WordPress is the go-to option for most looking to launch a website. The number of WordPress websites in 2021 is a staggering 728 million (a number we extracted by comparing user percentage and the total number of websites).
14.7% o 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 numbers WordPress has achieved during the years.
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How Did It All Start?
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.
Fun Fact: WordPress’ name was originally suggested by a friend of Matt Mullenweg, Christine Selleck Tremoulet.
How Big is WordPress?
In 2021, WordPress has a market share of 64.8% 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.
Apart from that, from January 2021, WordPress usage has grown by 0.7%—going from 64.1% to 64.8% in a span of five months.
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 Usage
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.
What About WordPress.com?
WordPress & SEO
WordPress is the best CMS for SEO. Here’s why:
- Focus on user experience
- The opportunity to create custom permalinks
- Easy metadata management
- Easy image optimization
- Fast load time
- It’s optimized for mobile users – 54.6% of web traffic comes from mobile users in 2021
- Plugins made specifically for SEO
- Easy to integrate with software tools
- SEO-friendly themes
- Easy social media integration
"WordPress is the best CMS for SEO"
WordPress Versions
WordPress 5.7 has been downloaded over 36 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 5.7 is codenamed Esperanza after Esperanza Spalding.
WordPress Plugins
How many websites across all internet have used WordPress plugins over the years?
Chart by Manaferra.com
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is considered to be the most popular plugin on the internet due to its 68% distribution.
There are at least 4 million websites that are using the WooCommerce plugin and it has been downloaded over 135 million times, a number that grows day by day.
WooCommerce supports 66 languages, twice more than Magento with 30 and Shopify with 20.
WooCommerce powers around 28% of all online stores, and 93.7% of WordPress eCommerce sites.
Gutenberg
Gutenberg is a close second to WooCommerce when it comes to popularity.
It has over 67 million active installations.
Additionally, there are at least 193 million Gutenberg posts, accounting only for posts that use Jetpack and report whether the post was written using Gutenberg.
Akismet
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.
Most popular WordPress plugins by active installations
SEO plugins
Yoast SEO
5+ million
All In One SEO Pack
2+ million
RankMath
800,000+
Speed plugins
JetPack
5+ million
WP-Optimize
1+ million
NitroPack
60,000+
Page builders
Elementor
5+ million
SiteOrigin Builder
1+ million
Beaver Builder
300,000+
Contact form plugins
Contact Form 7
5+ million
WP Forms
4+ million
Ninja Forms
1+ million
Security plugins
Wordfence Security
4+ million
iThemes Security
1+ million
Sucuri Security
800,000+
Backup plugins
UpdraftPlus
3+ million
BackWPup
700,000+
VaultPress (Jetpack Backup)
60,000+
WordPress Themes
881
total number of themes
$
0
average theme price
0
theme companies
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.
WordPress theme usage distribution in the top one million sites
Chart by Manaferra.com
WordPress Security
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%.
How Much Do People Make with WordPress?
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.