Proof Free Trial: Money-back guarantee Real/Fake Social Proof: Fake

WP Social Proof comes in Essential and Premium versions, with both offering fantastic value for money. Whichever option you choose, you get an unlimited number of notifications and visitors, and three kinds of Social Proof notification.

The plugin has built-in integrations which mean it can display recent sales messages for a WooCommerce site with very little set-up. There is even an option for customizing the sound that your notifications make. Unfortunately, since this plugin is produced and maintained by a very small company, the support is likely to be sporadic. It is also worth noting that some users have had trouble with how the notifications look on mobile devices.

9. Evidence: Social Proof and FOMO Notifications

Workspace: External Built By: Evidence Free Trial: Credit Card Required Real/Fake Social Proof: Real

Evidence provides a lot of the main types of Social Proof notifications, but doesn’t show information about other aspects of your website (like stock levels). You can also create custom notifications to advertise a special offer or introduce a new feature, which makes this a good option for SaaS businesses. One distinctive feature is the “Boomerang tab”, which turns your tab titles into scrolling text. That makes your website’s tabs more attention-grabbing when a browser has another tab open.

The app gives you a lot of control over the design and the specifications for your notifications, so you can decide exactly where, when and how they are displayed. However, some of the claims made on the plugin’s website are dubious. For example, the ROI calculator (which sets the minimum predicted uplift for an Evidence user at 10%) is not a realistic way to think about a WordPress Social Proof plugin. Anyone with a background in conversion rate optimization will tell you that these kinds of projections are misleading.

10. VisitorsProof

Workspace: External Built by: VisitorsProof Free Trial: Free version Real/Fake Social Proof: Real

VisitorsProof is a one-click plugin that allows you to display many different kinds of on-site activity. You can also add features like social share widgets and even show when a new product is added to your store. The plugin contains a built-in reporting dashboard, so you can see exactly how your notifications are performing.

Since this is a relatively new plugin, there is a limited amount of feedback from users. However, the customer support is excellent and this is one of the only WordPress Social Proof plugins with a plausible free plan.

11. NextSale: Sales Pop Notifications, FOMO

Workspace: External Built by: Next Sale Free Trial: Free version and Free trial Real/Fake Social Proof: Real

NextSale has an impressive range of both messages and widgets. Alongside the usual sliding notifications are exit pop-ups, a top bar and promotional pop-up boxes. The customization of these different widgets is flexible, so you can use them to promote sales, announce new features or collect emails, depending on your industry. One of the most distinctive features is the sale top bar, which shows a time limit based on a pre-set deadline.

This plugin is full of lively features and functions, giving you an incredible range of options. For example, you can set your messages to be triggered based on scrolling or exit intent, define your own animation and sound preferences, and create an unlimited number of different campaigns. Paid versions of the app even allow you to A/B test your campaigns. The only downside is that the pricing increases very quickly once your traffic goes beyond 3000 sessions per month (which applies to most business websites).

12. Beeketing for WooCommerce

Workspace: External Built by: Beeketing Free Trial: Credit Card Required Real/Fake Social Proof: Fake

Beeketing was once the most popular Social Proof app on Shopify and WooCommerce, but its influence has reduced in recent years. One problem was that the platform did not distinguish between real and fake sales. That led to a loss of trust in its popular Sales Pop notifications (an issue which led to the app being removed from Shopify).

Unlike other WordPress Social Proof plugins, Beeketing sells its different types of notifications feature individually. Sales Pops, for example, are free – but adding other types of notifications will cost extra.

13. Notifia

Workspace: External Built by: Notifa Free Trial: Credit Card Required Real/Fake Social Proof: Fake

Notifia advertises a wide range of different widgets and provides flexibility in terms of notification triggers and display settings. You can purchase all the available widgets for only $49/month with unlimited visitors and impressions – which makes this an excellent option for small and medium-sized businesses. However, the Social Proof messaging is basic, and some customers have had problems with the customer support.

One of the most elegant features included with Notifia is the built-in referral scheme, which gives you 50% of the sign-up revenue for customers referred from your widgets. Unfortunately, that is only available if you keep the branding in place. It is also worth bearing in mind that the potential for faking the content in your conversion feed reduces the credibility of your Social Proof.

14. FOMO

Workspace: External Built by: FOMO Free Trial: Credit Card Required Real/Fake Social Proof: Real

FOMO is a comprehensive and user-friendly platform with a huge number of built-in integrations and a wide range of customization features. You can adapt your notifications to suit your brand, and show activity that takes place on hundreds of 3rd-party apps. Apart from the fact that this is a feature-rich plugin with a generous free trial, it is worth noting that FOMO is a strong advocate of ethical Social Proof.

Although FOMO wasn’t built with WordPress in mind, the highly-rated customer support and advanced features makes this a great option for medium and large businesses.

The Best WordPress Social Proof Plugin For You

Due to the recent boom in Social Proof solutions, there is a good range of alternative plugins to choose from. To narrow down the selection, you should think about your budget and what you are trying to achieve with your website. These are our recommendations for the best WordPress Social Proof plugin options in 2020:

• Retail websites: You need a plugin that provides verified Social Proof and customization options. Depending on your budget, you should consider Nudgify, Provesource, Nextsale or Beeketing.
• Agencies: You need a plugin that lets you create client accounts. The best Social Proof solution for agencies is either Nudgify, NextSale or FOMO.
• Bloggers: You need a plugin with sophisticated page rules so that the notifications do not distract readers from your content. NotificationX has comprehensive targeting and a purpose-built notifications for WordPress bloggers.