WordPress is the go-to option for most looking to launch a website. The number of WordPress websites in 2022 was a staggering 835 million (a number we extracted by comparing user percentage and the total number of websites).
14.7% of the world’s top sites are powered by WordPress, counting the NFL, NBC, and CNN as just a few among the Fortune 500 companies that use WordPress as their preferred CMS.
Now, let’s see what other impressive WordPress statistics our most-loved CMS has achieved during the years.
The history of WordPress begins with what is known as WordPress 0.5, or at the time, B2/Cafelog in 2001. After a couple of years, in 2003, Matt Mullenweg took over the platform as lead programmer and launches WordPress 0.7 the same year.
As of July 2011, WordPress went on to surpass 50 million blogs, and in 2013 with a 59% CMS market share, it becomes the most popular and used CMS in the world.
In 2023, WordPress powers 43.2% of the web.
Its popularity is at a steady year-over-year rise, which explains why there are 661 new WordPress sites popping up daily on average.
In 2023, WordPress has a market share of 63.5% considering the websites whose CMS we know
This number has grown by more than 10% over the years. In 2010, WordPress was known to be used by 51% of the websites, which is still over half.
We can also see that back in 2016, usage had a significant drop, during which Joomla was their biggest competitor with a 3.3% market share.
WordPress growth has come from no/custom CMS decline
While other CMS usage has changed in low percentages, WordPress’s accessibility and user-friendliness have steadily helped it become the number one choice for those looking to build a website.
Part of WordPress’s popularity is that it’s affordable, You can host a WordPress site for as little as $60 per year, and get a domain name for $10 in total. Of course, for a more professional site, these numbers would increase significantly.
WordPress is translated into 208 languages.
WordPress.org has been translated into 208 languages so far, 52 of them being more than 50% translated, meanwhile the others are still in the early stages of translation.
WordPress is the best CMS for SEO. Here’s why:
WordPress 6.1 has been downloaded over 69 million times
This number continues to increase daily. Naturally, new versions will always be the most used ones. Due to this, a huge gap between the percentages of usage of earlier versions and newer ones is expected and usual.
Fun Fact: WordPress is known for codenaming their new versions after Jazz musicians starting from version 1.0, named Davis after Miles Davis.
Some other names include Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, James Smith, and Nathaniel Adderley among others. The latest WordPress 6.1 is codenamed Misha after Mikhail “Misha” Alperin.
| Version | Usage |
|---|---|
| Version 6 | 62.30% |
| Version 5 | 30.50% |
| Version 4 | 6.70% |
| Version 3 | 0.40% |
| Version 2 | Less than 0.1% |
There are more than 60k plugins on WordPress Plugins, and their downloads reach one billion and counting
Plugin usage has seen significant increase in usage over the years, due to both the rise of technology, as well as sheer number of plugins on the market today.
WooCommerce is considered to be the most popular plugin on the internet due to its 68% distribution.
There are at least 6.9 million websites that are using the WooCommerce plugin and it has been downloaded over 229 million times, a number that grows day by day.
WooCommerce supports 67 languages, twice more than Magento with 30 and thrice more than Shopify with 20.
WooCommerce powers around 28% of all online stores, and 93.7% of WordPress eCommerce sites.
Gutenberg is a close second to WooCommerce when it comes to popularity.
It has over 79.6 million active installations.
Additionally, there are at least 284.2 million Gutenberg posts, accounting only for posts that use Jetpack and report whether the post was written using Gutenberg.
Akismet is another widely popular and useful WordPress plugin.
This plugin, designed to block spam comments, has over 133 million downloads.
The amount of pieces of spam Akismet has blocked is well over 500 billion, averaging around 7 and a half million per hour.
| Plugin | Installations |
|---|---|
| Yoast SEO | 5+ million |
| All In One SEO Pack | 2+ million |
| RankMath | 800,000+ |
| Plugin | Installations |
|---|---|
| JetPack | 5+ million |
| WP-Optimize | 1+ million |
| NitroPack | 60,000+ |
| Plugin | Installations |
|---|---|
| Elementor | 5+ million |
| SiteOrigin Builder | 1+ million |
| Beaver Builder | 300,000+ |
| Plugin | Installations |
|---|---|
| Contact Form 7 | 3+ million |
| WP Forms | 4+ million |
| Sucuri Security | 1+ million |
| Plugin | Installations |
|---|---|
| Wordfence Security | 5+ million |
| iThemes Security | 700,000+ |
| Ninja Forms | 60,000+ |
| Plugin | Installations |
|---|---|
| UpdraftPlus | 3+ million |
| BackWPup | 700,000+ |
| VaultPress (Jetpack Backup) | 60,000+ |
WordPress themes are incredibly popular among WordPress sites.
There are 8k+ free WordPress themes on WordPress alone. Meanwhile, one of the largest WordPress theme repositories, Themeforest, has 51k+ themes for sale.
One of the most popular WordPress themes is Choices, followed closely by Divi, Popper, Astra Theme, and Avada which has sold over 675k copies for $60 per piece.
When it comes to WordPress sites, often the biggest concern is security.
There are at least 90k attacks on WordPress sites every minute, with the biggest threat with over 50% of hack entry points is plugins. The best way to fight against these kinds of attacks is to download plugins from reputable sites only, stay away from abandoned plugins, and always contact the provider in case of attacks.
Other ways a WordPress site could be compromised include brute force at 16.1%, followed by core, themes, and hosting with less than 10%.
WordPress developer and designer jobs are not hard to come by and they offer decent salaries.
When it comes to freelancing WordPress jobs in the US, 32% charge an hourly rate of $10-$19, and 28% charge $20-$29.
Co-Founder & SEO Director
Granit is the Head of Search at Manaferra and the team’s guide to understanding SEO’s complexity and simplicity.
Granit is the Head of Search at Manaferra and the team’s guide to understanding SEO’s complexity and simplicity.
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