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WordPress was released in May 2003.
More than 20+ years on, it is still the most popular website content management system (CMS) in the world.
With its free and user-friendly platform design, anyone can create impressive websites without requiring technical expertise.
The platform’s extensive library of themes and plugins has enhanced website design possibilities for anyone at any level.
But how popular is WordPress today?
In this blog, we have put together the latest WordPress statistics to show how many people are still using WordPress today and what the future looks like for this powerful platform.
Here’s everything you need to know about the domination of WordPress in the online world.
Key WordPress Statistics
WordPress has an impressive history of constantly evolving as the web design needs of users change.
This is part of what has made them so successful over the years.
Here are the key WordPress statistics you need to know:
- WordPress has a total 63.3% market share of the entire CMS market
- 36% of the world’s top 1 million websites (by traffic) currently use WordPress to power their sites
- A massive 43.2% of all websites on the internet use WordPress today
- More than 500+ sites are built each day on WordPress, while only an average of about 60-80 per day are built on competitor platforms like Shopify and Squarespace
- The Official WordPress Plugin Directory features over 55,000+ free and paid plugins
- WooCommerce (same parent company as WordPress) powers 20.1% of the top 1 million ecommerce sites in the world
- It’s estimated that about 13,000 WordPress sites are hacked every day
- 37 million searches are made for the term “WordPress” every month
- 409 million people view over 20 billion WordPress pages at any time of the day
The bottom line is that WordPress is big. They are completely dominant as the biggest and most popular content management system.
WordPress Usage Statistics
How many people use WordPress today?
About 810 million websites use WordPress in 2023.
This means that a total of 43.2% of all live websites on the internet are powered by WordPress.
In other words:
On average, every 2 out of every 5 sites you visit is built on WordPress!
What’s more?
WordPress is still growing fast.
Last year WordPress powered sites on the internet, which means it grew by almost 4% this year.
Keep in mind that WordPress was used by just 12% of all sites online in 2011. That’s a very impressive growth record!
But WordPress isn’t just for beginner sites. It’s also used for some of the largest and most established websites in the world!
WordPress currently powers about 36% of the top 1 million websites, including big names like:
- The New York Times
- Bloomberg
- Nike
- And more!
One of the big reasons that people love WordPress is because of how fast you can launch a quality website.
In fact, it is estimated that every 2 minutes, a website in the top 10 million sites starts using WordPress as its CMS.
That means that more than 1,000 new WordPress sites within the 10 million sites worldwide are created daily!
WordPress is also very popular amongst bloggers and is an excellent blogging platform.
About 17 new blog posts are published every second on WordPress alone. With the rapid development in AI content generation, it’s likely this will only increase!
Are you ready for some really crazy WordPress statistics?
37 million searches are made for the term “WordPress” every month.
More than that – 409 million people view over 20 billion WordPress pages at any time of the day.
Further WordPress activity data shows people are reading 70 million WordPress-powered posts and making up to 77 million new comments at any given time of the day.
Those huge WordPress statistics show just how many people interact with WordPress sites every single second of every day!
WordPress Market Share Statistics
WordPress is completely dominant in the content management system market.
63.3% of all sites that use a CMS use WordPress.
In other words:
WordPress has a massive 63.3% market share within the content management system industry.
How much market share do WordPress competitors have?
Here is a list of the top content management systems available right now and their total marketing share:
| Content Management System (CMS) | Market Share 2023 |
|---|---|
| WordPress | 63.3% |
| Shopify | 5.6% |
| Wix | 3.7% |
| Squarespace | 3.1% |
| Joomla | 2.7% |
| Drupal | 1.8% |
| Adobe Systems | 1.6% |
| Google Systems | 1.1% |
| Others | 17.1% |
Shopify is the next biggest competitor to WordPress, with just a 5.6% market share. Wix has also been growing fast with their drag-and-drop builder and currently claims a 3.7% market share in the CMS industry.
But there is no doubt that WordPress blows its competitors away with a dominant market share that looks like it will be around for a while!
WordPress Subcategories Statistics
A big advantage of WordPress is the different subcategories you can use with the WordPress CMS platform.
This turns WordPress into an easier-to-use platform that even allows beginners to customise their site exactly how they want it.
The most popular subcategory for WordPress is WooCommerce.
It turns your basic WordPress website into a powerful ecommerce platform where you can sell physical and digital products.
How popular is WooCommerce?
20.2% of WordPress websites currently use WooCommerce on their website.
Here is a list of the top 10 subcategories for WordPress:
| Subcategory | Percentage Of WordPress Sites |
|---|---|
| WooCommerce | 20.2% |
| Elementor | 19.4% |
| WPBakery | 13% |
| BeaverBuilder | 1.1% |
| 10Web Photo Gallery | 0.8% |
| NextGEN Gallery | 0.7% |
| bbPress | 0.5% |
| BuddyPress | 0.4% |
| Oxygen | 0.3% |
| FooGallery | 0.2% |
Elementor is a very close second in the most popular subcategory for WordPress, with a total of 19.1% of all WordPress sites using Elementor today.
Because WooCommerce is focussed on ecommerce and Elementor is focused on page building, many WordPress website owners will use both in conjunction with each other.
The third most popular WordPress subcategory application is WPBarkery, with 13.1% of all WordPress websites using it.
WooCommerce, Elementor and WPBakery are completely dominant when it comes to subcategories on WordPress.
WordPress Plugin Statistics
Without plugins…
WordPress would not be nearly as popular as it is.
Think of Plugins as small applications you install onto your website to do specific things.
This can be anything from customising aspects of your site to simply adding social sharing buttons to your blogs.
There are more than 60,000+ free and paid plugins now available on WordPress.
There are over 53+ million sites that are using at least 1 WordPress plugin.
From 2016 to 2019, more than 18,262 plugins were developed and published in the WordPress plugin directory.
Out of all the plugins available on WordPress:
- 3% have never been updated
- 57% have never received a review
- 76% have a homepage link to the plugin owner’s site
- 47% have a donate button
But what is the most popular plugin?
Short Answer – Akismet
Akismet is an “anti-spam” plugin that is now included by default on any new WordPress installation.
Akismet blocks over 5 million spam comments every hour across all of their WordPress sites.
Here is a list of the most popular WordPress plugins by lifetime total downloads:
| Plugin | Lifetime Total Downloads | Current Active Installations |
|---|---|---|
| Akismet | 76 million | 5+ million |
| Yoast SEO | 63 million | 5+ million |
| Contact Form 7 | 61 million | 5+ million |
| Jetpack | 50 million | 4+ million |
| Wordfence Security | 47 million | 2+ million |
Yoast SEO is the second most popular plugin on WordPress of all time.
It currently has 5+ million active installations and more than 26,000 five-star ratings.
Yoast SEO is a website SEO plugin that helps you optimise your entire website and content for better rankings in search engines like Google.
While our team personally prefers RankMath as the best SEO plugin for WordPress, there is no doubt about the popularity of Yoast SEO.
Feel free to check out our complete Rank Math review to learn why we now recommend Rank Math over Yoast SEO.
Interestingly 3 of the top 5 most downloaded plugins are to do with website security which is essential for every WordPress owner.
While the best WordPress hosting providers often come with some level of security, having a solid security plugin bolsters the security of your WordPress website.
WordPress Theme Statistics
What’s the first thing most site owners do when they start a WordPress site?
Quick answer – Install a theme.
Here’s why:
Think of themes like the bones of every WordPress website:
- There are over 9,000 free themes in the official WordPress theme repository.
- There are over 31,000 total WordPress themes available to download or purchase in the WordPress theme directory.
How much does a premium WordPress theme cost?
The average premium WordPress theme costs $77.57.
Most of these themes are one-time purchases, so launching a nice-looking WordPress website doesn’t need to be expensive.
But not all Themes are created equal. These are the top WordPress themes by the number of uses on the top 1 million sites:
| Theme Name | Websites |
|---|---|
| Divi | 14,356 |
| Astra Theme | 13,504 |
| Hello Elementor | 11,510 |
| GeneratePress | 9,129 |
| Newspaper | 7,677 |
| Avada | 6,291 |
| Genesis Framework | 5,671 |
| Twenty Seventeen | 4,134 |
| Twenty Twenty-One | 3,889 |
| Twenty Twenty | 3,806 |
Divi (developed by Elegant Themes) has long been the most popular theme on WordPress because of how well it integrates with the Divi site builder.
This combination allows users to make beautiful and customised sites with minimal coding knowledge.
Astra is extremely popular due to how lightweight it is and the performance it offers WordPress site owners.
WordPress Security Statistics
Security is a huge part of website development and maintenance.
And the security on WordPress websites is no different!
Because so many people use WordPress as their website CMS, hackers often target WordPress site owners.
It’s estimated that about 13,000 WordPress sites are hacked every single day.
That means…
- 9 sites are hacked every minute
- 47 million sites are hacked yearly
It’s not about if your WordPress site will experience an attack, but when!
Thankfully there are tons of great plugins and apps to protect site owners.
Popular security plugin Sucuri reported that 90% of its cleanup requests come from WordPress users alone.
Cybersecurity statistics also show that 41% of WordPress attacks are caused by a vulnerability on the WordPress hosting platform.
37% of successful attacks are due to WordPress core, and about 11% of attacks occur because of WordPress themes.
| Reason For Security Attack | Percentage |
|---|---|
| WordPress Hosting Platform | 41% |
| WordPress Core | 37% |
| Theme | 11% |
| Other | 11% |
Another study found that 44% of successful hacks were due to outdated WordPress sites. This could include the theme, a plugin or something else.
Although WordPress is an easy-to-use CMS platform, there are a lot of moving parts. That means you need to have excellent security to protect your site.
Wordfence is one of the most popular WordPress security plugins. In the first 6 months of 2022, Wordfence blocked over 86 billion password attack requests.
What’s more?
In January 2022 alone, Wordfence blocked more than 8.23 billion brute-force attempts.
More than that…
The security software blocked over 18.55 billion brute-force attempts in the first 6 months of the year.
A “brute-force attack” involves using software to randomly guess a user’s password.
Ransomware statistics show that your password should be at least 14+ random characters to give you high password security.
Wordfence Web Application Firewall also blocked over 4 billion site visits from blacklisted IPs and hackers looking for site vulnerabilities in the first half of 2022.
The app also blocked 18.5 billion password hack attempts.
Other studies have found that:
- Up to 90% of WordPress vulnerabilities are related to plugins
- About 6% of WordPress vulnerabilities are due to themes
- About 4% are due to core software vulnerabilities
What does this mean?
Just by using reputable plugins, themes and good security software, you can reduce the risk of a successful hack by over 94%.
This should be the standard for all WordPress site owners.
Between January to June 2021, WPScan recorded 602 new vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins, themes and the core software.
That included 552 new plugin vulnerabilities and 47 theme vulnerabilities.
The most common exploitation caused by vulnerabilities within Themes, Plugins and WordPress software is Cross-Site Scripting (XSS):
- 39% of WordPress vulnerabilities are because of cross-site scripting (XSS)
- 84% of ALL security vulnerabilities on the internet result from cross-site scripting or XSS attacks
Cross-Site Scripting attacks are a type of malicious code injection generally in the form of a browser-side script.
The bottom line for WordPress security is you need to pay attention. WordPress attacks happen every day!
Keep your themes and plugins updated. Take advantage of the top security software and ensure your site is protected.
Wrapping It Up
That brings us to the end of these WordPress statistics.
One thing is for sure…
WordPress is still the most popular content management system in the world. And the truth is it’s only getting more popular!
With its ease of use and wide range of features, WordPress provides users with a great platform to build websites.
The benefit of custom themes and plugins makes WordPress an excellent choice for both beginners and seasoned developers.
But popularity comes at a cost:
Hackers are always looking for ways to exploit vulnerabilities in WordPress sites.
If you are going to run a WordPress site, you must have excellent security. It’s just not worth the risk!
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