71
AdRotate Banner Manager
An old hand at ad rotation with a very loud sales voice.
Healthy
71/100
The plugin provides reliable ad rotation but suffers from intrusive upselling and occasional instability after WordPress updates.
Active installs
~25,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 20k+
Rating
4.3★
653 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
+3%
Holding steady
112 → 115 installs/day
What to watch out for
- MINORreviews unevenly distributed over time
Downloads over time
real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03
organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median
Holding steady · +3% in the last year
112/day a year ago→115/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayAdRotate Banner Manager is generally regarded as a capable and easy-to-use free ad rotation plugin, but it is undermined by aggressive in-dashboard upselling and reported instability after WordPress updates.
What people like
- +Easy to set up and use from the start×3
- +Supports banner grouping, individual banner management, and shortcode placement, making it flexible×2
- +Tracks views and clicks separately per ad
- +Responsive and helpful developer/support×3
- +Reliable long-term performance for some users×2
Common complaints
- −Persistent, intrusive upsell banners for the Pro version appear throughout the WordPress admin, and dismissing them navigates users away from their current page×2
- −Plugin stops working after WordPress updates
- −Banner rotation reported as non-functional in at least one case
Review trustReviews look organic
- 4.42★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.30★
- 18%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2023-07-202025-01-102026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 653 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2026-05-26★★★★★A painful waste of timemassebooks
- 2026-05-23★★★★★Working fine for YEARSSandra M. Lopes1-shot
- 2025-10-14★★★★★Typical Narcissistic pluginkauder
- 2025-08-28★★★★★Great Product: Simple, Straightforward, Efficient, PowerfulPete Broderick
- 2025-08-11★★★★★A rare developer that is genuinely interested in making better products.Brian – TGL
- 2025-08-06★★★★★Excelentepzactual2025
- 2025-07-26★★★★★The best ad manager for WordPressWeb Hippo
- 2025-03-18★★★★★Great Plugindickso2
- 2025-03-18★★★★★Great Plugindickso11-shot
- 2024-04-27★★★★★Very usefulblack20091
Releases
recent versions from WordPress.org SVNFor developers & the curious
the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary aboveDownload signals
Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.
100
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
111
Prior 7-day baseline
90
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
410
Mean release-day peak (30d)
122
Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)
-9.9%
Week-over-week organic trend
Review signals
Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.
15%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
1.86
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
80%
5★ share in analyzed sample
18%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
-60%
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.46 → 4.42★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered