For endless business and website owners across the globe, WordPress has emerged as the go-to option for anyone hoping to launch their own website. WordPress is one of the simplest, most versatile, and most flexible content management systems (CMS) on the market.
Initially created by Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg, WordPress was inspired by a desire to create a more elegant personal publishing system for business leaders. The solution is built on MySQL and PHP, and licensed under the GPLv2 guidelines, so it’s free to use and modify.
Here’s your guide to some of the most interesting WordPress statistics available today.
WordPress General Usage Statistics
WordPress currently stands as the most popular tool for any blogger or business owner creating their own website. With the largest share of the CMS market according to site stats, and a huge number of global subscribers, this popular content management system has taken the world by storm.
Even as new site building tools emerge in the market, WordPress continues to own the biggest share of the marketplace.
The current version of WordPress is estimated to have taken 230 years of work to build
WordPress as it stands today is a huge and powerful CMS solution, featuring a codebase of 850,118 lines. According to some reports, the level of work implemented into creating WordPress adds up to around 230 years’ worth of effort. These statistics also suggest the current version of WordPress would have cost around $12,662,769 to build.
(Openhub)
WordPress powers around 43% of the web
It’s no secret WordPress is the biggest CMS on the market. According to research into site-building habits, around 43% of the web is currently powered by WordPress. This number only accounts for the websites whose CMS we’re aware of.
In the last 10 years (from 2012 to 2022), WordPress has more than doubled in reach, increasing from powering 15.98% of the web, to 43% as of August 2022. Notably, there was a slight decline in the number of people using WordPress between January and August 2022 (43.2% to 43%).
(W3Techs)
WordPress has translations for 205 local languages
The reach of WordPress as a CMS is constantly expanding. According to the most recent insights released by the WordPress translation page, there have been dedicated releases across 205 locales. Currently, 38 of these locales are at 100% translation, and 31 are at more than 95% translation.
Around 71 locales are at less than 50% translation, indicating a demand for a higher number of translators to assist with the evolution of WordPress.
WordPress sites have 409 million unique visitors per month
According to WordPress analysis of the existing userbase, WordPress sites currently attract around 409 million unique visitors each month, and 20 billion page views per month. What’s more, around 70 million new posts are generated every day, and 77 million new comments are posted each month.
While this might not seem like much at a glance, it adds up to more than 97k of new posts every hour, and 1620 posts published on WordPress sites per minute!
WordPress Addresses around 80-90% of Google’s crawling issues
According to a report released by the former leader of the Google webspam team, Matt Cutts, sites built with WordPress are potentially more capable of ranking higher in the search engines. This is because the CMS has already been built to address 80-90% of the crawling issues of Google.
WordPress therefore stands as one of the most SEO-friendly solutions for website builders on the market today.
291,329 of the top 1 million websites use WordPress
According to BuiltWith, WordPress is also one of the most popular CMS solutions among sites with the highest level of traffic and customer interest. Around 291,329 of the world’s top 1 million websites. Companies using WordPress today include major market leaders like Bitly, Bloomberg.com, Booking.com, Cambridge.org, and Coursera.
WordPress holds 64.3% of the CMS market share
WordPress doesn’t just power the majority of the websites on the net today, it also holds the largest market share in the CMS landscape by a significant level. According to W3techs, WordPress currently accounts for 64.3% of the CMS market.
The second most popular CMS, Shopify, is a significant way behind WordPress, with only 6.2% of the market share. Shopify is followed by Wix at 3.4%, and Squarespace at 3%.
(W3Techs)
WordPress was the fastest-growing CMS in the world for 11 years in a row
As a testament to its popularity, WordPress maintained the title of the fastest-growing CMS worldwide for more than 11 years in a row. According to a report released by WP-Content in 2020, the CMS more than doubled its market share within only 5 years.
WooCommerce is also used by 12% of all the websites whose content management systems we know about, which also contributes to the growth of WordPress.
WordPress Plugin Statistics
One of the most attractive features of WordPress is how easy it is to expand and upgrade the functionality of your site. There are a huge number of plugins available for this ecosystem, capable of a wide range of tasks. You can access plugins to connect your site to social media, or use tools like Sucuri to improve site security.
There are apps for managing and reducing spam comments, offering insight into site stats, and even tools for translating content into different languages like Spanish or French.
To Date, WooCommerce has been downloaded more than 199 million times
Automaticc, the company responsible for creating the world’s most popular WordPress ecommerce tool, WooCommerce, frequently updates its download statistics. According to the company, as of August 2022, WooCommerce has been downloaded a total of 199,830,3656 times.
Interestingly, of all the downloads currently monitored for WooCommerce, only around 15.5% are on the latest version of WooCommerce (6.8). Approximately 56.2% of WooCommerce users are accessing something other than version 6.5, 6.6. 6.7, or 6.8.
WooCommerce has also been translated to 66 locales to date.
There are over 59,000 free plugins available for WordPress
WordPress plugins are available in both free and premium formats, depending on the functionality you need. Plugins help to extend the basic functionality of the WordPress ecosystem, to give you more control over what you can do online.
At the time of this report, there are a total of 59,774 free plugins available for WordPress.
WooCommerce is used by 20.3% of all WordPress users
WooCommerce is one of the most popular sub-categories of WordPress adopted by online users. At present, around 20.3% of all the companies or website owners using WordPress also use WooCommerce. The second most popular “sub-category” for WordPress is Elementor, at 17.9%, followed by WPBakery at 14%.
(W3Techs)
Around 2.69% of the world’s top 1 million websites use WooCommerce
Currently, around 2.69% of the world’s top 1 million websites are using WooCommerce to power their stores. Though this number might not seem particularly large at first, it still makes WooCommerce the most popular plugin for checkout functionality among leading websites, followed by Shopify at 2.05%.
JetPack has more than 287 million downloads to date
Another of the most popular WordPress plugins created by Automattic, Jetpack is a series of optimization tools designed to help companies improve their site’s marketing, design, and security standing. The solution currently has over 287 million downloads to date, making it one of the most popular tools available in the WordPress plugin market.
Askimet has over 255 million downloads
Askimet is the most popular spam blocker on WordPress, blocking approximately 7,500,000 pieces of spam content per hour. Though it’s difficult to know for certain how many active installations of Askimet there are in the world, Askimet reports around 255,544,177 downloads since its release.
Approximately 32.4% of all the people using Askimet today are leveraging the latest version of 5.0, while a similar number are also still using versions 4.1 and 4.2.
Yoast has the most 5-star ratings in the WordPress plugin directory
Though there are countless amazing WordPress plugins to choose from today, the Yoast SEO plugin is one of the most highly regarded. The app has over 25 thousand 5-star ratings – the most of any plugin on the WordPress app ecosystem.
As of August 2022, Yoast has reported more than 454 million downloads since its initial release. Approximately 20.2% of Yoast customers are using the latest version of the product.
WordPress Version Statistics
WordPress has had a number of version updates over the years designed to improve the user experience for the open-source software. However, each new update comes with new features, from different contact form designs to automatic formatting tools. As not every blogger enjoys using new features, some people prefer to stick to older versions of WordPress, even if this harms security.
Notably, you’ll only need to worry about WordPress versions if you’re using the WordPress.org open-source software, as WordPress.com updates automatically.
WordPress 6.0 has been downloaded over 59 million times
New WordPress versions aim to address the previous bugs and issues of old instalments, while simultaneously offering new functionality to users. WordPress 6.0 is currently the most recent WordPress release at the time of writing, introduced in May 2022. The update introduced better performance enhancements and template creation solutions.
WordPress.org notes that this version of the software has been downloaded over 59 million times, with new downloads occurring every second.
Around 52% of WordPress users have updated to the latest version
WordPress and its wide collection of plugin and app creators regularly advise professionals to update their system to the latest version of the software to avoid common bugs and security issues. Unfortunately, only around 52% of WordPress users are currently using the latest version of the technology.
Interestingly, the 48% of WordPress users not using the latest version of the software aren’t all on version 5.9 either. Only 8.8% of users have the second most recent version of the software installed. 4.3% of users are still using versions as old as WordPress 4.9.
Gutenberg has over 77.2 million active installs
Alongside WooCommerce, Gutenberg is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress. The solution is a WordPress editor, capable of delivering block-style editing to the WordPress ecosystem. The Gutenberg install is included in the most recent versions of WordPress. As of 2022, there are approximately 77.2 million active installs of Gutenberg across WordPress sites.
Notably, according to Gutenstats, there are also 277.3 million posts written with Gutenberg across the web, and 258,000 of these are often written in a single day. Unfortunately, not everyone enjoys building a WordPress website with Gutenberg, which may be why some companies have avoided updating to the latest WordPress version.
(Kinsta)
WordPress Theme Statistics
WordPress themes are one of the most important aspects for companies to consider when building their own WordPress website. Themes allow WordPress users to change the look and feel of their website, as well as adding built-in features like enhanced shopping carts and contact forms.
There are more than 9,000 free themes on WordPress
WordPress users have the option to choose between free and paid themes for styling their website. There are over 8,000 free themes available in the WordPress theme repository today, with new options emerging all the time. You can also sort through styles based on categories or features.
While free themes are excellent for beginners, they can also have limited functionality and customization options compared to paid alternatives. Some of the most popular free themes include Astra, Neve, and OceanWP.
There are more than 31k themes on WordPress right Now
According to researchers invested in the WordPress space, there are currently around 31,010 themes available for WordPress users today. These include both free and paid themes. There are around 211 theme companies distributing options for WordPress users, and some of the top options include:
- Divi: More than 550,000 downloads
- Avada: 475,000 buyers have cast votes for Avada as the best theme on ThemeForest
- Hestia: This is one of the most popular themes on Themeisle, with over 80,000 downloads.
On average, the price of a theme from WordPress will cost around $77.57 as of 2022.
ThemeForest Offers Nearly 8,000 WordPress themes
ThemeForest, one of the most popular repositories for WordPress themes, has a total of over 28,000 templates and themes available for different websites. While a significant portion of these themes aren’t focused on WordPress, around 7,982 are dedicated to WordPress users. This means about 28% of all the themes on ThemeForest are for WordPress users.
(Freemius)
93% of the themes sold on Envato Market are Responsive themes
Envato, another theme and plugin repository for WordPress designers, has sold over $1 million worth of themes. An item is sold on the Envato Marketplace every five seconds, and while there are around 11,000 themes to choose from on this marketplace, 70% of searches for themes revolve around niche terms. According to studies, around 93% of the themes sold on Envato Market are responsive.
Some of the most popular themes available on Envato include the “Avada” theme, with 500,000 sales, the “X” super-fast theme, and the Enfold multi-purpose theme.
(Envato)
WordPress Security Statistics
While WordPress developers and users love the technology for its versatility, add-ons, and flexibility, it’s also widely regarded as one of the most vulnerable CMS solutions. Because there are so many users on WordPress, it’s often a common target for hackers and cyber criminals.
Fortunately, there are various widget tools, and apps for the blogging platform which can help to make it more secure.
There are around 90,000 attacks on WordPress sites every minute
According to one report, there are about 90,000 attacks on WordPress sites on the internet today every minute. Notably, the biggest threat to users is plugin security, as 50% of hack entry points come from plugins. The best way to protect yourself is to make sure you only download plugins from reputable sites, and make sure your apps are up-to-date.
Outside of a plugin attack, some of the other ways WordPress sites are hacked include brute force attacks (16.1%) and core, theme, and update issues (less than 10%).
52% of all WordPress security issues are linked to plugins
According to WPScan, around 52% of all the security issues reported in WordPress are related to plugins. WordPress core issues account for around 37% of all security issues, while WordPress themes only account for around 11% of all attack issues.
Notably, WPScan also found around 39% of WordPress vulnerabilities are linked to cross-scripting problems, and around 44% of hacking problems occurred as a result of outdated WordPress sites.
(WPScan)
Finishing Thoughts
Started in 2003, WordPress has almost achieved two decades of success in the CMS space. A lot has changed in the environment since it’s original inception, but the core functionality and flexibility of the platform remains consistent to this day.
Hopefully, these WordPress stats have given you an insight into some of the most important data available about WordPress usage and performance. Of course, real-time insights into WordPress from plugin and app providers and referrers are updating all the time, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the new reports as they roll in.
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