In the past years, blogging is one of the most popular careers worldwide.
More people create personal blogs about their travel experiences, fitness journeys, cooking tips, and product reviews.
Aside from personal blogs, some businesses and companies create e-commerce websites and professional publications.
To create, design, and publish blogs, publications, and products to sell, they need a content management system (CMS) instead of manually coding their website from scratch.
The most popular and most-used CMS is WordPress.
More than 800 million websites use WordPress.
What Percentage of Websites are WordPress in 2025?
Approximately 835 million websites run under WordPress, equivalent to around 43% of websites worldwide in 2023.
Over 500 new sites are created every day using the free WordPress tool.
WordPress is popular since it is a user-friendly and highly versatile platform.
More than 60% of the fastest-growing firms and businesses in the United States are powered by WordPress.
Let’s take a look at the percentage of websites powered by WordPress from 2013 to 2022:
- WordPress powers 17.4% of websites on the internet in 2013
- WordPress powers 21% of websites on the internet in 2014
- WordPress powers 23.3% of websites on the internet in 2015
- WordPress powers 25.6% of websites on the internet in 2016
- WordPress powers 27.3% of websites on the internet in 2017
- WordPress powers 29.2% of websites on the internet in 2018
- WordPress powers 32.7% of websites on the internet in 2019
- WordPress powers 35.4% of websites on the internet in 2020
- WordPress powers 39.5% of websites on the internet in 2021
- WordPress powers 43.2% of websites on the internet in 2022
Here is the percentage of websites powered by WordPress compared to other open-source content management systems and website builders:
- 43.2% of websites on the internet use WordPress
- 4.1% of websites on the internet use Shopify
- 2.3% of websites on the internet use Wix
- 2% of websites on the internet use Squarespace
- 1.6% of websites on the internet use Joomla
- 1.2% of websites on the internet use Drupal
- 1.1% of websites on the internet use Adobe Systems
- 0.9% of websites on the internet use Google Systems
- 0.8% of websites on the internet use Bitrix4
- 0.6% of websites on the internet use Webflow
Percentage of Websites Using WordPress Versions
WordPress is releasing new features, maintenance, and security updates regularly to ensure efficiency in its system.
Users must update their WordPress to the latest version to improve protection and acquire performance enhancement.
According to W3Techs, 62% of all websites powered by WordPress used version 6, while less than 0.1% used version 2.
Below are the percentages of websites using different WordPress versions as of January 2023:
- 62.2% of websites powered by WordPress used version 6
- 30.6% of websites powered by WordPress used version 5
- 6.7% of websites powered by WordPress used version 4
- 0.4% of websites powered by WordPress used version 3
- Less than 0.1% of websites powered by WordPress used version 2
Percentage of Websites Using WordPress Plugin
WordPress plugins provide additional features and functionality or extension to the existing functionality of the website.
Some of the WordPress plugins are WooCommerce, Elementor, and WPBakery. WooCommerce is used by 20% of all websites using WordPress.
Here are the percentages of websites using various WordPress plugins as of January 2023, according to W3Techs:
- 20% of all websites using WordPress used WooCommerce
- 18.3% of all websites using WordPress used Elementor
- 13.6% of all websites using WordPress used WPBakery
- 1.1% of all websites using WordPress used Beaver Builder
- 0.8% of all websites using WordPress used 10Web Photo Gallery
- 0.7% of all websites using WordPress used NextGen Gallery
- 0.5% of all websites using WordPress used bbPress
- 0.4% of all websites using WordPress used BuddyPress
- 0.3% of all websites using WordPress used Oxygen
- 0.2% of all websites using WordPress used FooGallery
- 0.2% of all websites using WordPress used LearnPress
Popular Brands Using WordPress
Wondering if popular brands also use WordPress? Some big-name and popular brands, companies, and celebrities use WordPress to power their sites.
Here are some of the popular brands that use WordPress:
- Sony Music
- Playstation Blog
- TechCrunch
- Meta Newsroom
- Time Magazine
- CNN Press Room
- Disney Books
- The Rolling Stones
- Spotify Newsroom
- Hypebeast
- Wired
- Microsoft News
- Boing Boing
- Daybreaker
- Etsy Journal
- TED Blog
- Yelp Blog
- cPanel
- Vogue
- The White House
WordPress accounts for almost two-thirds of the CMS market.
It holds a market share of more than 64% in the content management system market on websites with a known CMS. Shopify comes next with more than 6%.
Below is a list of shares of open-source content management systems and website builders in the CMS market:
- WordPress accounts for a 64.2% market share in the content management system market
- Shopify accounts for a 6.2% market share in the content management system market
- Wix accounts for a 3.4% market share in the content management system market
- Squarespace accounts for a 3% market share in the content management system market
- Joomla accounts for a 2.5% market share in the content management system market
- Drupal accounts for a 1.8% market share in the content management system market
Conclusion
WordPress started as a blogging tool and became a leading open-source content management system worldwide with over 50,000 free plugins.
Millions of websites on the internet are powered by WordPress in 2023, equating to more than 40%.
This CMS allows users to create sites, upload images, moderate comments, manage content and even publish products easier and faster.