Announcement Bar vs Simple Banner

Head-to-head on the signals that matter, from the public WordPress.org data.

Announcement Bar

by Austin

Health D40

Simple Banner

by rpetersen29

Health A90

Active-install trajectory

Announcement Bar Simple Banner

Active installs, each indexed to 100 at the start of the window. A line above 100 is growing its install base, below 100 is shrinking.

Metric	Announcement Bar	Simple Banner
Active installs Modeled from the public "N+" band and recent downloads.	3K–4K	50K–60K ✓
Install trend Change in active installs across the charted window.	0%	0%
Overall health	D · 40	A · 90 ✓
Maintenance How recently the plugin was updated.	3/100	100/100 ✓
Rating quality Volume-adjusted review quality.	62/100	92/100 ✓
Support Share of forum threads marked resolved.	70/100	70/100
Rating (adjusted)	3.49★	4.63★ ✓
Reviews	2	45 ✓
Ranking optimization How well the listing is tuned to rank on wp.org.	36/100	88/100 ✓
Removal risk Maintenance signals that precede a wp.org closure. Not an official status.	High	Low ✓
Last updated	11.4y ago	8d ago ✓
Downloads · 30d	242	62.8K ✓
Category	Admin & Utilities	Uncategorized

✓ marks the stronger plugin on each row. Rows where they're level show no marker.

Release activity

Announcement Bar Simple Banner

7-day average daily downloads. Downloads spike for about a week after each release as the install base re-downloads, so read this as release cadence, not growth.