51
Social Share Icons & Social Share Buttons
Easy sharing buttons that demand your attention and your wallet.
DecliningPoor rating
51/100
Simple sharing functionality is overshadowed by intrusive pop-ups and a suspicious rating discrepancy.
Active installs
~44,000
our estimate · wp.org shows 10k+
Rating
4.9★
1,911 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
-71%
Declining fast
129 → 38 installs/day
What to watch out for
- MINORverified rating is 3.74★
- MINORdownloads down 71% 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 · -71% in the last year
129/day a year ago→38/day today
Reviews
what people actually saySocial Share Icons & Social Share Buttons is praised for its simplicity and easy setup, but many users criticize intrusive pop-ups, poor design, and unresponsive support.
What people like
- +Simple and easy to use
- +Clear, friendly instructions make setup quick
- +Free version provides solid functionality
Common complaints
- −Annoying GDPR-style checkbox that redirects to plugin page when dismissed
- −Frequent, poorly translated pop-ups demanding donations, reviews or feature enablement
- −Perceived spammy or unethical behavior, including adding unrelated code (tastewp)×2
- −Support unresponsive; unable to cancel service
- −Unattractive visual design; icons and settings panel look terrible×2
- −Missing social icons (e.g., WhatsApp, LinkedIn) despite correct settings
- −Poor documentation and setup; API requests and integrations often fail
- −Floating button effect is intrusive and time-consuming to manage
Review trustMostly organic
- 3.74★Verified rating — drops from 4.90★ once one-shot reviewers are removed
- 23%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
2023-07-202025-01-102026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 1,911 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2024-08-28★★★★★Annoying social buttons box at the top of my website all the timegwadm
- 2023-10-26★★★★★very helpfulabhinag739
- 2023-07-05★★★★★Ottimo plugineuroinvest
- 2023-03-15★★★★★Plugin is trashbuffalowired
- 2022-09-21★★★★★Spam pluginaryanrajseo
- 2022-02-17★★★★★Excellent, simple and very usefulkreeden
- 2022-01-26★★★★★Can't contact them and they keep billing youchrisdoeswhat
- 2021-12-13★★★★★Too many annoying ‘little things!'derek1957
- 2021-09-27★★★★★What design and animation do you want to give your icons?mllapan
- 2021-06-04★★★★★Great pluginguitdp
Releases
recent versions from WordPress.org SVNAlternatives to Social Share Icons & Social Share Buttons
Top Social plugins, ranked by score.For 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.
35
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
33
Prior 7-day baseline
138
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
4,288
Mean release-day peak (30d)
171
Latest day · 2026-06-03(spike)
+6.1%
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
3.32
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
68%
5★ share in analyzed sample
23%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
—
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
4.02 → 3.74★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered