CritiquePlus Comparator

CritiquePlus Comparator is a complete WordPress comparison builder for

publishers, affiliate websites, review portals and editorial teams. Create a

reusable product catalogue, define your own criteria, write in the familiar

WordPress editor and publish responsive comparison tables, cards and rankings.

Professional comparison creation

• Comparison editor: Build each comparison from clear Information,

Products, Criteria, Content, Design, SEO and Publication sections.

• Classic WordPress editing: Write the comparison description and complete

product content in Visual or Text mode with the native WordPress editor.

• Rich editorial formatting: Use paragraphs, H2-H6 headings, lists,

blockquotes, links, separators, code, media, captions and editable

information, success and warning callouts.

• Reusable product catalogue: Maintain product names, brands, prices,

platforms, features, descriptions, images, galleries and commercial data in

one place.

• Custom comparison criteria: Create public or internal criteria, control

their order and enter product-specific values and scores.

• Editorial verdicts: Publish advantages, disadvantages, recommendations,

FAQs and supporting content without changing theme files.

Flexible public presentation

• Responsive comparison views: Present the same data as a comparison table,

cards or a ranked selection on desktop, tablet and mobile.

• Reusable WordPress blocks: Insert comparisons and focused presentations

from the block editor without duplicating catalogue data.

• Shortcode support: Place comparisons in classic content areas and page

builders that accept WordPress shortcodes.

• Public catalogues: Provide browsable product and comparison directories

with search, filters and sorting.

• Accessible interactions: Use labelled controls, keyboard-compatible

actions, semantic headings and meaningful image alternative text.

• Theme-aware design: Apply configurable presets, colours, widths and

display options while keeping the public output responsive.

Notifications and editorial workflow

• Notification centre: Follow important catalogue, publication, link and

extension events from a dedicated notification screen and administration

toolbar indicator.

• Read and unread status: Identify new events immediately, mark individual

notifications as read and clear items that no longer require attention.

• Notification search: Search the notification history instead of manually

browsing every message.

• Notification preferences: Choose which types of information should appear

and configure the plugin’s error-notification behaviour.

• Actionable alerts: Open the relevant product, comparison, affiliate link

or settings area directly when a notification requires intervention.

Appearance and ready-to-use templates

• Global appearance workspace: Configure the visual foundation used by

public comparisons from one administration screen.

• Colours and typography: Select the primary colour, font family and other

visual values without editing theme files.

• Corners and shadows: Control border radius and shadow intensity to match

the WordPress site’s existing identity.

• Custom CSS: Add carefully scoped presentation adjustments when the built-in

controls are not sufficient.

• Responsive preview: Inspect appearance changes in a live preview before

applying them to public content.

• 10 included comparison templates: Start from one of the ten ready-made

Free comparison models, preview its presentation, duplicate it as a draft and

adapt its products, criteria, content and design instead of starting from an

empty comparison.

• Per-comparison design: Choose a presentation template and adjust colour,

width, mobile behaviour, scores and calls to action for each comparison.

Gutenberg blocks and WordPress integration

• Complete comparison block: Insert a published comparison with its

introduction, views, scores and detailed sections.

• Comparison table block: Display a responsive criteria-by-product table

with optional scores, calls to action and sticky presentation.

• Product card block: Highlight one catalogue product with its price, score,

advantages and offer button.

• Ranking block: Publish a configurable selection of the best products from

a comparison.

• Pros and cons block: Reuse detailed advantages and disadvantages for a

comparison or a selected product.

• Best choice block: Promote the recommended product with its score, price,

label and call to action.

• Affiliate button block: Add a traceable product offer button with size,

alignment, colour and new-tab controls.

• Product grid block: Build responsive catalogue grids with a configurable

product limit and number of columns.

• Editorial note block: Add a signed and dated editorial note using a

configurable visual style.

• Server-rendered previews: Select products and comparisons from the editor

and preview dynamic output without duplicating saved catalogue information.

• Shortcode compatibility: Use equivalent presentations in classic editors,

widgets and page builders that support WordPress shortcodes.

Detailed, privacy-friendly statistics

• Performance dashboard: Review comparison views, affiliate clicks and

click-through rate from a dedicated statistics screen.

• Flexible periods: Analyse the last 7, 30, 90 or 365 days and follow daily

activity over the selected period.

• Top comparisons: Identify the comparisons that generate the most activity

and prioritise editorial improvements.

• Traffic sources: Understand where recorded comparison visits originate

without installing a separate analytics interface.

• Statistics export: Export available reporting data for further analysis or

internal reporting.

• Responsible measurement: Tracking is optional and disabled by default;

local events exclude visitor IP addresses, raw user agents and tracking

cookies from the plugin’s statistics tables.

• Retention controls: Choose how long statistics and activity logs remain in

the WordPress database.

User access and permissions

• Role-based access: Decide what administrators, editors, authors,

contributors and the dedicated custom Comparator role can do.

• Granular permissions: Control viewing, creation, editing, publication and

deletion of comparisons separately from product, affiliate, statistics,

settings, user and import/export permissions.

• User overview: Review WordPress users, their assigned role and their last

recorded Comparator activity from the plugin interface.

• User invitations: Invite a user by email and assign an appropriate role

for the comparison workflow.

• Protected administration: Keep administrator permissions protected while

allowing safer delegation of editorial responsibilities.

Complete extension settings

• General settings: Configure language, currency, price presentation, score

scale, default product count, drafts, automatic display and autosave.

• Affiliate settings: Manage nofollow and sponsored attributes, click

tracking, sponsored badges, transparency notices, UTM values and automatic

link verification.

• SEO settings: Control structured-data types, indexation, canonical URLs,

sitemap and robots options, title affixes, authors, reviewers and metadata for

answer engines.

• Performance settings: Configure comparison caching, image optimisation,

lazy loading, WebP conversion, CSS/JavaScript delivery, font preloading and

database cleanup.

• Privacy settings: Control anonymous statistics, affiliate-click records,

user-action logs, consent, Cookiebot, Axeptio, ePrivacy, data requests,

uninstall behaviour and retention periods.

• Advanced settings: Access integration and technical controls intended for

experienced administrators.

• Diagnostic tools: Inspect the plugin environment, cache and database,

trigger maintenance actions and identify configuration problems.

• Safe reset controls: Restore an individual settings group without having

to reset the entire extension.

SEO and discoverability

• SEO title and description: Define comparison-specific search metadata or

use a clean, automatically shortened description fallback.

• Canonical URLs: Output consistent canonical destinations for dedicated

product, comparison and catalogue pages.

• Indexing control: Choose whether public comparison pages may be indexed;

the setting is respected in WordPress robots directives.

• Structured data: Enable Product, Review, ItemList, FAQPage and

BreadcrumbList schema independently at global and comparison level.

• Valid rating markup: Rating schema is emitted only when a real positive

score is available.

• Social sharing metadata: Reuse the principal image, alternative text,

title, description and public URL for Open Graph and Twitter previews.

• SEO plugin integration: Supply titles, descriptions, canonicals, robots

rules, social images and schema adapters for Rank Math, Yoast SEO and All in

One SEO.

• Semantic page structure: Dedicated comparison pages use one primary H1;

embedded comparisons preserve the host page heading hierarchy.

Affiliate publishing and measurement

• Affiliate destinations: Save product or offer URLs and configure button

labels without hard-coding links in page content.

• Link attributes: Apply sponsored, nofollow, new-tab and noopener behaviour

to affiliate calls to action.

• Transparency notices: Display a configurable affiliate disclosure above

or below the comparison.

• Optional link verification: Let an administrator check saved destinations

and identify unavailable links.

• Local anonymous statistics: Optionally count views and affiliate clicks

inside WordPress without storing visitor IP addresses or raw user agents.

Data management and ownership

• Import tools: Import structured catalogue data from CSV, JSON, XML or an

administrator-provided remote URL.

• Export tools: Export reusable CSV or JSON data and create complete plugin

backups.

• WordPress-owned storage: Keep products, comparisons, criteria and optional

events in the website’s own database.

• Controlled uninstall: Preserve content by default and remove plugin data

only after an administrator explicitly enables that option.

• No forced account: Use the complete free edition without a CritiquePlus

account, licence key, subscription or automatic connection to CritiquePlus.

Optional CritiquePlus Comparator Pro add-on

The separately distributed CritiquePlus Comparator Pro add-on extends the Free

plugin for teams that need guided configuration, interactive recommendation

experiences, artificial intelligence and centralised licence management. All

Free features described above remain available without Pro.

• Quick setup assistant: Configure comparison types, appearance, primary

colour, affiliate behaviour, artificial intelligence and licence activation

through a guided seven-step workflow.

• Saved setup progress: Resume an incomplete configuration without starting

the entire assistant again.

• 10 additional premium templates: Add ten Pro designs to the ten models

included in Free, providing 20 comparison templates in total when both

extensions are active.

• Premium visual systems: Use Atlas, Prism, Executive, Magazine, Benchmark,

Conversion, Bento, Horizon, Aurora and Monochrome for different editorial,

benchmark and conversion-oriented presentations.

• Personalised calculator: Transform comparison criteria into visitor

questions and recommend products according to individual priorities.

• Weighted recommendations: Combine visitor answers, criterion weights and

saved product scores to produce an understandable personalised ranking.

• Calculator management: Create, edit, publish and reuse calculators linked

to existing Free comparisons and catalogue products.

• Public calculator catalogue: Publish calculators on dedicated routes and

make them available from a browsable public catalogue.

• Calculator Gutenberg block: Insert a selected calculator directly from

the WordPress block editor.

• Two-product Versus mode: Place two products face to face in a focused,

responsive presentation designed for direct purchasing decisions.

• Shared Versus data: Reuse saved products, public criteria, features,

scores and commercial information without maintaining duplicate records.

• Versus Gutenberg block: Select a comparison and the two products to show

from a dedicated dynamic WordPress block.

• Multi-provider AI assistant: Connect OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google

Gemini or DeepSeek and select the provider and model used by the assistant.

• Secure AI configuration: Store provider API keys encrypted on the

WordPress server and test each connection before production use.

• Product and comparison assistance: Use catalogue context to accelerate

product and comparison creation and ongoing management.

• Criteria generation: Prepare structured criterion proposals adapted to a

product family or comparison subject.

• SEO assistance: Generate contextual SEO title and meta-description

proposals for products and comparisons.

• Editorial assistance: Prepare advantages, disadvantages, FAQs, summaries

and content suggestions from the selected catalogue context.

• Consistency and update suggestions: Identify incomplete information and

prepare proposals for correction or future editorial updates.

• Explicit AI validation: Review generated proposals before applying them;

catalogue content is not modified without user validation.

• AI activity history: Record the provider, model, operation, latency,

status and available usage data for diagnostics.

• Support interface available 24/7: Consult help resources or submit a

support request at any time. Human response times depend on the active

support plan.

• Licence and Help hub: Review activation status and open documentation,

support and account resources from a central WordPress screen.

• Centralised licence management: Authorise licences and domains from the

CritiquePlus Panel before connecting the WordPress installation securely.

• Licence visibility: Review the active plan, authorised site, activation

usage and expiration information from WordPress.

• Secure licence storage: Encrypt the local licence key and avoid exposing

the saved value in the browser after activation.

• Authenticated Pro updates: Receive compatible Pro releases through the

private update channel while the licence remains valid.

CritiquePlus Comparator Pro is a separate optional add-on. No premium

org package. Activation creates

the required data structure only; it does not publish sample products or

demonstration comparisons.

Privacy

Anonymous statistics and affiliate-click tracking are disabled by default.

When an administrator explicitly enables them, event information is stored

locally in WordPress. The plugin does not store visitor IP addresses, raw user

agents or visitor cookies in its statistics tables.

No analytics information is transmitted to CritiquePlus.

External services

CritiquePlus Comparator does not contact CritiquePlus servers automatically

and does not require a CritiquePlus account. Help and Upgrade links open only

after an administrator chooses them.

The plugin can contact another website in the following administrator-initiated

or administrator-enabled situations:

• Remote import: the plugin requests a CSV, JSON, XML or API URL entered by an

administrator. An optional API key is sent only to that configured URL.

• Affiliate-link verification: the plugin requests a saved destination to read

its HTTP availability status. The destination can receive the WordPress

server IP address and link-checker user agent as part of the normal request.

• Affiliate navigation: a visitor who chooses an affiliate button is sent to

the destination configured by the site administrator.

No personal visitor information is sent to CritiquePlus by these operations.