59
ECS – Ele Custom Skin for Elementor
A brilliant concept left to rot in the Elementor weeds.
Declining
59/100
It solves real Elementor limitations but suffers from abandonment and poor support for paying customers.
Active installs
~105,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 100k+
Rating
4.6★
117 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
-51%
Declining fast
172 → 85 installs/day
What to watch out for
- MINORhigh release cadence
- MINORdownloads down 51% 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 · -51% in the last year
172/day a year ago→85/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayECS – Ele Custom Skin is a well-conceived plugin that fills a genuine gap in Elementor's post/archive templating, but its reputation has been seriously damaged by prolonged abandonment, poor support, and recurring compatibility breakage.
What people like
- +Solves a real Elementor limitation by enabling fully custom post/archive loop templates, including ACF custom field support×5
- +Free version considered sufficient for core use cases×2
- +Concept praised as innovative and something that should be native to Elementor×3
Common complaints
- −Plugin appears abandoned — no updates for extended periods, leaving compatibility issues unresolved×5
- −Support is non-existent or extremely slow; emails and forum posts go unanswered, including for paying Pro customers×6
- −Breaks sites after Elementor updates due to incompatibilities×4
- −Severe page load performance impact — the plugin loads the Elementor template once per post item, causing major slowdowns on pages with many items×2
- −Pro version perceived as a scam by multiple users due to lack of support, missing documentation, and unresolved bugs×3
- −Plugin removes or overrides native Elementor functionality (e.g. pagination/AJAX), which users find hostile and manipulative
- −No documentation or setup guides for the Pro version
- −Update cadence has been erratic — at one point pushing daily updates causing errors, then going silent for months×2
Review trustMostly organic
- 4.56★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.60★
- 9%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
- past spikeReview timing — up to 33% of all reviews landed in a single month
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2024-09-122025-08-082026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 117 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2026-05-13★★★★★Horriblekber1-shot
- 2025-01-17★★★★★Not working anymore and abandonedhax1
- 2024-09-09★★★★★Was a great plugin…webbycraig
- 2023-01-13★★★★★No support, SCAM on ProZak Single
- 2022-08-06★★★★★it's superb plugintechpd1-shot
- 2022-07-06★★★★★Increases load times up to 5-10xdanielcroitor
- 2022-06-26★★★★★Great plugin but seriously needs to be updated to recent versions of WordPressSimeon Taiwo
- 2022-06-17★★★★★Great pluginsaadkkhan
- 2022-06-07★★★★★Pure Genius!fr33lanc3r
- 2022-05-13★★★★★Works great, love itmayuratthem
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.
847
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
83
Prior 7-day baseline
982
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
20,122
Mean release-day peak (30d)
1,973
Latest day · 2026-06-03(tail)
+920.5%
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.
33%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
2.52
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
86%
5★ share in analyzed sample
9%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
—
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.51 → 4.56★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered