Two-way buyer and seller reviews for Dokan

Without the add-on

With the add-on

What mutual reviews actually do

Most marketplace review systems run one way: the buyer leaves stars, the seller absorbs them, nothing travels back. BazaarKit's Mutual Reviews & Ratings add-on makes reviews run both ways. Once an order reaches Completed, the buyer can rate the seller and the seller can rate the buyer — one to five stars each, with an optional comment, once per order.

Both directions feed one rating per member. Somebody who sells on Tuesday and buys on Thursday gets a single average, not two scores, and each review carries a small tag reading “as a seller” or “as a buyer”.

Why one-way reviews are not enough

Ask a marketplace owner what their review system does and the answer has the same shape every time: buyers can review sellers, but not the other way around. Dokan's own vendor review feature works that way, and it lives in Dokan Pro. The other big multivendor plugins are the same — we have not found one that lets the seller rate the buyer. (The BazaarKit vs Dokan Pro comparison covers the rest of the picture.)

That gap matters, because your sellers are the side of the marketplace that can walk away. They pack parcels at nine at night, get ghosted mid-conversation, and take the hit when a buyer ignores three questions about size and opens a dispute a fortnight later. Giving them no voice in the record tells them only one person's experience counts.

Buyers already understand the idea completely. Airbnb has hosts and guests reviewing each other. eBay built its reputation on two-way feedback. Vinted and Depop rate the buyer as well as the seller. Uber made passenger ratings so normal that people brag about theirs. Nobody needs teaching what a two-way review is — only telling that you have one.

Why two-way reviews change how people behave

The interesting part is not the extra star rating. It is what happens to a buyer who knows they can be rated.

Reputation systems work by making future consequences visible now, and a one-way system does that to one person only. The seller is careful: their rating is public, permanent, and their income depends on it. The buyer has nothing at stake. Add the second direction and three things tend to follow.

• People communicate. A buyer who can be reviewed answers the “what's your address?” message, because silence now carries a cost.
• People pay and confirm promptly. What stops an Uber passenger keeping the driver waiting also makes a buyer finish the order rather than leave it hanging.
• Bad-faith disputes get rarer. Someone trying it on — “it never arrived”, about a tracked parcel — is far less comfortable when the other party can write one honest sentence in public afterwards. It does not stop genuine complaints; it raises the cost of dishonest ones.

None of that is guaranteed by a plugin, and anyone quoting you a percentage is making it up. What you can say is that every marketplace at scale here chose mutual reviews and none went back. Disputes handle the trouble that happens anyway; reviews shape behaviour before it starts.

One rating, in one place

The second complaint, after “buyers can review sellers but not the other way around”, is that reviews are split between products and vendors, so there is no single store rating. WooCommerce reviews attach to a product, and Dokan's own seller rating is calculated from those same comments. A seller's reputation therefore scatters across their listings — and where items are one-offs, which is what secondhand and handmade marketplaces sell, every new listing starts blank while the real track record sits on things that have sold out.

BazaarKit stores the rating against the member instead. Every published review that person has received averages into one number, which appears:

• On their store page — a badge in the store header, with the full list of reviews below it.
• On their product pages — a compact “★ 4.8 (12 reviews)” badge in the summary, linking to their store.
• Wherever Dokan shows a seller rating — store header, vendor list — because the add-on repoints Dokan's rating at the BazaarKit figure. Otherwise Dokan's header can read “No ratings found yet!” directly above a reviews section saying 4.7.

Hiding a review takes it out of both the public list and the average.

How it works, step by step

1. An order reaches Completed. With BazaarKit's escrow it gets there by itself when the payout releases, so the money landing and the reviews opening happen together.
2. Both sides get a button. The buyer sees “Leave a review for [seller]” on their order page under My Account; the seller sees the mirror image on that order in their Dokan dashboard.
3. They pick stars and, if they want, write something. The form posts normally — no third-party widget, nothing loaded from outside your site.
4. The review publishes immediately and the person reviewed is emailed, stars and comment included.
5. Their rating updates everywhere it is shown, straight away.
6. A few days later, whoever has not reviewed gets a reminder — see the review-request emails.

Who can review whom, and when

This is the security gate, so it is worth being precise. A review is allowed only when all of these are true:

• The order status is Completed. Processing, on-hold, refunded and cancelled orders give nobody a button.
• The reviewer is one of the two parties — the customer, or the seller the order resolves to. Nobody else, including your own admin account.
• Buyer and seller are different people. A seller who bought their own item cannot review themselves.
• They have not already reviewed that order. One per order per side, enforced by a unique database key as well as by the check, so a double-submitted form cannot produce two.

The other party is resolved on the server from the order itself, never taken from the page — Dokan first, falling back to the author of the first product. Button and submit run the same check, so the button is a courtesy and the submit is the enforcement: a hand-crafted POST from a non-party is rejected.

Two honest limits: this is a single-seller model, so an order that does not resolve to one seller produces no trigger (Dokan splits multi-vendor baskets into per-vendor orders, which do resolve), and nobody may leave more than twenty reviews a day.

The review-request emails

Most reviews never get written because nobody asks. A daily background job does the asking, and it asks both sides.

A few days after an order completes — three by default, anything from one to ninety — it emails whoever has not yet reviewed. The buyer gets “How was your order from [seller]?”, the seller “How was your sale to [buyer]?”, each linking to that order.

• Each order is chased exactly once. It is stamped before the emails go out, so a mail failure cannot cause a second round of nudges.
• Only a narrow window is looked at — orders completed between your chosen number of days ago and four days before that. Switching the add-on on never mails your whole history; the trade-off is that older orders are not chased.
• Members can opt out, of both the request and the “you have been reviewed” notification. With the Notifications add-on these route through its preference centre and unsubscribe footer.
• It uses your existing mail setup. No external service, no API key, no account to create.

WooCommerce core is adding a review-request email of its own, and the difference matters: that one asks a buyer to review a product. This asks both people to review each other.

Moderating reviews

Reviews publish as soon as they are submitted. There is no approval queue — a backlog makes reviews arrive days late and a marketplace look curated rather than honest — but it does mean moderation is after the fact, so plan for that.

Everything lands in WordPress admin → BazaarKit → Reviews: every review, newest first, with the rating, who reviewed whom, whether it was buyer-to-seller or seller-to-buyer, the comment, a link to the order and when it was filed.

Each row has one action. Hide takes a review out of the public list and the rating average; Restore puts it back. Nothing is deleted. What is not here in this version: sellers cannot publicly reply. A seller who wants to respond can use messaging, or bring it to you.

Your settings, and what they change

Three controls, at WordPress admin → BazaarKit → Settings, under “Reviews & Ratings”. All three ship switched on, so a fresh install behaves sensibly untouched.

What to change in WooCommerce

The decision that matters is whether you keep WooCommerce's product reviews running alongside this. Our recommendation is that you do not, which is why the setting defaults to hiding them.

Running both means a buyer can leave four stars on a product page — which counts toward nothing, because it is a WordPress comment — and two stars on the seller, the number that actually follows them around. Two averages, neither explaining itself. Shoppers do not investigate; they just trust you slightly less. Pick one, and on a marketplace pick the seller: the listing is usually a one-off, the person behind it is not.

How to check it is working

1. Open BazaarKit → Settings and confirm “Reviews & Ratings” shows real controls rather than a padlock.
2. Take a test order all the way to Completed.
3. As the buyer, open that order under My Account and use “Leave a review for [seller]”. Give three stars and a sentence.
4. Reload. The button becomes “Thanks — your review has been posted”, and the seller's store page shows the badge and the review.
5. As the seller, open the same order in the Dokan dashboard — their own button is waiting, pointed at the buyer. Leave one, then check the buyer has a rating too.
6. Open BazaarKit → Reviews, hide one, and watch it leave the store page and the average.

Or try it on a marketplace that already has orders in it: the live demo.

Troubleshooting

Review-request emails are not sending

In order: is the order actually Completed? Is WP-Cron running — where cron is disabled with no system cron replacing it, the daily job never fires. Has that order already been chased, since each is emailed once? Did it complete longer ago than the job's window, which reaches only a few days past your delay? And can WordPress send mail here at all — test with a password reset first.

The “Leave a review” button is not appearing

Nearly always the order is not Completed, the viewer is not one of the two parties, or they have already reviewed it. An admin viewing somebody else's order never sees the button — the check asks whether you were on that order, not whether you may view it.

The store page says there are no ratings, but reviews exist

That is Dokan's own rating showing through, counting WooCommerce product comments rather than BazaarKit reviews. Turn on “Show the BazaarKit rating wherever Dokan shows a seller rating” and the two agree again.

The settings section is padlocked

The controls unlock only on a site with an active licence. Until then nothing saves and the module does not run.

Frequently asked questions

Where to go next