Maria Ratings

Maria Ratings is a lightweight, self-hosted review and rating system built on PHP 8.0+. Unlike SaaS platforms that lock you into monthly fees and store your customer data on their servers, Maria Ratings gives you full ownership — install it on your own hosting, embed it into any website with a single JavaScript snippet, and keep all your review data under your control. It works with any platform — custom HTML sites, legacy systems, PHP frameworks, or any CMS that allows JavaScript embeds. You can choose between JSON file storage for simple projects or MySQL/MariaDB for high-traffic production environments. Free features include:

Star rating widget embeddable via one JS snippet Moderation dashboard to approve, reject, and manage reviews Spam protection via IP rate limiting and one-review-per-email rules Customizable submission form fields CSV export for data portability Flexible storage (JSON or MySQL/MariaDB)

Pro features ($29 single site) add:

Photo and video uploads with reviews Owner replies and verified buyer badges Double opt-in email verification CAPTCHA integration (Cloudflare Turnstile or Google reCAPTCHA v3) Multi-criteria ratings (rate Quality, Value, Support separately) Helpful/unhelpful voting by community SEO JSON-LD schema for Google rich snippets (star ratings in search results) WYSIWYG rich text editor for reviewers Analytics dashboard with CSAT trends and review distribution charts

A multi-site license is available at $99 for agencies and developers managing multiple client projects. Maria Ratings is ideal for developers, small businesses, and agencies who want a capable, privacy-friendly review system without recurring costs or dependency on third-party services.