HivePress – Business Directory, Listings & Classified Ads Plugin

How well this listing is tuned to rank in WordPress.org search, on the factors an owner controls. Not popularity, optimization.

Directory searches this plugin turns up in, and which way each one is moving. WordPress.org publishes no history of search positions, so this starts the day we first tracked a keyword and never backfills.

wp.org is where the directory puts the plugin for that search. On merit is where it would sit if results were ranked on rating, support and updates, without the install boost. The last column is how far the wp.org position moved, from our first reading in the last 90 days to the latest.

346 searches this plugin appeared in over the last 90 days, 20 listed. 249 left out as unrelated or noise (years, numbers, stray words).

Directory rank vs rivals

wp.org popularity rank over time · higher is better · when a rival's line climbs above yours, they've overtaken you

How often this plugin actually ships. A steady rhythm is the maintenance signal a single "last updated" date can't show.

Share of active installs on each version of this plugin. Green is the current release; a big slice on older versions is a user base that has stopped updating.

Crossed into this band 3.9 years ago; a band this size takes about a year or more to cross, which places it about 90% of the way through.

1. ★★★★★ Rex Jones

   5mo ago

   I don’t think HivePress is a bad product. I want to say that first because a 3-star review next to a wall of 5-star reviews can look like someone having a bad day, and that’s not what this is. This is a month of honest effort from a non-developer building a tourism directory who eventually walked away. The code is clean. The free tier is genuinely generous. The paid tier has more features. The support community is active and the team responds. If you’re a developer, or if your project fits neatly into one of their niche themes (rentals, jobs, freelance marketplaces), HivePress is probably a great choice. I believe the people giving it 5 stars. Their experience just wasn’t mine. My problem was the distance between the demo and the product I was trying to build. HivePress installs fast and looks professional out of the box. But the moment I started shaping it into an actual tourism directory with real listings, custom fields, and a structure that didn’t match their default templates, every adjustment required CSS at minimum and PHP more often than I expected. The documentation is thin in the places where it matters most, which is the customization layer between “installed the plugin” and “built the thing I actually need.” The plugin’s own help center directs you to code snippets and child theme overrides for anything beyond surface-level changes. That’s a legitimate approach, but it’s not a no-code one, and the marketing doesn’t make that distinction clearly enough. I spent a little over a month trying to close that gap. I never got there. Not because the plugin broke, not because support was rude, and not because the tool is poorly made. I gave up because the time I was investing in learning HivePress’s architecture was time I wasn’t spending on my actual business, and after trying several other directory plugins with similar results, I eventually built a custom system from scratch that does exactly what I need. If your project aligns with what HivePress already does out of the box, you’ll probably love it. If your project doesn’t, be prepared to either write code or pay someone who can. I gave it three stars because the product is solid but the gap between what it promises and what it delivers to a non-developer is wider than the feature list suggests.

   Read on wp.org ↗
2. ★★★★★ Enrick PIERRE de la BRIERE

   7mo ago

   The support team has been able to help me and fix a compatibility bug. I recommend.

   Read on wp.org ↗
3. ★★★★★ Vanbo

   8mo ago

   Easy to customize. Use it for a motorcycle website.

   Read on wp.org ↗
4. ★★★★★ outofqueens

   9mo ago

   The support chat has been next level, all the plugins and themes are also without fault.

   Read on wp.org ↗
5. ★★★★★ kalkat

   10mo ago

   The plugin is great. It’s obvious that you need to customize it to your needs. I’m speaking as a non-coding user. You can create some pretty cool websites. The technical support is very helpful. The support team’s policy is to respond within 24 hours (of course, for paid support, but no one works for charity). At the beginning of my HivePress journey, I didn’t believe in such fast support, but I’ve learned that it’s true. I give it 5 stars and wish the continued development of this wonderful plugin and themes.

   Read on wp.org ↗
6. ★★★★★ chihi108

   10mo ago

   They fixed my issue so quickly I barely had time to complain about it. 10/10

   Read on wp.org ↗
7. ★★★★★ extremeleadprogramcom

   11mo ago

   This plugin is great for running a directory listing. Flexible enough to meet most any need. I did have to do a bit of my own optimization for a HUGE site but that’s a pretty rare edge case for the most part. Will use on other projects if I need to.

   Read on wp.org ↗
8. ★★★★★ windflowerau

   12mo ago

   The plugin is incredible and the ai assistant makes it so easy. Highly recommend!

   Read on wp.org ↗

All 6 disclosed vulnerabilities are patched in the current version (1.8.1). Sites still on an older version should update.

1. Patched High · 8.8 HivePress – Business Directory, Listings & Classified Ads Plugin <= 1.7.32 - Authenticated (Contributor+) Remote Code Execution ↗
   2026-10-17 CVE-2026-110887 Improper Control of Generation of Code Affects <= 1.7.32 Patched in 1.8.0
2. Patched Medium · 6.5 HivePress – Business Directory, Listings & Classified Ads Plugin <= 1.7.32 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Arbitrary CSS Injection ↗
   2026-10-16 CVE-2026-110885 Improper Input Validation Affects <= 1.7.32 Patched in 1.8.0
3. Patched High · 7.2 HivePress <= 1.7.32 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Custom User Attribute Value ↗
   2026-10-15 CVE-2026-109193 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects <= 1.7.32 Patched in 1.8.0
4. Patched Medium · 6.4 HivePress <= 1.7.32 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting via 'message' Attribute of the hivepress_user_login_form Shortcode ↗
   2026-10-15 CVE-2026-109388 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects <= 1.7.32 Patched in 1.8.0
5. Patched High · 7.2 HivePress <= 1.7.31 - Unauthenticated Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Custom User Attribute Value via Registration Form ↗
   2026-10-09 CVE-2026-107657 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects <= 1.7.31 Patched in 1.7.32
6. Patched Medium · 6.4 HivePress <= 1.7.31 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Stored Cross-Site Scripting via Listing Attribute Value in Administrator-configured HTML Format ↗
   2026-10-09 CVE-2026-103520 Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation Affects <= 1.7.31 Patched in 1.7.32

Automated install-time checks, tested on PHP 8.1.12 · WP 7.0.1

Translated into 34 languages, 18 at 90% or more

Plus 10 more locales with partial translations.

Whether ChatGPT and Claude name this plugin when asked the category question, and whether the readme gives them something to quote.

Not measured yet for this plugin’s topics. Its tracked searches are not among the measured topics. See the topics measured so far.

Growth timeline

Install-tier crossings we have observed, and how long each tier took to outgrow

1. 2022-11-26 9K+ → 10K+ up after 67 days in tier
2. 2022-09-20 8K+ → 9K+ up after 85 days in tier
3. 2022-06-27 7K+ → 8K+ up after 50 days in tier
4. 2022-05-08 6K+ → 7K+ up after 50 days in tier
5. 2022-03-19 5K+ → 6K+ up after 67 days in tier
6. 2022-01-11 4K+ → 5K+ up after 168 days in tier
7. 2021-07-27 3K+ → 4K+ up after 145 days in tier
8. 2021-03-04 2K+ → 3K+ up after 124 days in tier

Competes with

The plugins that solve the same job, ranked by shared tags then reach, closest match first. The letter on the right is each plugin's health grade (A best, F worst).

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HivePress – Business Directory, Listings & Classified Ads Plugin: 10K+ active installs, 4.9★ (221 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-10-31. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/hivepress