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. Our collection of the most important WordPress statistics 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.
The percentage of websites using WordPress is impressive. 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 consider the sites with a known CMS, the WordPress market share amounts to 64.1%.
(w3techs)
WordPress popularity only grows with time. CMS usage stats show that it dominates Shopify and Joomla, the self-hosted CMS that power 3.2% and 2.2% of all websites and 5.2% and 3.5% of the market, respectively.
(w3techs)
WordPress is a giant in every sense of the word. It sees 126 million unique visitors every month which is more than Amazon that gets 96 million unique visitors per month.
(ManageWP)
WordPress stats speak louder than words. Undoubtedly, this is the preferred CMS for the majority of webmasters. To put the number of 500 sites that get built every day on the platform in perspective, we must highlight that there are only 60-80 sites built on other platforms like Shopify and Squarespace.
(Kinsta)
WordPress 5.6 version called Simone was released at the end of 2020 and to date, it has been downloaded more than 15 million times. It comes with some advanced features including auto-updates for major releases, better support for PHP 8.0, and several versions of the Block Editor.
(WordPress)
27.4% of WordPress sites are running on the latest version, 5.6. 21.8% of sites are still running on WordPress 5.5, whereas 12.7% are on WordPress 5.4.
(WordPress)
Many web development experts are choosing to build websites on WordPress. The latest WordPress user statistics show that there are more than 28 million live sites. 325,003 of them (or 32.5%) are in the top 1 million sites, 31,370 (or 31.37%) are in the top 100,000 websites, and 3,495 (or 34.95%) are in the top 10,000 sites.
(Built With)
WordPress has established itself as a real game-changer. It’s no surprise that 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 and Katy Perry.
(WeDevs)
Nearly 50% of the top universities globally—the likes of Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California—are using WordPress. The platform also hosts thousands of government sites including US Federal and State government websites and small towns.
(Campus Press, WPBeginner)
WordPress handles a considerable amount of traffic. As WordPress statistics show, 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 usage doesn’t show signs of slowing down.
(WordPress)
People do love uploading files on WordPress, and this stat proves it. 21,903,491 files were uploaded in December 2020. At 70,399,151, the number of files uploaded was historically highest in December 2018. The monthly average stands at around 24.7 million files.
(WordPress)
Blogging stats indicate that more and more people are using WordPress to post new content and spark up discussions. In December 2020, there were 79,271,587 new posts. At 136,185,666, this figure was highest in December 2018. When it comes to comments, WordPress saw the highest number of 575,137,941 in September 2019. At 75,134,349, the number of comments in 2020 was in the median range.
(WordPress)
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%.
(WordPress, WPbeginner)
Roughly 71% of WordPress blogs are written in English and Spanish is the far second with nearly 5%.
(CodeinWP, WordPress)
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.
(WordPress)
ThemeForest offers nearly 35,000 premium themes and templates, 11,000 of which are for WordPress. As per WordPress stats, the most popular theme is Avada, which costs $60, and it has been bought over 324,351 times. X and Enfold are also part of the top three best-selling themes on ThemeForest.
(WinningWP, Envato)
Half of the ThemeForest themes for WordPress have made at $1,000 a month. A quarter have made $2,500 in a month, 15% have made $5,000 or more a month, and 7% have seen $7,500 in a month.
(Envato)
According to CodeinWP WordPress statistics, 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 as the median cost.
(CodeInWP)
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)
At the time of writing this page, there are 55,040 plugins available at Wordpress.org. So yes, there’s likely a plugin for any problem you have. Still, you shouldn’t exceed 20 plugins; otherwise, you can compromise your site’s load time. And remember, SEO stats show that 40% of visitors would abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load.
(WordPress)
WordPress 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 of the most downloaded ones. Yoast, Contact Form 7, Akismet, W3 Total Cache, and Google XML Sitemaps are some of the plugins with over 1 million downloads.
(WPbeginner)
Further proving the effectiveness and popularity of WordPress plugins, 11 of them have seen more than 7 million downloads. WooCommerce, NextGEN Gallery, WordPress Importer, WP Super Cache, and Google Analytics by Yoast, to name a few.
(CodeinWP)
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)
With more than 202 million downloads and 5 million active installations, Yoast SEO is the most popular WordPress plugin. WordPress usage statistics place Akismet, Google XML Sitemaps, Contact Form 7, and NextGEN Gallery on the list of the most downloaded plugins.
(Wikipedia, WordPress)
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 downloads, popular post tracking, and much more. At the moment, it has over 2 million active installations.
(MonsterInsights)
Have you ever been wondering how to check views within the WordPress dashboard? 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)
Akismet is an anti-spam plugin that checks comments and submissions to ensure the website doesn’t publish them. Statistics on WordPress show that Akismet is now protecting more than 6 million websites and has blocked 450+ billion spam comments.
(Akismet)
WooCommerce is indisputably the most popular ecommerce plugin used by the leading ecommerce development specialists. The current market share of WooCommerce is 30% of the top 1 million websites running online stores. The number of WordPress sites with WooCommerce goes over 5 million and notes 43 million all-time downloads.
(WPbeginner, Built With)
Squarespace follows with 21.15% and next comes Shopify with 12.69%. WordPress statistics from BuiltWith reveal that WooCommerce powers 264,765 of the top 1 million sites online.
(Datanyze, BuiltWith)
In addition to the 1,120 themes for WordPress available on WordPress.org, there are around 1,200 themes on ThemeForest. This totals to over 2,300 themes from these two resources, excluding independent theme companies and theme marketplaces.
(Theme Forest, WordPress)
WordPress trends show continuous growth of WooCommerce plugin adoption. Just over a year ago, 5.7% of all sites were using the plugin and in 2019, this number was about 4.7%.
(w3techs)
No ecommerce plugin can compete with WooCommerce. The most popular plugin for online shops is installed on a whopping 93.7% of WordPress sites. For comparison, Ecwid, the second-most-popular WP ecommerce plugin powers only 122,062 sites.
(Barn2)
WordPress ranks as the top security-compromised CMS even though it’s continually inspected and improved upon version-by-version by the top security experts.
(WP Manage Ninja)
WordPress stats reveal 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)
Vulnerabilities aren’t related to the CMS only. 41% of them stem from security issues on the hosting platforms.
(WP White Security)
The biggest WordPress data breach happened in 2011. The attack compromised 18 million users. Another large data breach hit WordPress in 2016. Known as the Panama Papers Leak, the attack affected 2.6 TB of data, 4.8 million emails, and 11.5 million documents.
(Skilled, WordFence)
Wordfence, a WordPress security plugin, reports close to 90,000 attacks every minute. This figure further proves that WordPress is highly vulnerable to bot and hacker attacks. Brute force attack is one of the most common vulnerabilities for sites using this CMS.
(WP Manage Ninja)
The first one was released on May 27, 2003, and the last one on December 8, 2020. 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.
(WordPress)
WordPress statistics show that more than 1 million people have changed their theme during December 2020. Historically, this number was highest in March 2015 when 5,334,942 people switched their WordPress theme.
(WordPress)
Christine is a successful blogger herself and a close friend to the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg.
(Wikipedia)
WordPress has only 1,149 employees across 72 countries. This is only a fraction of the number of employees other big companies have. For example, Google has 60,000.
(Who Is Hosting This)
The platform’s community of developers, contributors, and WordCamp organizers is what makes this open-source platform more usable. Currently, WordPress stats indicate there are nearly 250,000 active members and over 840 meetup groups globally.
(WP Online Support)
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)
The first version of WordPress, 0.7, was created on May 27th, 2003. WordPress 1.0 was released in January 2004 and it’s also known as the Davis version.
WordPress trends indicate the CMS powers 75 million sites, and this number is poised to grow over the next year.
According to some estimations, there are just over 31,000 themes on WordPress and platforms like ThemeForest.
WordPress is the most popular CMS and powers 39.77% of all websites. In other words, roughly 1 in 4 websites is a WordPress website.
The latest known WordPress statistics show that the platform is used by 409 million people every month. They are viewing more than 70 million posts and leave approximately 77 million comments.
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