WordPress Stats For New Companies

We are not a WordPress shop, but that does not mean we do not work on other stuff. We prefer WordPress and other open-source solutions that you can control. We can build custom software if that interests you, and YES, sometimes a custom solution is the best solution. That said, this post is the result of our need to answer questions from customers about WordPress and why we push WordPress for new users and users who are still determining what they need for a new website.

According to the data we have reviewed, WooCommerce is used on over twice as many sites as any other platform, based on the millions of ecommerce sites tracked.

WordPress Statistics*

• Aproxamently 13 million websites in the USA currently WordPress
• 472 million websites use WordPress, which is 43.3% of all the websites on the internet
• WordPress has a 62.7% share of the CMS market, which is more than 10x greater than its closest competitor 
• 62.4% of WordPress users are running the latest version of the software (WordPress 6.5)
• 20.2% of WordPress sites and 8.8% of all websites use WooCommerce, which means there are over 163.5 million WooCommerce stores.
• WooCommerce (built on WordPress) is the world’s most popular ecommerce platform, with over 36% of the market share.
• There are over 20,000 WordPress themes, including around 11,000 free themes, in the WordPress Themes Directory.
• Divi is used on over 3.8 million websites, making it the most popular WordPress theme.
• Individual WordPress themes cost between Free and hundreds of dollars, on average about $59, and theme subscriptions cost $145 per year. 
• There are around 60,000 free WordPress plugins on the WP plugin database.
• There are several responsive drag-and-drop editors for WordPress. Elementor is the most widely used free WordPress plugin, with over 10m+ installations. However, TTG recommends GeneratePress for knowledge sites and Kadence WP for WooCommerce storefronts.
  

How many websites use WordPress?

As of 2024, around 472 million websites use WordPress, representing 43.3% of all websites. Over 10,000 sites are built with WordPress daily, compared to just 60-80 on competitor platforms like Shopify and Squarespace. This makes WordPress the world’s most widely used CMS platform and the fastest growing.

What percentage of websites use WordPress?

As of June 2024, a mindboggling 43.3% of all websites globally use WordPress.

WordPress dominates the market, and the closest competitor has a 10x smaller market share. However, below, you can see how it compares against its main competitors, such as Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, and others. There are over 1.1 billion websites online in 2024. Thus, we can calculate that the number of websites built on WordPress is around 474 million. That’s leagues away from their nearest competitor, Wix.

*This is a rough estimation calculated based on each CMS platform’s market share and the estimated number of websites online.

The success of WordPress can no doubt be attributed to its unparalleled versatility and extensibility.

WordPress’s open-source roots, flexible infrastructure, and a huge database of plugins and themes enable developers to create any kind of website imaginable, from small personal blogs to complex business websites for the world’s biggest companies.

Key WordPress usage statistics:

• According to BuiltWith, 29.41% of the world’s top 10k websites use WordPress
• 29.65% of the world’s top 100k websites use WordPress
• 28.7% of the world’s top 1m websites use WordPress
• 44% of WordPress users have English (US) as their primary language (locale).

What is WordPress CMS market share?

WordPress has a CMS market share of 64.2%, almost two-thirds. This makes it the clear market leader by a large margin. For comparison, WordPress’ closest competitor, Shopify, has a market share of just 6.4%

Top 5 CMS platforms by market share:

1. WordPress – 62.7%
2. Shopify – 6.4%
3. Wix – 3.9%
4. Squarespace – 3%
5. Joomla – 2.4%

Sources: WordPress, W3Techs¹, W3Techs², Statista, BuiltWith, WordPress stats, Google Trends

WordPress theme statistics

WordPress themes are templates that control the way your website looks. You can add them to your WordPress site in a couple of clicks to instantly transform the design, then customize them to make them your own.

Tens of WordPress themes are available, including around 10,000 free themes in the WordPress Themes Directory and around 11,000 premium themes on Envato Elements. 

The most popular themes have over 1 million downloads each. The most popular theme of all time is Divi, used by over 3.8 million websites. 

How many WordPress themes are there?

Currently, 11,720 free themes are listed in the WordPress Themes Directory, plus thousands more paid themes available through third-party websites. There are 11,561 premium themes for sale on Envato Elements alone. 

What is the most popular free WordPress theme?

The most popular free WordPress theme in the WordPress Themes Directory is Twenty Twenty-Four, with over 1M+ active installations and thousands of downloads daily. However, the WordPress directory stops counting at 1 million installations, so it’s tough to know the exact number. Newspaper – the most popular news magazine, WordPress theme was developed by tagDiv. It has a unique Cloud Library that features over 1,300 unique starter templates and website elements, making it the most customizable WordPress theme.

This number one spot isn’t all that surprising, given that it’s WordPress’ default theme this year and was built to take full advantage of the editing features introduced in the latest version of WordPress. 

Top 10 themes in the WordPress theme directory:

1. Twenty Twenty-Four: 1M+ active installations
2. Hello Elementor: 1M+ installations
3. Astra: 1M+ installations
4. Twenty Twenty-Three: 1M+ active installations
5. Twenty Twenty-Two: 1M+ installations
6. Twenty Twenty-One: 1M+ installations
7. OceanWP: 600k+ installations
8. Kadenca: 300k+ installations
9. Twenty Twenty: 700k+ installations
10. GeneratePress: 400k+ installations
11. Neve: 300k+ installations

What is the most popular WordPress theme on Envato Market?

Avada is the most popular theme on Envato Market, with almost 965,000 sales. It’s been the number-one best-selling theme on Envato for the last decade.

Top 10 paid themes on Envato Market:

1. Avada – 965k sales
2. The7 – 308k sales
3. Betheme – 301k sales
4. Enfold – 260k sales
5. Flatsome – 238k sales
6. X | The Theme – 225k sales
7. Bridge – 210k sales
8. Jupiter – 176k sales
9. Salient – 152k sales
10. Newspaper – 143k sales

How much do WordPress themes cost?

The average WordPress theme costs $59, according to an analysis by Codeinwp. This seems to be the sweet spot for pricing, with more premium themes clustered around this price point than any other.

However, there is considerable variation from the low-end to the high-end of the market:

• The lowest-priced themes on Envato Market are $13
• The highest-priced theme on Envato Market is $10,000

However, themes at these kinds of price points tend to be outliers. Less than 2.4% of premium themes cost more than $100, and only 3% fall in the $10-$20 range.

Many WordPress users and web design agencies prefer to buy theme club subscriptions rather than purchase themes individually. A theme club subscription costs $145 per year or $255 for a lifetime subscription.

Other interesting WordPress theme statistics

• As of 2024, there have been 15 default WordPress themes, each named after the year of its release.
• ‘Classic’ is the earliest WordPress theme. It was the default theme for all WordPress sites before 2005. However, it wasn’t a ‘theme’ in the same sense that we think of it now, as it came before the introduction of the WordPress theme system.
• Kubrick was the first ‘official’ WordPress theme. It was designed by Michael Hellemann and released as the default theme in 2005.

Sources: WordPress Themes Directory, BuiltWith, Envato Market

WordPress plugin statistics

Next, we’ll look at some WordPress statistics related to plugins. In case you didn’t know, plugins are small software applications that run on WordPress. You can install and activate them on your WordPress site to extend functionality.

How many WordPress plugins are there?

There are around 59,557 free plugins in the WordPress Plugin Directory. In addition, over 5,000 paid plugins on CodeCanyon, and many more are available on other third-party sites. We estimate that there are over 15,000 paid WordPress plugins.

This huge number of plugins is what makes WordPress such a powerful platform. It’s practically endlessly extensible, and some plugins cover any use case you can imagine. If you can think of it, there’s probably a plugin out there that can make it happen.

What is the most popular WordPress plugin?

Elementor is the most popular free WordPress plugin, with over 10M active installations. It is closely followed by Contact Forms 7, Yoast SEO, and Classic Editor. WordPress.org plugin repository reports the same active numbers for all, but Elementor still takes the crown with more installs, which is a tight battle.

Besides Elementor, three other free plugins in the WordPress Plugin Directory with 10m+ active installs are listed below.

Top 10 free WordPress plugins by active installations*:

1. Elementor Website Builder
2. Contact Form 7
3. Yoast SEO
4. Classic Editor
5. WooCommerce
6. Akismet Spam Protection
7. Contact Form by WPForms
8. All-in-one WP Migration
9. LiteSpeed Cache
10. Wordfence Security
11. Simple SSL
12. Jetpack

*All of these plugins have 5m+ installations

The most popular paid plugin on CodeCanyon is Slider Revolution, which has been sold over 424,000 times to date. Below are some of the other best-sellers on the marketplace.

Top 10 premium WordPress plugins by number of sales (on CodeCanyon):

1. WPBakery Page Builder – 405k 
2. UberMenu – 89k 
3. Ultimate Addons for WPBakery – 79k 
4. EventON – 62k 
5. Bookly Pro – 52k (Fastest growing)
6. Essential Grid Gallery – 48k 
7. Popup Plugin – 41k 
8. Ultimate Membership Pro – 37k 
9. WordPress Automatic Plugins – 36k
10. WooCommerce Amazon Affiliates – 35k 

There is no way to tell how many paid users there are for plugins outside CodeCanyon. However, given the number of users for free plugins like Elementor and Yoast SEO, we can assume that they are even more popular than the premium offerings mentioned above.

Other interesting plugin statistics

Ilovewp carried out an analysis of over 18,000 plugins on the WordPress Plugin Database. Here are some interesting stats that came to light in the study:

• 18.3% of plugins have never been updated
• 68% of plugins have fewer than 100 active installations
• Users have never rated 57% of plugins
• 28% of plugins have a perfect 5-star rating
• 47% of plugins have a link to a donation page
• Only around 2% of plugins have over 10k active installations

* We pulled data in many places, including ChatGPT and Grok.
Sources: CodeCanyon, Ilovewp, WordPress Plugins Directory

Which version of WordPress do most people use?

62.4% of WordPress users use WordPress 6.5, making it the most used version. WordPress 6.5 is the latest iteration of the core WordPress software at the time of writing and was released in April 2024. It’s been downloaded 82 million times at the time of writing. 

But while it’s true that most people are using the latest version of WordPress, this still means that only a little under half of all users are running outdated versions of the CMS. The problem with this is that failing to update to the latest version of WordPress is a security vulnerability that puts your website at greater risk of being hacked.

Top 5 WordPress versions by usage:

1. 62.4% are using WordPress 6.5 (the current version)
2. 8.9% are using WordPress 6.4
3. 3% are using WordPress 6.3
4. 3.7% are using WordPress 6.2
5. 2.9% are using WordPress 6.1

As you can see, WordPress 4.9 is somewhat of an outlier in that despite several versions out of date, it’s still the 6th most used version.

This likely is because this was the last version of WordPress before the introduction of the block-based Gutenberg editor in WordPress 5.0. Presumably, those who continue to use version 4.9 prefer the old classic editor.

And speaking of Gutenberg…

Gutenberg by the numbers

Gutenberg has over 77.5 million active installations on WordPress and counting. Over 279 million posts have been written in the editor so far.

The Gutenberg WordPress editor uses a block-based system. Unsurprisingly, the most used block is the paragraph block, which accounts for 56.5% of all blocks used.

Top 10 most-used Gutenberg blocks:

1. Paragraph – 56.5%
2. Image – 14.7%
3. Heading – 12.4%
4. List – 4%
5. Spacer – 3.3%
6. Separator – 1.8%
7. HTML – 1.5%
8. Group – 1.4%
9. Columns – 1.3%
10. Button – 0.9%

How often does WordPress release updates?

WordPress typically releases a major update to its core software 2 to 3 times yearly, around every 3-6 months. 

These major updates represent new version releases and are named after jazz musicians (because WordPress developers are big jazz fans). The latest release was named after musician Arturo O’Farrill.

WordPress version history (release dates)

• WordPress 6.5 – April 2, 2024
• WordPress 6.4 – November 7, 2023
• WordPress 6.3 – August 8, 2023
• WordPress 6.2 – March 28, 2023
• WordPress 6.1 – November 2022
• WordPress 6.0 – January 2023
• WordPress 5.9 – January 2023
• WordPress 5.8 – January 2023
• WordPress 5.7 – March 2021
• WordPress 5.6 – January 2023
• WordPress 5.5 – January 2023
• WordPress 5.4 – March 2020
• WordPress 5.3 – November 2019
• WordPress 5.2 – May 2019
• WordPress 5.1 – February 2019

Sources: Gutenstats, WordPress stats, WordPress download counter, WordPress history

WordPress.com statistics

So far, all of the WordPress statistics we’ve looked at have been related to the open-source content management system available at WordPress.org. 

Next, we’ll examine some statistics about the fully-hosted blogging platform WordPress.com. 

While WordPress.com uses the same WordPress core software, it’s fully for-profit and acts as a managed hosting platform that helps you to build and host your website. This makes it different from WordPress.org, a source where you can download the software.

How many blogs are published on WordPress?

WordPress.com users publish around 70 million new posts every month. That works out at around 1,600 new blog posts every minute or over 26 per second. In addition, there are over 77 million comments on WordPress blog posts every month.

How many people read WordPress blogs?

Over 409 million people view over 20 billion pages on WordPress.com websites monthly.

Sources: WordPress.com

WordPress WooCommerce statistics

Next, let’s take a look at some WooCommerce statistics. WooCommerce is an ecommerce solution built on WordPress. It’s built and owned by Automattic, the same company that runs WordPress. 

You can install and activate the WooCommerce plugin on your WordPress website to turn it into an ecommerce store and start selling products online.

How many WooCommerce stores are there?

According to our calculations, there are over 163.5 million WooCommerce stores online.

This is based on the fact that 8.7% of all websites use WooCommerce, according to W3Techs, and there are around 1.88 billion websites online.

Key WooCommerce usage statistics:

• 20.2% of all sites that run on WordPress use WooCommerce. This makes it the biggest subcategory of WordPress sites. 
• The WooCommerce plugin has over 5 million active installations on the WordPress plugin database.
• There are 771 official WooCommerce extensions. That includes 47 free extensions and 724 paid extensions.
• WooCommerce stores generated over $10b in sales in 2017 

WooCommerce market share

WooCommerce is the leading e-commerce solution, with 36.68% of the global market share. That’s more than double its closest competitor, Squarespace Online Stores, which has a 14.49% market share.

Top 5 ecommerce platforms by market share:

1. WooCommerce – 38.74%
2. Squarespace – 14.67%
3. Woo Themes (Old version of WooCommerce) – 14.94%
4. Shopify – 10.32%
5. WixStores – 8.09%

Sources: W3Techs³, W3Techs⁴, WPTavern, WordPress plugins, Statista