64
Category Posts Widget
Useful for sidebars but the premium upgrade is a risky gamble.
HealthyDeclining
64/100
It serves simple sidebar needs well but the paid tier carries risks of site breakage and poor refund support.
Active installs
~45,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 40k+
Rating
4.5★
79 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
-57%
Declining fast
151 → 66 installs/day
What to watch out for
- MINORdownloads down 57% vs a year ago
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
Declining fast · -57% in the last year
151/day a year ago→66/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayCategory Posts Widget is well-regarded as a straightforward, easy-to-use plugin for displaying categorized posts in sidebars, but users report meaningful friction around its widget-only scope, unsorted category lists, auto-generated CSS that conflicts with custom themes, and a paid upgrade that has caused site breakage with a reportedly no-refund policy.
What people like
- +Does exactly what it advertises — displays category-filtered posts in a widget with minimal setup×6
- +Easy to use with no documentation required×4
- +Responsive and helpful support team, including assistance with issues unrelated to the plugin itself×5
- +Supports thumbnail display out of the box
Common complaints
- −Only works at the widget/template level — cannot be used directly on individual pages or posts
- −Category list in the filter dialogue is unsorted, making it difficult to navigate sites with many categories
- −Plugin auto-generates its own CSS that is hard to remove, causing conflicts with custom themes
- −Paid upgrade broke at least one user's site (corrupted header and navigation menu), and the company refused to issue a refund (since 4.9.1)
- −Version 4.9.1 upgrade flagged as problematic by at least one user (since 4.9.1)
Review trustMostly organic
- 4.46★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.50★
- 3%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
- past spikeReview timing — up to 50% of all reviews landed in a single month
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2024-02-152025-04-102026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 79 total
Latest reviews · 80 analyzed
- 2024-03-12★★★★★It does exactly what it saysdanielepais
- 2024-01-21★★★★★This solution worked in minutes — not days or weeks!rob21403
- 2023-04-27★★★★★A must have plugin.yodastudio
- 2023-03-08★★★★★Works like a charmweblink
- 2023-02-04★★★★★Not suitable for pages or poststheofontane
- 2022-04-09★★★★★Great supportjaneeha
- 2022-03-21★★★★★Great plugin, Great SupportVkreations
- 2022-02-19★★★★★Great plugintvdster1-shot
- 2021-08-03★★★★★Just What I neededdonfink
- 2021-01-09★★★★★Excellencedspplug
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.
66
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
61
Prior 7-day baseline
53
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
66
Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)
+8.2%
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.
50%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
3.67
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
83%
5★ share in analyzed sample
3%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
—
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.47 → 4.46★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered