WooCommerce - How to only allow reviews from verified buyers

WooCommerce Product Review Verified BuyerOne of our WordPress clients recently noticed that someone had added reviews for a product they had not purchased. The website was using the WooCommerce plugin.

WooCommerce is the world leading e-commerce platform and has a hidden away setting that fixes this problem. I'm sharing this in case anyone else finds it useful.

These tips apply whether you use our full WordPress web design service, our affordable WooCommerce web design services (MySimpleSite and MySimpleStore) or another agency.

By default, anyone can leave a product review on a WooCommerce website. The plugin doesn't check who is leaving the review or whether they have actually purchased the product.

This is sometimes beneficial. For example if your products are also available for sale elsewhere then you're likely to get more reviews if you let people review them who didn't purchase directly on your website.

However some store owners have a problem with reviews from people who haven't purchased the product at all - for example non-buyers who just like the look of a product, or malicious reviews from competitors. (This is a separate issue to spam reviews, which can be dealt with using an anti-spam plugin.) Irrelevant reviews like this will make your genuine reviews less credible and can damage your sales if they are negative.

How to prevent non-buyers from reviewing your WooCommerce products

Show Verified Owner label for customer reviewsTo set up your website so that only verified buyers can review your products, log into the WordPress admin and go to WooCommerce > Settings > Products.

You'll see a tick box called 'Only allow reviews fro "verified owners". If you tick this box, only logged in users who have purchased the product will be able to leave a review.

Non-buyers will see a note saying "Only logged in customers who have purchased this product may leave a review". Problem solved!

You can read more about WooCommerce settings in the official documentation.

25 Comments

  1. Hi there,
    Do you know of any way to validate reviews before they get published/

    Thank you

    • Hi, Josh. I suggest that you contact WooCommerce support for their suggestions on whether or not you can hold product reviews in moderation and how to do so. Thanks.

  2. One doubt, enabling this option is permitting costumers that have purchased for the product but NOT made a registration (sometimes a lot of costumers prefer buying products without having to make a registration for the website) to make a review? If not, is there any possible way to make it possible?
    Resuming: just the costumers that have bought THAT exact product (with or without registration) can make a review, not the rest of the people visiting the e commerce
    Thank you very much

    • Hi, Albert. My apologies for my late reply.

      You're correct - our article shows you how you can allow only logged in (registered) users who have purchased the product to be able to leave a review. I'm afraid there's no default way that the WooCommerce plugin can determine or know whether a guest or unregistered user has purchased the product. Should you wish to pursue this option further, I suggest you contact WooCommerce Suppport.

      Best regards,

  3. Finally a good guide that illustrates how to use woocommerce to receive only verified reviews.
    In other cases it is also possible to use external platforms.

    • Thanks, Marco. I'm glad this is helpful to you. Please let use know if you might have any other useful info to add to this. E.g. what external platforms do you mean exactly? Thanks!

  4. hello katie
    Is there any way to limit the number of reviews per customer per product
    now a customer can leave reviews?

    • Hi Lisa, unfortunately I don't know of any plugins that can do this so you might need to add it as a custom development.

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