Anna PisanieBut does WordPress use 43% of cms or websites in general?
Known CMS market
58.3%
WordPress share when a content system is identified.
Lead over nearest rival
7.5×
WordPress share compared with Shopify.
Free plugins
72,654
Current WordPress.org directory total.
01
Research section
What WordPress use looks like across 100 websites
The simplest way to understand its reach is to place WordPress, other content systems, and unidentified systems in the same group.
WordPress in a group of 100 websites
About 40 use WordPress
The rest use another known system or have no content management system that the measurement can identify.
- WordPress
- 40
- Websites where WordPress is detected.
- Other known CMS
- 28
- Websites using another identified content system.
- No detected CMS
- 32
- Custom, static, hidden, or otherwise unidentified systems.
Siteefy Researchsiteefy.com
In a group of 100 measured websites, about 40 use WordPress, about 28 use another known CMS, and about 32 have no detected CMS. The last group can include custom software, static sites, and systems that do not reveal what they use.
This also explains why two WordPress figures appear in research. WordPress accounts for 39.6% of all websites, but 58.3% of websites with a known CMS. The second percentage is higher because it leaves out the unidentified group.
02
Research section
WordPress is much larger than its nearest CMS rivals
Comparing every platform against the same all-website measure shows the size of the gap.
Share of all measured websites
WordPress is far ahead of its nearest CMS rivals
WordPress39.6%
Shopify5.3%
Wix4.2%
Squarespace2.4%
7.5×
the website share of Shopify
3.3×
the combined share of the next three systems shown
Siteefy Researchsiteefy.com
WordPress has about 7.5 times the website share of Shopify, its nearest platform in this dataset. It is also about 3.3 times the combined share of Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace.
The practical advantage is an ecosystem that smaller systems cannot easily reproduce. Website owners can find more hosting choices, specialists, documentation, themes, and extensions. The same scale also creates more variation in quality, so individual products still need careful selection.
03
Research section
The ecosystem is what WordPress adoption makes possible
A large installed base supports thousands of add-ons and specialist services around the core publishing system.
Two different measures of ecosystem scale
WordPress can grow from a simple site into a store or member service
72,654
free plugins in WordPress.org
Plugins add functions such as forms, memberships, multilingual content, backups, and ecommerce.
7,000,000+
active WooCommerce installations
WooCommerce shows how one plugin can turn WordPress into a widely used online-store platform.
Siteefy Researchsiteefy.com
The official directory currently lists 72,654 free plugins. A small business can begin with pages and a contact form, then add appointments, multilingual content, memberships, or a store without moving to a different publishing platform.
WooCommerce reports more than 7,000,000 active installations. That does not mean every installation is a live store, but it shows that ecommerce is a major part of WordPress use rather than a niche extension. For context beyond WooCommerce, compare it with the wider number of ecommerce websites across all platforms.
A large plugin directory creates choice, not guaranteed quality. Website owners still need to check maintenance history, compatibility, support, and whether a plugin adds unnecessary complexity.
04
Research section
Market share is useful context, not a product score
The statistics explain WordPress reach and ecosystem size. They do not decide whether it fits one project.
WordPress is a practical fit when a website needs flexible publishing, a broad choice of extensions, or access to many developers and hosts. A managed builder may be simpler when a small team wants fewer technical decisions, while a custom application may need a different foundation entirely.
Use these figures to understand the size and staying power of the WordPress ecosystem. Choose the actual platform by what the website must do, who will maintain it, and how much technical responsibility the owner wants to carry.
According to Siteefy
The tools behind this, in Siteefy's index
Siteefy lists 44 tools for these 3 jobs. The counts come from the live index and change as tools are published or retired.
| Job | Tools | With a free plan | Most saved by readers |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress Hosting | 9 | 1 | No saves yet |
| Content Management | 25 | 17 | HubSpot · 3 saves |
| WordPress Website Creation | 10 | 6 | WordPress · 2 saves |
Sources and method
How the numbers are maintained
W3Techs supplies the daily technology shares. The official WordPress.org plugin API supplies the plugin-directory and WooCommerce counts. Each candidate passes range, source-host, and change guardrails before it replaces the approved value. Siteefy calculates the comparisons on this page from those approved values.
W3Techs CMS Usage
October 26, 2026
WordPress all-websites share, known CMS market share, and competing CMS shares.
WooCommerce on WordPress.org
October 9, 2026
Official active-installation total and plugin update date.
When a source cannot be refreshed safely, the last approved value remains visible and the failed refresh is flagged for review. Missing data is never replaced with a guess.
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4 comments
- Anna Pisanie
Kelly BolenGreat article! Thanks for the awesome information!
VineetGreat article, really enjoyed reading these facts & stats. I think WordPress is really doing great in its field.
AlvernThese WordPress statistics are totally amazing and almost unbelievable. To think that it only started in 2003 is even more interesting. I have experience using WordPress-org for over 10 years and I still enjoy it.
