WordPress Statistics 2020

December 19, 2019 1 comment

What was launched as a basic blogging tool quickly evolved to become an innovator in the digital marketing scene and a go-to platform for website building. As an open-source content management system, WordPress comes with an abundance of customizable themes and plugins, making it possible for literally everyone to create unique websites.

Our collection of the most important WordPress statistics for 2020 will help you understand its dominance in the CMS market, how powerful it is, and why you should consider it for your next project. In the end, you will also find some fun facts that will get you closer to the WordPress concept, as well as the answers to five of the most frequently asked questions.

WordPress Statistics (Editor’s Choice)

35.3% of websites use WordPress.
There are 27,021,750 live WordPress websites.
35% of 10,000 popular business sites use WordPress.
WooCommerce is installed on over 3 million websites.
WordPress 5.3 has been downloaded over 27 million times.
The free theme directory has over 5,800 themes.
A total of 106 versions of WordPress have been released to date.
WordPress grows faster than Joomla and Drupal.

General Stats & Facts

1. 35.3% of the websites on the Internet run on WordPress.

For those of you wondering how many websites use WordPress, the platform powers more than one-third of all the websites, including the ones without a CMS or with a custom-coded CMS. If you only take into consideration the sites with a known CMS, WordPress dominates 62% market share. Impressive, right?

(w3techs)

2. WordPress is 8.9 times more prevalent than Drupal and ten times more popular than Joomla.

When considering the overall CMS usage, it’s evident that WordPress won’t be dethroned any time soon. In fact, it dominates over Drupal and Joomla, the self-hosted CMSs that power 1.9% and 2.9% of all websites and 3.4% and 5.2% of the CMS market, respectively.

(w3techs)

3. WordPress grows faster than Joomla and Drupal.

If you want further proof of what is the best CMS, take a look at the research conducted by Kinsta. Between 2018 and 2019, Joomla’s market share decreased from 3.1% to 3% and Drupal’s from 2.2% to 1.9%. On the other hand, WordPress continues to grow steadily by approximately 1-4% over the past eight years.

(Kinsta)

4. 35% of 10,000 popular business sites use WordPress.

WordPress has established itself as a real game-changer. It is no surprise that some prominent names like The New Yorker, Sony Music, Whitehouse.gov, and BBC America have chosen it to build their websites. WordPress also powers the websites of some famous personalities like Justin Bieber, Kobe Bryant, and Katy Perry.

(WinningWP)

5. There are 805 new WordPress sites built daily.

WordPress stats speak louder than words. Undoubtedly, WP is the preferred CMS for the majority of webmasters. To put the number of 805 sites that get built every day on the platform in perspective, we must highlight that there are 300 sites built on Joomla and 73 on Shopify.

(w3techs)

6. Currently, there are 27,021,750 live WordPress websites.

The latest WordPress usage statistics show that there are more than 27 million live sites. Of them, 355,077 or 35.51% are in the top 1 million sites, 35,940 or 35.94% are in the top 100,000 websites, and 3,803 or 38.03% are in the top 10,000 sites.

(Built With)

7. Over 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages each month.

WordPress handles a considerable amount of traffic. Every month, 409 million people generate approximately 20 billion page views on WordPress blogs. The number of people creating and consuming content continues to grow, and WordPress doesn’t show signs of slowing down.

(WordPress)

8. Users produce about 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments each month.

WordPress blogging stats are astonishing! More and more people are using WordPress to post new content and spark up discussions.

(WordPress)

9. WordPress is available in 162 languages and actively used in 68 of them.

If you use WordPress, you can translate your site into a different language seamlessly. At the moment, WordPress statistics show that the English language version tops the list of the most used languages with 71%. Spanish is next in line at 4.7%, followed by Indonesian at 2.4%, Portuguese at 2.3%, and French at 1.5%.

(WPbeginner)

10. WordPress 5.3 has been downloaded over 27 million times.

At the moment of compiling these WordPress stats, the latest version of WordPress, “Kirk,” was downloaded exactly 26,394,335 times. You can keep up with the download counter at WordPress.org.

(WordPress)

11. It takes $50-60 to host a professional WordPress site.

WordPress is affordable. Hosting a professional site will cost you anywhere between $50 and $60 a year, while a “.com” domain is approximately $10 a year. All in all, you can have a top-notch site with excellent hosting and domain of your choice for as much as $70. Due to the high demand and competition, WordPress development companies are also affordable to hire.

(CodeInWP)

12. In 2016, 117,913,148,357 words were published on WordPress.

This staggering amount breaks down to 595,795,035 posts and 457,596,906 comments!

(WhoIsHostingThis)

WordPress Plugins

13. There are more than 55,000 free WordPress plugins.

At the time of writing this page, there are 55,040 plugins available at WordPress.org. So yes, there is a plugin for any solution you need. Still, you shouldn’t exceed 20 plugins; otherwise, you can experience slow site loading. And remember, SEO stats show that 40% of visitors would abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load.

(WordPress)

14. The top 19 plugins have been downloaded more than 1 million times.

WordPress site stats confirm that some plugins are outstanding in terms of functionality. Users have recognized this and placed such plugins on the top of the list for most downloads. Yoast, Contact Form 7, Akismet, W3 Total Cache, and Google XML Sitemaps are some of the plugins with over 1 million downloads.

(WPbeginner)

15. WooCommerce is installed on over 3 million websites.

WooCommerce is indisputably the most popular ecommerce plugin. The current market share for WooCommerce is 22% of the top 1 million websites running as online stores. The number of WordPress sites with WooCommerce plugin goes over 3 million, and this plugin notes 43 million all-time downloads.

(WPbeginner, Built With)

16. Weber, Ripley’s, and Orange are some of the amazing WordPress sites that use WooCommerce.

As per ecommerce statistics, with 68,938,765 downloads, WooCommerce currently powers 28% of the online stores worldwide. It’s completely free and offers a wide range of user-friendly features aimed at helping users reach the top positions in the ecommerce world.

(WooCommerce)

17. The most popular free page builder is Elementor with over 430,000 new downloads every week.

Packed with the most useful widgets and advanced capabilities, Elementor quickly became the favorite page builder in the ecommerce industry. At the moment, this plugin has over 2 million active installations and is available in 52 languages.

(Software Findr)

18. Yoast SEO is the most downloaded plugin.

With more than 202 million downloads and 5 million active installations, Yoast SEO is the most popular plugin for WordPress. WordPress usage statistics place Akismet, Google XML Sitemaps, Contact Form 7, and NextGEN Gallery on the list of the most downloaded plugins.

(Wikipedia, WordPress)

19. Akismet has blocked over 450 billion spam comments.

Akismet is an anti-spam plugin that checks comments and submissions to ensure the website doesn’t publish them. As of January 2019, Akismet is protecting more than 6 million websites and has blocked 450+ billion spam comments.

(Akismet)

20. MonsterInsights business intelligence has helped webmasters increase their revenue by 50% and profits by 126%.

MonsterInsights is a plugin that makes it easy for WordPress users to track user page views effortlessly. It enables ecommerce tracking, Google AdSense tracking, file download, as well as popular post tracking, and much more. At the moment, it has over 2 million active installations.

(MonsterInsights)

21. Wordfence blocked 3,610,460,343 attacks on WordPress sites in the past month.

Wordfence is a WordPress plugin that scans for hacked files and monitors visitors’ access to your site. Only in the past month, Wordfence blocked over 3.6 billion attacks and blacklisted 67,167 malicious IPs. Best news? It’s free to use!

(WordFence)

22. Jetpack is one of the WordPress plugins with over 5 million active installations.

Have you ever been wondering how to check views on WordPress website? The answer is Jetpack. Besides providing data on site visits, views, and search terms people used to discover your site, this popular plugin enables 24/7 security, effortless management, and elevated site performance.

(WordPress)

WordPress Themes

23. The median membership price per theme is $4.20.

According to CodeinWP WordPress website stats, the average theme club subscription per theme will cost you $4.20. On average, a theme club subscription will cost you $145 per year, with $139 a median cost.

(CodeInWP)

24. The median price of a WordPress theme is $59.

WordPress offers a variety of themes at different prices. For a premium theme, you can pay anywhere between $10 and $200. Currently, the median price is $59, which is a rise from $46 in 2013.

(CodeInWP)

25. ThemeForest is the most popular premium theme marketplace.

ThemeForest offers nearly 35,000 premium themes and templates of which 10,000 are for WordPress. As per WordPress.com stats, the most popular theme is Avada, which costs $60, and it has been bought over 324,351 times.

(WinningWP)

26. The free theme directory has over 5,800 themes.

There is a vast number of themes you can opt for without spending a dime. You get to choose from a variety of combinations of layout, color schemes, design, and features.

(WPbeginner)

WordPress Security Stats & Facts

27. Running outdated versions of WordPress, themes, and plugins leave you vulnerable to attacks.

52% of detected vulnerabilities are from plugins, 37% are from core WordPress, and 11% are from themes. The best solution is to keep your WordPress site up to date. Pro tip: leave the WordPress core self-update option on and also adjust plugins to auto-update.

(iThemes)

28. The most common WordPress malware infections are Drive-by downloads, Pharma hacks, Backdoors, and Malicious redirects.

You might think that your site doesn’t have data worth stealing, but the truth is, it’s still vulnerable to attacks. Hackers often want to use the site’s server and usually send out spam from an unknown location. The most common hack attacks are Backdoors, Drive-by downloads, Pharma hacks, and Malicious redirects.

(Smashing Magazine)

WordPress Fun Facts

29. A total of 106 versions of WordPress have been released to date.

The first one was released on May 27, 2003, and the last one on December 18, 2019. On average, major core updates are released every 152 days. All WordPress versions have been named after jazz musicians since the developers are jazz music lovers.

(Codex)

30. 2,125,962 is the number of times users switched their WordPress theme in September, 2018.

WordPress statistics show that more than 2 million people have changed their theme during September 2018. Historically, this number was highest in March 2015 when 5,334,942 people switched their WordPress theme.

(WordPress)

31. 70,399,151 files were uploaded to WordPress.com in December 2018.

People do love uploading files on WordPress, and this stat proves it. The number of uploaded files in December 2018 was the highest so far. For comparison, in April 2019 this number was 27,218,813.

(WordPress)

32. Christine Selleck Tremoulet suggested the name WordPress.

Christine is a successful blogger herself and a close friend to the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg.

(Wikipedia)

33. Friday is the most popular day for downloading WordPress, while Sunday is the least favorite day.

WordPress stats show that Fridays are the most popular days for downloading the CMS. In fact, in the past week, 6,573,192 WordPress downloads happened on Friday. On the other hand, the number of downloads on Sunday was 299,352.

(WPCentral)

WordPress FAQs

1. What percentage of websites are built on WordPress?

33.9% of all websites use WordPress, and this number grows steadily. For example, in 2017, 27.3% of the sites on the Internet were using WordPress. If you do the math, you’ll come to conclude that WordPress noted a 23% growth over two years.

2. How long has WordPress been around?

The first official version of WordPress was released on May 27, 2003, and soon, it will celebrate its 19th birthday. As you can see, WordPress has been around longer than popular social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.

3. How do I find stats on WordPress?

WordPress.com provides useful statistics about how many visits your site gets, and what pages and posts are the most popular. To find these stats, you need Jetpack. Once you download the plugin go to the dashboard to enable the Site Stats widget to get a glance of your site visit, search terms used by your visitors, and overall site visits. To get more detailed information, go to the Jetpack menu.

4. What is the difference between views and visitors on WordPress?

Both views and visitors are essential metrics to assess how successful your site is. Visitors are the individual people that visit your site. On the other hand, a visitor can view multiple posts on your website, and this metric indicates how engaging or useful they find your content.

5. How do I see visitors on WordPress?

Knowing how many people visit your site will inform your next strategies and grow your business. MonsterInsights is a user-friendly analytics tool that enables you to quickly set up Google Analytics and get comprehensive and comprehensible reports.

Wrapping It Up

Based on the WordPress statistics analyzed above, this is undeniably the most popular CMS and also one of the best blogging platforms. Its popularity lies in its user-friendliness, low-cost, and simplicity. The abundance of plugins, themes, language options, and search engine optimization features are a few more reasons why WordPress is still dominating the market.

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