Every service marketplace has the same trust problem. A buyer lands on a seller’s page, knows nothing about them, and has to guess whether this person will deliver. Reviews help, but a seller with two five-star reviews and a seller with two hundred look similar at a glance. A badge fixes that, as long as it means something.
The test for a badge is simple: can anyone buy it, or does it have to be earned? A badge that can be bought, claimed or handed out freely tells a buyer nothing. WP Sell Services works out seller levels from what sellers have actually done on your marketplace, and it does the arithmetic for you.
This guide covers the four levels, the exact thresholds, how often they refresh, what sellers are told when they move up, where an admin can override, and what the levels do not measure. Seller levels are part of the free plugin.
The four levels
A seller sits on one of four levels:
- New Seller. Where everyone starts.
- Rising Seller. The first earned level.
- Top Rated. The highest earned level.
- Pro Seller. Granted by an administrator only. The plugin never assigns it automatically.
That last one is useful. Earned levels are about performance on your site. Pro Seller is your own mark for people you’ve vetted yourself, for example a professional agency you recruited directly.
What the plugin measures
Rising and Top Rated each have a set of requirements, and a seller must meet all of them. The numbers are:
- Rising Seller: 5 completed orders, an average rating of 4.0, at least 3 reviews, on-time delivery on 80 percent of completed orders, and 30 days since the seller’s profile was created.
- Top Rated: 25 completed orders, an average rating of 4.7, at least 10 reviews, on-time delivery on 90 percent of completed orders, and 90 days since the profile was created.
The same thresholds side by side:
| Requirement | Rising Seller | Top Rated |
|---|---|---|
| Completed orders | 5 | 25 |
| Average rating | 4.0 | 4.7 |
| Approved reviews | 3 | 10 |
| On-time rate | 80 percent | 90 percent |
| Days since profile created | 30 | 90 |
Each of those has a precise meaning on your site.
Completed orders counts orders with a completed status. An order that was cancelled or is still in progress doesn’t count.
Average rating and review count use approved reviews only. A review waiting in moderation doesn’t count yet.
On-time delivery is the share of completed orders whose completion time is at or before their delivery deadline. If a seller completes ten orders and eight are completed by the deadline, the rate is 80 percent. A seller with no completed orders has a rate of zero. The plugin compares the moment the order completes, which is when the buyer accepts or the order auto-completes, with the deadline. A seller who delivers on the last day can still count as late if acceptance lands after it, so early delivery is the safe habit.
Days active counts from the creation of the seller’s profile on your site, not from their first order. A seller who signs up and waits still builds days, but they can’t reach a level without the orders and reviews as well.
The time requirements matter for planning. Even a flawless seller needs 30 days on the platform for Rising and 90 days for Top Rated. On a brand-new marketplace, nobody can be Top Rated for three months.
What the levels do not measure
Response time is not a requirement. The plugin doesn’t track how quickly a seller answers messages, and it no longer carries a response-rate field at all, so nothing in the level calculation depends on it. The requirements that decide a level are the five above.
If you plan to tell sellers that they must answer messages quickly to be promoted, that isn’t enforced by the level system. Set that expectation in your seller terms and your own moderation instead.
How often levels refresh
A level is recalculated in three situations. A seller’s level is checked as soon as one of their orders completes, again when a new review is created for them, and once a week by a recurring background job that sweeps every seller. The weekly job runs through Action Scheduler, the same job queue WooCommerce uses.
That has two effects. A seller who completes their twenty-fifth order can reach Top Rated straight away, as long as the days-active requirement is met. And a seller whose numbers slip can drop a level at any of those checks. Time-based requirements only change at the next check, so a seller whose thirtieth day passes quietly may wait for a completion, a review or the weekly run to see the change. Say this clearly in your seller guide so nobody is surprised by the timing.
What sellers are told
When the weekly run promotes a seller, two things happen. The seller gets an in-app notification titled “Congratulations! Level Up!” that names their new level, and an email goes out as well, using its own template. Developers can also listen to a hook that fires on promotion and passes the seller, the new level and the old one.
A drop in level is applied without a message. The code only notifies on promotions. If you want to tell a seller when they lose a level, you’ll need to build that on the level-updated hook, which fires on every change.
Where buyers see it
The level shows in three places. A service card in the listings carries a badge for Rising Seller, Top Rated or Pro Seller, and shows nothing for a New Seller. The seller card shows the level, and the seller’s own dashboard shows it too. Buyers see the badge while they browse, which is the moment a trust signal matters most.
The REST API exposes levels too. There’s a route for the signed-in seller’s level, which can include progress details, a route for any seller’s level, and routes that return the list of levels and the requirements for each one. A custom front end can use them to build a progress bar.
What a seller can do to move up
Because the rules are plain, you can tell sellers exactly what to do. Each habit maps to a number the plugin tracks.
- Deliver before the deadline. On-time delivery counts completed orders finished at or before the deadline. An early delivery can only help.
- Ask for a review after each order. Rising needs three approved reviews and Top Rated needs ten. A seller with great work and no reviews can’t move.
- Protect the average. The rating is an average over every approved review, so a single poor review matters less as the total grows.
- Be patient with the clock. Days on the platform can’t be rushed, and a level only changes at one of the recalculation points.
The on-time rate is calculated across a seller’s whole history of orders, not a recent window. One late order early on fades as more on-time orders pile up, but it never disappears entirely. That’s fair to buyers and gives a seller a clear reason to treat every deadline seriously from the first order.
A worked example: one seller’s first three months
This is an invented path to show how the requirements interact, not a promise about real sellers.
A seller joins and starts at New Seller. By day 20 they have finished six orders, all on time, with four approved five-star reviews. They meet the order, rating, review and on-time requirements for Rising Seller, but not the 30 days, so they stay at New Seller.
On day 31 nothing happens by itself. The next time one of their orders completes, a review arrives or the weekly sweep runs, the level is recalculated and they become Rising Seller. They get an in-app notification and an email.
By day 90 they have 26 completed orders, eleven approved reviews averaging 4.8, and 24 of the 26 completed on time, which is about 92 percent. They meet every Top Rated requirement. If two more of those orders had been completed after the deadline, the on-time rate would have dropped under 90 percent and Top Rated would stay out of reach until more on-time orders pushed it back up.
Mistakes owners make with levels
- Promising a level to new sellers. Nobody can reach Rising Seller before 30 days, whatever their work looks like, so don’t tell new sellers it is available sooner.
- Moderating reviews slowly. If you hold reviews for moderation, reviews that sit in the queue don’t count, which can hold a good seller at the same level for weeks.
- Setting a level by hand and forgetting it. A manual level stays put. Check the list of manually set sellers now and then, and return them to Automatic if the reason for the override has gone.
- Assuming the thresholds can be changed in settings. They can’t. If your market needs different numbers, the supported route is manual levels, not a hidden option.
- Treating the badge as a guarantee. A level reflects completed orders on your site. It says nothing about work the seller has done elsewhere.
Where an admin steps in
Open a seller’s detail in the Vendors admin screen and look for the Seller Level (Admin Override) section. It shows the level the plugin calculated and a dropdown. The first option is Automatic, followed by every level, including Pro Seller.
There is one detail worth knowing before you use it. Choosing a specific level marks that seller as set by an admin, and from then on the automatic recalculation leaves them alone. That holds for any level, not only Pro Seller. Choosing Automatic hands the seller back to the calculation, which works their level out straight away. So:
- Use a manual level for sellers you want to keep at a trusted level whatever their numbers, such as an agency you recruited.
- Choose Automatic again when you want the numbers to decide.
- Remember that a manually set level will not move up or down by itself, even if the seller’s performance changes.
Commission by seller level
Levels also connect to money. Pro adds commission rules, and one of the rule types works by seller level. You could take a lower commission from Top Rated sellers, as an incentive to earn the level and stay. The vendor payouts guide covers how commission and payouts work, and the Pro rules sit on top of that.
For developers
The thresholds are fixed in the plugin. There’s no setting for them, and the filter that exists on the level list changes what the REST route returns, not how levels are calculated. If you need different numbers, the supported route is to manage levels by hand with the override and keep the automatic ones as they are.
You get two routes under the seller-levels path (the list, and one level’s requirements) and two on the vendor side (your own level, and any seller’s level). There are also two action hooks, one when a level changes and one when a seller is promoted. That’s enough to build a custom badge, a progress meter or a message for demotions.
Planning your launch
A new marketplace has no history, so everyone is a New Seller on day one. A few habits help:
- Decide whether you’ll hand out Pro Seller to your first vetted sellers, so buyers see a trust signal from the start.
- Explain the levels on your seller onboarding page, with the numbers above.
- Remind sellers that on-time delivery counts. Late orders drag the rate down, and they only recover through more on-time orders.
- Keep reviews moderated and prompt. Pending reviews don’t count toward a level.
- Tell sellers that levels refresh when an order completes, when a review arrives and in a weekly sweep.
The two marketplace modes explained post helps with the bigger structural decision, and guiding an order from payment to completion shows where completed orders and deadlines come from.
Test it before you announce it
Use a test seller and a test buyer.
- Create a test seller and confirm the level starts as New Seller.
- Complete five small orders on time with approved reviews of four stars or better.
- Rising also needs 30 days since the profile was created, so use an older test seller or wait. Check the Vendors screen to see what level the plugin calculates.
- Complete an order or add a review, or run the weekly recalculation from your scheduler, and confirm the level changes and the notification and email arrive.
- Set the seller to Pro Seller by hand, trigger another recalculation, and confirm it stays.
- Set a different seller to Top Rated by hand, trigger it again, and confirm it also stays. Then choose Automatic and confirm the level returns to what the numbers say.
Where to go next
The features page lists the rest of the marketplace toolkit, and Free vs Pro shows what needs Pro. The pricing page has the plans.