2025’s Must-Know WordPress Statistics

What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you come across the word “WordPress”? As a content creator in the web hosting industry, I hear it… maybe 10 times a day (I’m dead serious)!

To me, it’s synonymous with “websites”. I know what you’re thinking: “He just gave the most obvious answer.”

Well, you’re right. After all, approximately 43% of all websites on the internet use the content management system (CMS).¹ In other words, WordPress is the go-to solution for around 522 million websites.² Let that sink in.

I can bet 10 dollars you’re intrigued — let’s explore some more WordPress statistics, shall we?

For starters, do you know what a CMS is? We both love food (consider it an educated guess), so let’s take a food blog as an example.

If you plan on launching the next five-star food blog, you’ll need a solid CMS to help you design it, add or update content, and streamline all website management tasks. You know where I’m going with this — WordPress is the most obvious choice.

And why not? It’s open-source, versatile, customizable, and boasts a pretty impressive user interface. But I have to admit, the fact that about 522 million websites use WordPress is astonishing.^1,2 Phew.

I had a great time curating this WordPress statistic. Several sources claim between 500 and 1,000 new WordPress websites are produced daily, but I don’t believe them — the math doesn’t check out.

I mean, more than 250,000 new websites are created every day, and since WordPress powers around 43.5% of all existing websites, are they seriously trying to tell me just 0.3% of them use WordPress?

Na.

This is the first time someone has accurately published this stat: approximately 108,000 new WordPress websites are built each day.^1,2 Now, that sounds right.

The latest version of WordPress alone, WordPress 6.8, has nearly 11 million downloads; more than the population of Washington!^3,4 Mind you, it was released on April 15, 2025 — that’s not too long ago.

If you’re new to website hosting, you don’t want to miss out on the goodies WordPress 6.8 packs — it’s simpler to manage, more secure, and most importantly, faster (speed sells in the web hosting business).

At HostingAdvice.com, we are one download in a sea of millions.

Now that you have a couple of quick-fire stats to impress your friends at work (or at the bar), let’s move on to more in-depth information. You already know WordPress is the OG CMS. But wait until you really see the numbers: it controls more than 61% of the CMS market share!

To put it into perspective, Shopify, the world’s second most popular CMS, holds a market share of just 6.7%. Wix takes the third spot with a market share of 5.2%.⁵ Dominance.

When Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg launched WordPress in 2003, they wouldn’t have imagined WordPress to become the juggernaut it is in their wildest dreams — approximately $1.7 billion in annual revenue is just insane!⁶

Now, I want you to put your thinking cap on: since WordPress has a hand in around 522 million websites, can you imagine the revenue it drives in the global economy? It’s more than $397 billion! If it were a company, it’d be the 10th largest worldwide.⁷

If you visit a website that is among the top one million in terms of traffic received, chances are it’s a WordPress website — more than one-third of these websites use WordPress.⁸

If you want to check whether a site is built on WordPress, all you have to do is type the website’s URL into the address bar with the extension /wp-admin.

If the site uses WordPress, you’ll be presented with the login screen. If it doesn’t, you’ll get a 404 error message.

Can you guess the five “biggest” websites that use WordPress? I’ll give you one brownie point for each right answer:

1. uol.com.br (with more than 260 million monthly visitors!).⁹
2. tumblr.com.
3. wordpress.com (no surprises here!).
4. nypost.com.
5. byjus.com.

If you got zero points, don’t sweat it — we’re in the same boat!

I’m not a party pooper, but before we proceed further, it’s my duty to make you aware that around 13,000 WordPress websites are hacked each day.⁸ One of the most common reasons for these hacks is setting up an easy-to-crack password for your admin account.

If you’re someone who still uses passwords like “12345678” or “abcdefgh,” please step up your game. Otherwise, be prepared to face the wrath of hackers — they use sophisticated techniques and are ready to pounce at the slightest mistake.

Just to give you a glimpse of their devious nature, in April 2025, WooCommerce admins were targeted with fake security patches via email — be on your toes at all times.¹⁰

Do you remember the good old days when WordPress was all about blogging? One of my English teachers in high school had a WordPress blog where he used to publish his life stories.

He narrated a few of them during class hours, and boy, were they interesting! Gone are those days — WordPress is now a full-fledged content management system.

The CMS goliath is still a favorite among bloggers. If you’re a content creator, this WordPress statistic is right up your alley: More than 8.5 billion WordPress posts are published each year. That equates to roughly 23.3 million posts per day.¹¹ Not bad!

Since 522 million websites use WordPress and the United States is the country with the most WordPress websites, I expected there to be many, many more active WordPress sites in the country than ~3.7 million!¹¹

The reality is, a large portion of the 500-odd million aren’t active — so, yeah, 3.7 million websites isn’t all that bad.

If I go through your Google search history, will I be scarred for life? I hope not. Well, if you’ve Googled “WordPress” in the recent past, you’re not alone — “WordPress” is Googled approximately 2.9 million times every month.¹²

Now that you know WordPress is quite literally the talk of the town, let’s dive into some stats that will help you build your WordPress website. Do you know what a WordPress theme is?

WordPress themes provide the “look and feel” of your website. When you’re building your website, you can choose one from the 13,000 free theme options in the WordPress Themes Directory and modify it to your liking.

If you’re feeling extra special, you can also buy a premium theme (you’re worth it) — WordPress offers more than 25,000 themes in total. This includes third-party themes from marketplaces like ThemeForest.^13,14

If you aren’t fluent in English or want to curate a website that caters to an audience that speaks a different language (like Spanish), you’ll be delighted to know WordPress supports 208 languages at the time of writing.¹⁴

This means someone from basically any background can use WordPress. Talk about promoting inclusivity! Don’t worry — audiences from around the world can still access your website through official WordPress translations.

You may be wondering what the connection is between WordPress versions and music. Since 2003, WordPress has launched 52 major versions — the latest being WordPress 6.8 — and 760 versions in total.¹⁴ Now, here comes the fun part: each major version is named in honor of a jazz musician!

Version 6.8, for example, honors Cecil Taylor. I wonder when WordPress will name a version in honor of Louis Armstrong. He’s arguably the greatest jazz musician of all time!

A plugin is a software add-on for WordPress that you can use to add new features to your website at the click of a button.

For example, you could add customizations like a hamburger menu (a food blog is incomplete without some burger talk!), customizable contact forms (you should explore customer retention options), and a social media sharing button without having to manually code them.

Plugins are crucial pieces of the puzzle, and you need them to dazzle website visitors. While you can code from scratch, why bother when you have more than 59,000 free plugins to choose from?¹⁵

The next three stats may seem repetitive, but I need to tell you more about Yoast SEO, Elementor, and WPForms.

Bear with me a minute. Yoast SEO is your one-stop shop for search engine optimization.

The plugin has helped more than 10 million people optimize their content to achieve the best results — you should join the bandwagon!¹⁵ You can choose to use the free version or pay a (reasonable) yearly fee for the premium plan. I recommend starting with the free version and upgrading to a paid plan later.

Dubbed the “Swiss army knife” of plugins (high praise indeed), Elementor is a drag-and-drop site builder that’ll help you craft your website in no time — and it won’t disappoint.

The plugin provides you with hundreds of custom theme options, widgets, WooCommerce integration (great news if you’re in the eCommerce business), and much-needed security features.

In other words, it’ll allow you to consolidate your website’s design and management functionality into one plugin. No wonder more than 10 million WordPress users swear by it!¹⁵

WPForms isn’t quite in the “10 million” club, but with more than six million active downloads, it is hands down the best form generator plugin for WordPress.¹⁵

Your customers are entitled to the best service, and if you offer them that, you deserve to retain them. With WPForms, you can create customized, aesthetic contact forms — they’re key for customer engagement.

WordPress makes it incredibly easy to install plugins. To activate these three plugins, go to your WordPress dashboard and select the “Plugins” option. Click “Add New” and search for them one by one. Click the “Activate” button for each, and you’re all set!

If you ever question the purpose of your existence on a lazy Sunday afternoon (let’s face it, we’ve all been there), spare a thought for the Hello Dolly plugin, a “worthless” plugin that has more than 700,000 active installations!¹⁵

I may be acting harsh, but let’s face it: what good could a plugin that displays random lyrics from the 1969 romance musical “Hello, Dolly!” on your WordPress dashboard do?

I might just create a plugin that randomly displays inspirational quotes on my dashboard. Considering how long my workdays have been recently, I could do with some inspiration! I think I’ll name it WP Quotes. Would you install it?

Divi is by far the most popular WordPress theme — it’s the “divine” choice for more than 3.8 million website owners.¹⁶

However, my advice is to avoid it. While it’s obviously sought-after and you can tinker with it, choose another vibrant theme that matches the context of your brand and adds a unique flavor to the internet.

Let’s assume you’re ready to craft your first blog post in WordPress. Do you know where it is stored? I mean, you can see it on your dashboard, of course, but the CMS stores it in a database connected to your website.

When a visitor searches for the latest posts on your blog, WordPress automatically goes into your database to retrieve recent blog posts and display them to your users.

MySQL is the most popular database system for WordPress users, and one you should consider — around 29.65% of WordPress website users prefer MySQL.¹⁷

If you want to launch a small business website powered by WordPress, be prepared to shell out a minimum of $75 upfront and $300 to $700 in ongoing costs per year.

Don’t be alarmed, as these amounts cover your domain name, web hosting, WordPress themes and plugins (paid versions, of course), and website security and maintenance fees — good things aren’t available for free.

The larger your business, the more you’ll likely have to pay. For example, a large-scale business may have to spend $5,000 to $15,000 in ongoing costs annually!¹⁸

Enough serious talk — let’s wrap things up with a WordPress stat related to music! If you’re a Taylor Swift fan — AKA a “Swiftie” — you’ll be thrilled to learn her website, TaylorSwift.com, uses WordPress too!

I visited the website and I like the minimalistic look — she wants her products to do the talking (they definitely do!).

Her website received 1.5 million visits in March 2025 and has a bounce rate of 41% (that’s decent for a celebrity website).¹⁹

What’s your favorite Taylor Swift song? I haven’t heard much of her music, but I do enjoy listening to “Fortnight” occasionally.

I’m all about the good things in life, like pizza, donuts, and these WordPress statistics! I hope these tidbits have left you hungry for more knowledge.

If you’re curious to learn more about WordPress and how to build a website with it, look at our how-to guides and WordPress hosting reviews.

Go on, my friend — use WordPress to create the best website you can!

1. https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress
2. https://siteefy.com/how-many-websites-are-there
3. https://wordpress.org/download/counter
4. https://worldpopulationreview.com/states
5. https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management
6. https://zetamatic.com/blog/2025/01/how-much-revenue-does-wordpress-generate
7. https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies
8. https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/statistics/wordpress-statistics
9. https://www.datafragment.com/technologies/cms/wordpress
10. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/woocommerce-admins-targeted-by-fake-security-patches-that-hijack-sites
11. https://instawp.com/50-wordpress-statistics-you-should-know
12. https://www.weshare.net/statistics/wordpress-statistics
13. https://wordpress.org/themes
14. https://colorlib.com/wp/wordpress-statistics
15. https://wordpress.com/blog/2025/04/17/wordpress-market-share
16. https://wordpress.org/plugins
17. https://bloggingwizard.com/wordpress-statistics
18. https://www.webfx.com/web-design/pricing/wordpress-cost
19. https://www.similarweb.com/website/taylorswift.com