What Percentage of Websites are WordPress in 2024? (New Data)
WordPress powers over 40% of all websites on the internet today. The most recent statistics show that 43.2% of all websites use WordPress. With over 455 million websites now using WordPress, it has grown to become the most popular content management system in the world.
But why has WordPress become so ubiquitous? What is it about WordPress that makes it the go-to choice for so many website owners? In this post, we’ll explore the history and growth of WordPress, analyze the key reasons behind its success, and predict where it might be headed in the future.
A Brief History of WordPress
WordPress was created in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little as a fork of an existing blogging platform called b2/cafelog. The initial version focused purely on blogging, but over time WordPress evolved into a fully-featured content management system capable of powering all kinds of websites.
Some key milestones in the history of WordPress include:
2005 – The first major update adding multi-author and multi-user capability. This transformed WordPress from a personal blogging tool into something that could power bigger sites.
2007 – WordPress 2.1 introduced custom post types, letting users create new content structures beyond just blog posts and pages. This paved the way for WordPress to become a general CMS.
2010 – WordPress 3.0 brought a major admin redesign and integrated custom menus and navigation headers across themes. The improved UI boosted adoption.
2021 – WordPress 5.8 added full site editing capabilities, allowing nearly all aspects of sites to be edited visually. This brought WordPress closer to popular site builders.
With each passing year WordPress has added new capabilities that have expanded what it can be used for. As it has evolved, more and more of the web has come to rely on it.
Why WordPress Continues to Grow
There are several key reasons why WordPress has not only continued to succeed but grown its market share year after year:
1. It‘s Open Source
WordPress is licensed under the GPL which allows anyone to freely use, modify, and distribute the software for free. This open source foundation ensures WordPress will remain free and continue evolving through the dedicated efforts of its global community.
2. Constant Innovation Through Plugins
With over 55,000 plugins available, WordPress can be endlessly extended and customized to meet virtually any website need. New functionality gets added all the time, keeping WordPress on the cutting edge.
3. Power Behind Major Sites
Over 30% of the top 10 million websites use WordPress, including sites like TechCrunch, BBC America, Microsoft, Forbes, and more. Its track record of scaling to massive levels proves its capabilities.
4. Beginner Friendly
WordPress has a famously intuitive admin interface allowing beginners to get up and running quickly. For many with limited tech skills, WordPress becomes the go-to option versus more complex or expensive alternatives.
5. Cross Compatible Themes
No matter what theme is used, the WordPress backend including posts, pages, plugins, etc remain compatible across them all. This interchangeability makes pivoting a site‘s look easy.
6. SEO Optimized
Built-in SEO best practices like clean code output, optimized metadata, and XML sitemaps give WordPress sites an advantage when it comes to rankings. There are also many SEO plugin options.
7. Multilingual Support
Currently WordPress has been translated into over 60 languages making it accessible across cultures. This is key for global growth.
With attributes like these propelling it forward, it‘s no mystery why WordPress has come to dominate its market space. As long as it retains these core strengths, expect its expansion to continue.
Understanding WordPress‘ Two Distinct Versions
It‘s important to note that there are two distinct versions of WordPress available:
WordPress.com – This free, hosted version of WordPress is limited in what plugins and customizations it allows, but it is quick and easy to get started with requiring zero technical know-how.
WordPress.org – The open source WordPress software available for download. This gives you total control and flexibility over your site, but it requires a separate web host and involves more complexity.
When most people discuss market share statistics for WordPress, they are typically talking about the open source WordPress.org platform. WordPress.com certainly has many millions of sites in its own right, but WordPress.org makes up the bulk and is what most businesses and serious sites are built on.
The choice between self-hosted WordPress.org vs the simplicity of WordPress.com is mainly an evaluation of your site’s needs and what level of control you require. But WordPress clearly dominates both its hosted and self-hosted spheres.
The Growth of WordPress as an eCommerce Platform
In addition to its growth as a content management system, WordPress has also rapidly risen to become the most used eCommerce platform as well. Driving this trend is WordPress’ flexibility combined with the powerful WooCommerce plugin.
Currently it’s estimated that WooCommerce accounts for approximately 30% of all online stores. With more than 3 million active installations, it edges out competitors like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. Much like WordPress itself, WooCommerce is open source, free to use, and boasts an enormous collection of extensions to customize stores.
For small to mid-level online retail stores, WordPress+WooCommerce allow merchants to get off the ground quickly without investing in expensive proprietary eCommerce platforms. The numbers speak to this accessibility, as market share is only predicted to expand. And with WordPress already powering over 40% of sites on the web, having built-in compatibility with WooCommerce only strengthens the ecosystem.
So when looking at the dominance of WordPress on the modern web, its position as the leading eCommerce platform in addition to being the top CMS adds quite a bit of extra weight. As online shopping continues its upward trajectory generally, WordPress is positioned to capture a great deal of that new business.
WordPress‘ Standing Among Other Site Building Platforms
Beyond open source competitors, WordPress also stacks up strongly against closed source proprietary systems like Squarespace, Wix, and Webflow which have arisen over the past decade as well:
Squarespace – While gaining popularity for its modern templates and integrated eCommerce, Squarespace sits far behind WordPress powering under 1% of all sites globally. It also severely lacks custom extensibility compared to WP.
Wix – Utilized on around 3% of sites, Wix competes on easy drag and drop site building for non-coders. But its downsides include unreliable hosting, forced branding, and ineffective SEO compared to WordPress.
Webflow – Webflow introduced visual editing and modern web design to its site builder. But the necessity of proprietary hosting and the lack of extensions limit growth versus WordPress which retains the advantage both in market share and flexibility.
Shopify – As the second largest eCommerce platform, Shopify creates direct competition with WooCommerce stores. But the encoded Buy Buttons, transaction fees, and lack of flexibility have so far ensured WordPress remains dominant.
Across both open source and proprietary competitors, WordPress continues to reign supreme in market share for a variety of important reasons like extensibility, scalability, SEO, and of course the open source community behind it. Dominating a 43%+ share in a fractured and crowded market is mighty impressive.
The Costs of Hosting a WordPress Site
When evaluating the large market share WordPress commands, it’s important to note the generally affordable costs involved with running WordPress sites as a factor that contributes to adoption levels.
Hosting fees for an average WordPress site typically run between $5 – $40 per month depending on traffic, with enterprise-class hosting scaling as high as $200 per month. Taking into account the low initial cost of the open source WordPress software itself, businesses can build and operate WordPress sites for reasonable monthly rates.
The total expenses involved break down as:
- Domain registration (~$15 per year)
- Web hosting provider (~$5 to $40+ per month)
- SSL certificate (free to around $100 per year)
- Plugins and themes (mostly free or low cost for commercial options)
- Maintenance costs (variable depending on needs)
While not completely free, for all the capabilities unlocked, WordPress delivers tremendous value across the spectrum from hobby blogs to high traffic news sites. The optionality to pay only for precisely the hosting resources needed allows for efficiently scaling costs as well.
For most, these reasonable expenses are outweighed by the long term flexibility and utility gained from a custom WordPress site. And of course, the free availability of the WordPress open source CMS itself eliminates what is often one of the costliest software licensing fees.
So WordPress certainly finds among its major advantages accessibility regarding lower financial barriers to getting started. This allows a wider range of users to benefit from the platform compared to some proprietary solutions.
The Popularity of WordPress Across Languages and Countries
Given the vast number of sites WordPress powers globally, it comes as no surprise that it spans many languages and geographical regions. Currently WordPress has been translated into over 100 languages. This helps speakers of languages beyond English leverage WordPress effectively.
Some interesting usage trends by country include:
English speaking countries unsurprisingly take top spots (United States #1, Canada #6, United Kingdom #7, Australia #12)
European nations with high rates of WP adoption (Russia #2, Germany #10, Spain #13, Italy #14)
Quickly growing usage in India (#4 and accelerating)
Strong usage across Nordic countries (#21 Sweden, #22 Norway, #24 Finland, #28 Denmark)
Emerging usage from nations like Vietnam (#15), Brazil (#16) and Argentina (#26) showing global usage
So while English speaking countries do account for significant percentages of users, WordPress encounters growing usage across locales, languages, and continents. Companies like Automattic (the lead developer) have made language translation and localization a priority, allowing this expansion to occur.
The flexibility of WordPress to publish content in any tongue or dialect has been a boon for global adoption. And its penetration stretches beyond developing nations to reach major economies demonstrating its worldwide applicability.
The Outlook for WordPress‘ Continued Growth
When taking stock all the factors driving WordPress to power over 40% of the world’s websites, the question becomes what does its future growth trajectory look like? We predict WordPress‘ expansion will carry on through these core advantages:
1. Increased Global Internet Usage
WordPress sits in prime position to capture a significant share of sites created by the billions of new Internet users expected to come online in emerging nations over the next decade.
2. The Rise of Mobile Commerce
As mobile overtakes desktop to become the new norm for eCommerce, WordPress is primed as the go-to mobile commerce platform through WooCommerce integrations.
3. The Push for Website Accessibility
From mobile responsiveness to strict ADA compliance, creating accessible sites is now a business mandate. As the WCAG compliant CMS, WordPress will gain sites needing guaranteed accessibility.
4. A Booming API Integrations Ecosystem
The rise of mobility-focused Internet of Things companies like Uber and Airbnb demonstrate the value of API-centric services. WordPress’ growing library of APIs and integrations make it ideal for assembling modern cloud services and marketing automation.
5. Emergence of the Headless Model
Decoupling content from presentation (the “headless” approach) is attracting many enterprises. WordPress’ REST API shows promise for driving headless, making it attractive versus traditional CMS options.
With developments like these propelling Web use overall, expect WordPress to capture additional market share thanks to its platform-agnostic flexibility and powerful core capabilities.
As Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, said – "As long as we‘re 80% as good as the proprietary tools, we‘ll get 80% of the market.” Wise words that have so far proven quite prescient.
So while putting an exact number on WordPress’ future expansion remains a guessing game, all indications point towards its domination increasing in the years ahead across all facets of site building on the modern Internet.
Conclusion
We are truly in the golden age of WordPress. Powering over 43% of all sites globally, it has earned its title as world’s #1 content management system and eCommerce platform combined. No proprietary platform comes close to matching WordPress‘ blend of open source freedom and widespread commercial adoption. And all signs point to its growth march continuing into the future.
Understanding the history that brought WordPress to its current standing along with the key advantages built into its DNA gives strong confidence that it will retain a central role in powering the Internet in the years and decades ahead.
