Capturing, managing and showcasing genuine customer testimonials can transform your business‘s credibility and revenue.
But collecting and organizing a steady stream of authentic testimonials is easier said than done.
This ultimate guide will explain how Thrive Ovation has become the leading WordPress testimonial solution to automate and simplify the entire testimonial workflow for businesses of any size.
We‘ll thoroughly cover:
- Key stats showing the crucial business impact of customer testimonials
- An in-depth walkthrough of all Thrive Ovation features
- Cost and pricing details with membership examples
- An unbiased comparison of the top alternative options
- Our final verdict if Thrive Ovation is right for you
Let‘s kick things off by understanding why testimonials are so incredibly vital for your brand and sales.
The Critical Business Impact of Testimonials
Peer recommendations remain one of the most trusted forms of advertising.
According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of promotion.
Various surveys have also discovered that:
- Over 70% of buying experiences are impacted by reviews before a purchase decision is made (Source)
- 88% of shoppers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations (BrightLocal)
- Testimonials can deliver up to 30% increase in sales conversions (Source)
This makes testimonials hugely influential during the buyer‘s journey before they become a customer.
And a Rock Content study showed that customer testimonials and reviews are the #1 most trusted piece of content that buyers depend on when researching a business:
Despite these compelling stats, surprisingly 65% of businesses still don‘t leverage customer testimonials according to BrightLocal data.
This is a hugely missed opportunity to tap into the power of social proof and word-of-mouth advocacy.
So how do you ensure you have a steady stream of authentic and compelling customer stories that visitors trust?
That‘s where using a dedicated WordPress testimonial plugin can make a transformational difference.
Next, let‘s examine why Thrive Ovation has become a top choice among leading WordPress platforms.
Why Use Thrive Ovation for Managing Testimonials?
Thrive Ovation aims to provide an all-in-one WordPress testimonial plugin to automate and simplify the entire testimonial workflow.
Unlike trying to cobble together different solutions, Thrive Ovation allows you to:
👉 Gather testimonials straight from your website
👉 Organize every testimonial in one central dashboard
👉 Display testimonials beautifully across all your pages
The goal is to remove all the typical headaches around managing customer testimonials at scale.
For example, some of the top frustrations Thrive Ovation solves include:
- Manually chasing customer reviews scattered everywhere
- No central database to store and organize testimonials
- Testimonials stuck in multiple siloed platforms
- Outdated testimonials shown across different pages
- Unable to find and reuse the best testimonials
- Testimonials not matching brand style and messaging
The all-in-one convenience, automation and seamless integration is why Thrive Ovation has grown to become a top choice among WordPress site owners.
Next let‘s do a deep dive walkthrough of all the key features…
Thrive Ovation Features Breakdown
The core value proposition of Thrive Ovation lies in its end-to-end testimonial management workflow – from collection to display.
Let‘s analyze all the major components that enable this streamlined workflow:
Streamlined Testimonial Capturing
The first challenge many businesses face is actually soliciting genuine testimonials at scale. Cold emailing customers often leads to low response rates.
Thrive Ovation provides multiple organic capturing options to gather testimonials right on your website – no more chasing customers!
Testimonial Submission Forms
The most powerful capture tool is the customizable submission form builder.
Using Thrive Architect, you can create multi-field forms with consent checkboxes, photos, questions and more. Visitors can easily leave detailed reviews straight on any page without leaving your site.
For example, here is a sample testimonial form built using Thrive Ovation and Thrive Architect:
Advanced form options include:
- Conditional logic to show/hide fields
- Multi-page layouts
- Connect to CRM like ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp
- Add surveys or assessments
Overall, submission forms provide by far the highest quality testimonial capturing compared to reviews left elsewhere online.
You get more relevance, depth and customizability.
Social Reviews Importer
If your brand already has an active Facebook or Twitter presence with lots of reviews, Thrive Ovation can automatically import these to further expand your testimonial database.
The one-click importer pulls in the profile image, name and text snippets to repurpose the UGC.
Manual Testimonial Input
You can also easily input any one-off testimonials you gather from phone calls, emails or surveys using the manual testimonial form inside your WordPress dashboard.
No more worrying about losing track of positive feedback through various channels.
Together, these organic testimonial capturing capabilities provide diverse sources of genuine social proof and advocacy without excessive effort.
Centralized Testimonial Management
Once you start accumulating reviews from multiple locations, organizing all of these snippets can become extremely messy.
Thrive Ovation solves this via its unified testimonial management dashboard – your central database for all testimonials in one place.
Inside this admin console, you get a live inventory of every testimonial with sortable details like:
- Date submitted
- Source (Form, Facebook etc)
- Status (Pending, Approved)
- Tags/categories
- Preview test text
- Profile image
From this centralized interface you can then:
- Review and moderate – Ensure brand quality
- Search and filter – Quick retrieval by tag/text
- Bulk edit – Global text replace
- Data management – Anonymize data
- Image management – Edit associated pictures
No more cross-checking various locations to manage testimonials. You have one secure database integrated with WordPress for easy access and governance.
This gives you quality control to curate a credible testimonial portfolio that aligns to messaging and compliance policies before public display.
Flexible Testimonial Showcasing
The final pillar is actually showcasing your authentic testimonials publicly to maximize conversions across your website.
Thrive Ovation is designed for flexible repurposing of approved testimonials using numerous display templates, options and native integrations.
You can exhibit testimonials via:
-
Multipurpose Galleries – Perfect for dedicated testimonial or case study landing pages using various grid, carousel and slider layouts.
-
Shortcode Embeds – Quickly insert standalone or combined testimonial galleries anywhere pages via shortcode.
-
Sidebar Widgets – Highlight snippets in sidebars, footer areas to reinforce credibility on every page.
-
Page Builder Elements – Seamlessly embed and customize testimonials across your site if using Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder etc.
-
Global Content Templates – Centrally publish templates sitewide for easy updates.
Thanks to native compatibility with all popular WordPress themes and page builders, you have endless options to exhibit genuinely satisfied customers strategically across all visitor touchpoints.
And using Thrive Architect, you can create completely custom templates with full styling control matched to your brand.
Now together this forms an automated flywheel:
- Capture more testimonials on-site
- Store in one accessible database
- Showcase everywhere to boost conversions
Saving you huge headaches while leveraging authentic social proof at scale.
Next let‘s compare how Thrive Ovation stacks up to alternatives…
How Thrive Ovation Compares to Other Testimonial Plugins
The WordPress plugin ecosystem offers no shortage of testimonial solutions with varying capabilities and limitations.
Below I‘ve compared Thrive Ovation against 5 top competing testimonial plugins based on 10 important criteria:
| Thrive Ovation | Strong Testimonials | WP Customer Reviews | Testimonial Pro | Testimonial Builder | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customizable Submission Forms | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Testimonial Management Dashboard | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Display Templates | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Native Page Builder Integration | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Import External Testimonials | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| GDPR Consent Options | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Customization Options | Advanced + Fully Custom | Advanced | Basic | Advanced | Basic |
| Ongoing Cost | Subscription | One-time | One-time | One-time | Free |
| Support Quality | Excellent | OK | OK | OK | Community |
| Ease of Use | Excellent | Average | Beginner | Average | Beginner |
Key Takeaways:
- Most plugins provide baseline testimonial capabilities but lack advanced customization and imports
- Thrive Ovation offers the most native integrations with other Thrive Suite apps like Thrive Architect and Thrive Theme Builder
- Strong Testimonials is a decent alternative with one-time pricing. But has less supportive product team compared to Thrive ecosystems.
- Free and super cheap plugins work for very simple needs but come with major limitations at scale.
Now that we‘ve mapped out the competitive landscape, let‘s examine Thrive Ovation pricing and plans…
Thrive Ovation Cost, Memberships and Bundles
Since Thrive Ovation is offered exclusively as a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, you need to subscribe to use it long-term.
There are two ways to purchase access:
1. As standalone app
- $67 per year
- $197 one-time promotional rate
2. Via Thrive Suite membership
Thrive Suite is a bundled collection of WordPress tools that includes:
- Thrive Architect – Landing page builder
- Thrive Leads – Email opt-in plugin
- Thrive Quiz Builder – Viral quizzes
- Thrive Apprentice – Online course platform
-
- Other marketing apps
When you subscribe to Thrive Suite, you gain access to the entire app collection which includes Thrive Ovation as well.
Here is an overview of the Thrive Suite membership options:
| Plan | Sites | Price per month | Price per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single Site | 1 site license | $19/month | $228/year |
| Multiple Sites | Up to 5 sites | $29/month | $348/year |
| Agency | Up to 25 sites | $49/month | $588/year |
| Enterprise | Unlimited sites | $119/month | $1,428/year |
- Monthly and annual discounts
- 30 day moneyback guarantee
- Unlocked premium support and updates
The prime advantage of using Thrive Suite is you can utilize multiple platforms like Thrive Leads, ThriveQuiz and Thrive Apprentice seamlessly under one dashboard.
For example, you can:
- Create high converting landing pages in Thrive Architect
- Connect opt-in forms made in Thrive Leads
- Embed testimonials automatically pulled from Thrive Ovation
This native integration saves enormous development and customization effort.
If you‘re only interested in the core testimonial management capabilities, I would probably recommend a standalone purchase. But most businesses can extract much more value from the full Thrive Suite.
For context, here is a screenshot showcasing some of the 20+ tightly integrated tools that are unlocked with Thrive Suite:
Next let‘s analyze some of the main pros and cons of picking Thrive Ovation based on our extensive review…
Key Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Thrive Ovation
Below I‘ve highlighted some of the most prominent positives and negatives uncovered in this guide around using Thrive Ovation specifically:
Core Advantages
- All-in-one convenience getting testimonial capture → organization → display with one plugin
- Super easy to get started even for WordPress beginners
- More advanced customization options thanks to seamless Thrive Architect integration
- Centralized management of all testimonials
- Excellent product support being part of Thrive‘s commercial ecosystem
- More trust and social proof using authentic customer content
- GDPR compliant submission and display options
Potential Downsides
- More expensive ongoing cost due to SaaS business model
- Lower cost of entry with simple freemium plugins
- Site lock-in once you build workflows using exclusive Thrive tools
- Needs some custom CSS knowledge for deep style tweaks
- Overkill functions if only focusing on basic testimonials
Now let‘s wrap up with my final recommendations…
Final Verdict – Who Should Use Thrive Ovation?
So should you choose Thrive Ovation as your website‘s customer testimonial engine?
My top advice would be Thrive Ovation is 100% worth exploring for any business seriously wanting to integrate and scale authentic 3rd party social proof across their digital properties to increase sales.
The end-to-end workflow automation coupled with top-notch support from Thrive makes managing genuine customer testimonials frictionless rather than a constant headache.
I would certainly recommend Thrive Ovation for:
✅ Marketing agencies handling multiple client sites
✅ Professional coaches and consultants selling services
✅ SaaS and online course businesses selling digital access
✅ Most WordPress site owners planning long-term growth
The more complex your web presence, the more you can leverage Thrive‘s ecosystem of tools like Thrive Architect and Thrive Leads for maximum impact.
However, if you just have a basic WordPress site and want minor testimonial capabilities, a free plugin may sufficient to start.
Overall Thrive Ovation provides immense strategic value far beyond basic reviews and ratings for enterprises truly wanting to build credibility and trust across the entire customer journey funnel.
I hope this Ultimate Guide offered you incredible clarity around getting the most from customer testimonials leveraging Thrive Ovation.
Please let me know if you have any other questions!
