Reddit user chr15m asks whether add-ins are actually used or just a power-user curiosity. Our take is straightforward: add-ins are not a niche luxury, they are the single most practical upgrade most spreadsheet users never install. The question itself reveals a gap between what spreadsheets can do out of the box and what people actually need them to do. Add-ins exist to close that gap, one install at a time.
Consider the evidence from the thread itself. Chr15m cannot find statistics on install rates, and the responses likely reflect a mix of casual users who have never bothered and power users who treat add-ins as essential. That split is telling. For the average user, a spreadsheet is a grid of rows and columns, functional, familiar, and often frustrating. Add-ins transform that grid into a tailored tool. Need to clean messy data? There is an add-in for that. Want to pull live stock prices? There is an add-in for that. The barrier is not complexity; it is awareness. Once a user discovers that a single install can eliminate hours of manual work, the question shifts from "Do people use them?" to "Why wouldn't you?"
The practical implication for chr15m is clear: build for the user who has a specific pain point, not for the hypothetical "normal" user. The most successful add-ins solve one problem well. Solver, Power Query, and even simple charting helpers thrive because they answer a concrete need. If your add-in saves a user ten minutes a day, it will be installed. If it requires a manual and a tutorial, it will be ignored. The data you cannot find likely exists in the pattern of what people actually install: utility over novelty, simplicity over features.
So stop worrying about whether add-ins are popular. Focus on whether yours solves a real problem in a way that feels obvious. Build something that makes a user think, "Why didn't this exist before?" That is the metric that matters. The rest is just a row of empty cells waiting for a formula.