Professional & trade directory software
Professional and trade directory software for WordPress and Joomla
A bar association member directory, a trade body of certified contractors, a vocational training school index, an architecture and engineering firm catalogue, a professional services directory for businesses hiring outside help — they share the same setup. The listing represents a real person, a firm, or an institution, and the person it represents has to keep it current themselves. Whether the build is an industry-specific directory tied to one profession or a professional services directory spanning several, visitors need to see credentials at a glance: license number, certifications, years in practice, jurisdictions served. Owners need to claim and update their entry without filing a support ticket. Buyers need to reach a practitioner without the contact email sitting in plain text on a public page.
JReviews handles all of that — the directory itself, the custom fields, owners updating their own entry, and multi-criteria reviews are all built-in; PaidListings adds annual listing-subscription tiers when monetization is part of the plan.
Who this is for
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Trade associations and industry guilds
Member directories of accredited contractors, registered professionals, and certified service providers, where the listing is the public face of a paying member and credential currency matters more than star count.
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Professional licensing boards and directories
Public-facing directories for bar associations, professional bodies for accountants, engineers, architects, surveyors, and translators. Every listing carries a license number, an issue date, and a jurisdiction that has to stay searchable.
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Vocational and training providers
Driving schools, barista schools, language schools, trade-skill bootcamps, and continuing-education providers — directories where prospective students filter by location, schedule, accreditation body, and graduation outcomes.
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Architecture, engineering, and professional service firms
Architecture, engineering, and construction firm catalogues, legal and accounting professional directories, agency-of-record networks, and vetted service-provider listings for businesses, where buyers compare practitioners on specialty, jurisdiction, and recent project work.
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Agencies building professional directories for clients
Studios launching a directory for a trade association, a licensing board, or a vocational education group — one annual license plus a documented self-service workflow instead of stitching together unrelated plugins for forms, membership, and search.
Common professional and trade directories use cases
Trade association member directory
A national contractors' association running a public directory of every paying member, sortable by trade specialty, license jurisdiction, and accreditation tier. Members claim, post project galleries, and renew annually through PaidListings.
Vocational training school directory
A directory of driving schools, barista schools, language schools, and other vocational programs. Prospective students filter by metro area, course schedule, and accreditation body. Schools claim their entry and keep tuition data current.
Architecture and construction firm directory
An architecture, engineering, and construction firm catalogue with per-firm portfolios of recent project work, principal-architect bios, professional association membership data, and a contact-form inbox routed to the project lead.
Legal and accounting professional directory
A directory of practicing lawyers and accountants, with per-listing fields for jurisdiction admission, license number, specialty practice areas, and fee structure. Peer reviews from referring practitioners sit alongside client reviews.
Vetted service-provider network
A vetted listing of service providers — translation, payroll, fractional CFOs, agency-of-record marketing — where operator revenue comes from annual listing subscriptions, and prospective clients reach providers through the inquiry form on each listing page. Every inquiry is logged in the admin Inquiries browse page for the audit trail.
Built for professional and trade directories
What each JReviews feature actually does for a professional and trade directories site.
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Claim workflow
Practitioners and firms claim their listing from your public site, then keep it current — services, hours, office photo, project work — through their account pages. Claims run under the moderation rules you set, and owners can reply publicly to reviews.
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Credential custom fields per category
Each listing category carries its own field set, so a tax accountant asks for license number, jurisdiction, and specialty; a vocational training school asks for accreditation body and outcome rate; an architecture firm asks for professional association membership and recent project gallery. None share the same submission form.
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Inquiry forms that hide the contact email
Buyers, peers, and prospective clients contact a practice through an inquiry form on the listing page. The message is routed to the practitioner's inbox without ever exposing the email address publicly. Every inquiry is logged in the admin Inquiries browse page as an audit trail — useful for vetting referrals or documenting introductions after the fact, not as a pre-send approval gate.
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Multi-criteria reviews from peers and clients
A tax accountant can be rated separately on responsiveness, clarity, technical accuracy, and value; a law firm on case strategy, communication, and fee transparency; a training provider on instructor quality, course materials, and post-graduation support. Peer reviews and client reviews coexist on the same listing, each criterion shown explicitly instead of folded into one star.
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Reviewer ranks for peer endorsement
Reviewers earn a public rank based on the number, quality, and helpfulness of their reviews — useful where a peer practitioner's endorsement carries different weight than an anonymous one-time review. Operators can highlight verified-practitioner ranks, top contributors, and editor designations on the reviewer profile.
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Portfolio and credential media library
Each listing carries a photo gallery, video embeds, audio, and file uploads — practical for credential certificates, project photos, architectural renders, course curricula, headshots, and demo reels. Video providers include YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Twitch, and Cloudflare Stream.
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Search filters by specialty, credential, and service area
Visitors filter listings by jurisdiction, license type, specialty, accreditation body, and years in practice. Numeric range filters, multi-select facets, and instant results all work on the same form, so a buyer searching for an immigration lawyer admitted in a specific jurisdiction with at least ten years of practice narrows the directory in a few clicks.
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Schema.org markup with professional subtypes
JReviews emits Schema.org markup for listings — LocalBusiness with professional subtypes including ProfessionalService, LegalService, FinancialService, EmergencyService, and GovernmentOffice — so Google can render ratings, hours, address, and price range as a rich result when it chooses to.
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Top-list ranking that values track record
A newly-claimed firm with five glowing peer reviews does not jump over a long-established practice averaging 4.7 across two hundred client reviews. The ranking takes review count into account alongside the score, so newcomers earn their place over time without invalidating an established practitioner.
What kind of professional and trade directories site you can build
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Trade association member directories
Public-facing directories of accredited contractors, registered professionals, and certified service providers — built around credential currency rather than star count.
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Vocational and training school directories
Driving schools, barista schools, language schools, trade-skill bootcamps, and continuing-education providers organised by accreditation, course schedule, and learning outcome.
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Legal and accounting professional directories
Lawyer and accountant directories with per-listing license, jurisdiction, specialty, and fee-structure fields, plus peer and client reviews shown side-by-side.
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Architecture, engineering, and construction firm directories
Architecture, engineering, and construction firm catalogues with per-firm portfolios, principal bios, completed-project galleries, and inquiry-form inboxes routed to project leads.
How professional and trade directories make money on JReviews
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Annual listing subscriptions via PaidListings
Charge listings as annual subscriptions through PaidListings — gold, silver, and bronze tiers each map to a pricing plan with its own field allowances and featured-placement entitlements. When each member is represented by a listing, annual listing renewal stands in for the member-side renewal. Bundled on Professional; paid extra on Standard.
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Featured placement on specialty pages
Sell promoted placement at the top of a specialty or trade-category page through PaidListings' featured-listing upgrades — separated from organic listings, and sold inside a member tier or as a one-off upgrade.
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Certification-tier badges via paid custom fields
PaidListings supports paid custom fields, so an operator can sell a verified-credential badge or a top-tier accreditation icon as a per-listing upsell rather than tying it to the whole pricing plan.
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Inquiry routing for client and peer referrals
The inquiry-form inbox routes client and peer leads straight to the practitioner. Every submission is logged in the admin Inquiries browse page as the audit trail.
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Sponsored content and CE resources via ListingResources
The ListingResources add-on attaches deals, articles, awards, and news to a listing without separate listing records — useful for continuing-education materials, vendor-sponsored guides, and accreditation-body announcements. Paid add-on on Standard; bundled on Professional.
Plans and pricing
Standard fits public directories and self-service member listings with a free or admin-only intake. Professional makes more sense when paid listing tiers, recurring listing-subscription renewals, and follow-and-alert notifications are part of the directory's revenue model.
Standard
$179 / year
Core reviews engine, listing types, custom fields, claims, inquiries, schema, and CMS support for WordPress and Joomla.
Premium add-ons such as PaidListings and MapsPro are available as separate purchases on this plan.
Buy for
Professional
$427 / year
Everything in Standard plus all premium add-ons bundled — PaidListings, MapsPro, Import, and the iReview (WordPress) or Vivaz (Joomla) template.
Built for directory builds where monetization, maps, and templating are part of the launch plan rather than later upgrades.
Buy for
30-day money-back guarantee
Frequently asked questions
Can listings carry credential fields like license number and certifications, and can I verify them before publishing?
Yes. Each category has its own field set, so a profession carries its own credential field set — license number, certification body, jurisdiction, years in practice — and the moderation rules you set determine whether a new claim or credential update needs admin approval. Verification is operator-side: require a license-number match, an uploaded certificate, or a manual admin check, and the listing waits in moderation until you publish it.
How do listing owners claim their entry, and what happens after?
Practitioners and firms submit a claim from the public site. Claims run under the moderation rules you set — open, moderated, or admin-only — and once approved, the owner keeps the listing current through their account pages: services, hours, office photo, project work, credential updates. Owner replies on reviews are part of the same workflow.
How do client and peer inquiries reach the practitioner?
An inquiry form sits on every listing page. The message routes to the practitioner's inbox without exposing the email address publicly. Every inquiry is logged in the admin Inquiries browse page so the operator has an audit trail of every lead that came through — useful for vetting referrals or documenting introductions after the fact, not as a pre-send approval gate.
Can members manage their own profile, edit hours and services, and post project work after claiming?
Yes. Once a claim is approved, the owner has account pages for editing fields, media, hours, and services under whatever moderation rules you set per listing type or category. Owner replies on reviews, inquiry-inbox management, and listing-renewal flows when PaidListings is active are all handled through the same account.
Can I bulk-import a member list from a CSV and keep that spreadsheet in sync with the directory?
Yes, with the Import add-on. CSV create, update, and export workflows let an operator seed the directory from an existing member spreadsheet, push updates from the master list back through the directory, and export current listings for accounting or compliance review. Import is bundled on Professional and a paid add-on on Standard.
Can different categories — lawyers, accountants, vocational schools, contractors — have different fields?
Yes. JReviews supports multiple listing types under one directory, each with its own field group, review criteria, and category tree. A lawyer listing can ask for jurisdiction admission and practice area; an accounting firm for license number and specialty; a vocational school for accreditation body and course list.
Get started
Open the live demo to see how a professional and trade directories site is configured, or jump straight to plans and pricing.