Substack Importer

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.

23 searches this plugin appeared in over the last 90 days, 5 listed. 18 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 · 68% run the current release. Green is the current release; a big slice on older versions is a user base that has stopped updating.

Crossed into this band 5 months ago; a band this size takes about a year or more to cross, which places it about 41% of the way through.

1. ★★★★★ Kenneth

   5mo ago

   This plugin worked for me, thank you for simplifying my life ♥️

   Read on wp.org ↗
2. ★★★★★ HollyJahangiri

   2.8y ago

   It worked. BUT… it should have an option to (a) make imported posts DRAFTS (even if they were not Drafts in Substack); .(b) use the first image as the Featured Image for imported posts; and (c) option to use import date as publish date so that they’re easier to find (or, alternatively, to set a Category or Tag for all imported posts). Yes, it times out. Not a fatal flaw, but maybe the ability to set a time-out value (or post import speed) would be useful? I used it on the smaller of my two newsletters. I don’t know that I’ll use it on the larger one unless the suggestions of (a), (b), and (c) above are implemented soon.

   Read on wp.org ↗
3. ★★★★★ mikeairhart

   3.2y ago

   This plugin does not work with WordPress 6.3:1. The page content is not imported, only a portion of the page header is. 2. The importer reports an error on the first image and makes no effort with other images. The developer has not responded to other support requests in two years. This topic was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by mikeairhart. Reason: Entered wrong star rating

   Read on wp.org ↗
4. ★★★★★ lisatann

   4.9y ago

   This is a decent plugin in that it essentially does what it claims to. Although the documentation was sketchy (almost nonexistent), it was easy enough to do the import. I downloaded a .zip file of my substack posts, then uploaded the same .zip file to my WP site from Tools > Import > Substack. The import was pretty quick — maybe 5 minutes at the most. I only started my substack 6 months ago so there wasn’t a lot of data. Then bam! I had a whole bunch of new, published WP blog posts, with the original substack date. (For the most part, that is — there were some date/time issues when the original post was near midnight. I’m assuming that’s due to different server times.) They came in with my site’s styling, which was impressive. Footnotes were more or less there, but not exactly as footnotes; had I wanted to keep them, I would have had to do some cleanup. My substack and blog are heavily dependent on images (I’m a photographer) and, although I could see the correct images in the imported posts, I couldn’t find them in the Media Library. I use each post’s Featured Image in several different ways and couldn’t figure out how to even find the images that I could see in my posts. So I tracked them down. Turns out they are copies of my images and they live on an AWS server. I never gave the plugin permission to make copies of my images or to host them elsewhere. So that’s fatal flaw #1: I’ve completely lost control of my own images. They are on a server for which I have only Read permissions. I’ve already alluded to fatal flaw #2: The images aren’t on my own server and therefore can’t be used as Featured Images in my posts. Fatal flaw #3 would be that when AWS goes down (as it did a few days ago), all of those images would be broken on my site. I unpublished all the newly created posts and began replacing the images. So — aside from the fatal flaws mentioned above, it likely would have taken just as much time to create the posts manually.

   Read on wp.org ↗

Translated into 6 languages, 0 at 90% or more

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. 2026-06-06 900+ → 1K+ up after 103 days in tier
2. 2026-02-23 800+ → 900+ up after 155 days in tier
3. 2025-09-21 700+ → 800+ up after 1 days in tier
4. 2025-09-20 800+ → 700+ down after 1 days in tier
5. 2025-09-19 700+ → 800+ up after 154 days in tier
6. 2025-04-18 600+ → 700+ up after 3 days in tier
7. 2025-04-15 700+ → 600+ down after 1 days in tier
8. 2025-04-14 600+ → 700+ up after 94 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).

Embed this report card

Drop a live Pulse card for Substack Importer into a readme, a review or a deck. It updates itself.

Substack Importer: 1K+ active installs, 2.8★ (4 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-11-02. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/substack-importer