Overview
Research on WordPress market position and ecosystem health as of January 2025-2026. WordPress is growing, not declining, maintaining dominant market share and a thriving ecosystem.
Market Share Status
Current Position (2024-2025)
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| All websites globally | 43-43.6% |
| CMS-only market share | 60-62.8% |
| Total sites powered | ~587 million |
| Daily new sites | ~661 |
| Monthly blog posts | 70 million |
Growth Trajectory
WordPress has experienced consistent and substantial growth:
- 2017: 27.3% market share
- 2025: 43.6% market share
- Growth: +16.3 percentage points over 8 years
The only dip was a minimal 0.1% decline in 2023, which recovered in 2024. This represents a healthy, stable market position.
Enterprise Adoption
- Top 10 million websites: 43% run WordPress
- Top 100,000 websites: 35% run WordPress
- Top 1,000 websites: 49.4% adoption (2025)
Competitive Landscape
WordPress maintains near-monopoly conditions in the CMS market:
| Platform | CMS Market Share |
|---|---|
| WordPress | 60-62.8% |
| Shopify | 6.5-7% |
| Wix | 4.4-5.9% |
| Squarespace | 3.1% |
WordPress is approximately 6-15x larger than its nearest competitor depending on measurement method.
Plugin Ecosystem
Growth Metrics (2024-2025)
- 60,000-65,000+ plugins available in directory
- 68% increase in approved plugins (2024-2025)
- 87% increase in new plugin submissions (2025)
- 2.1 billion projected plugin downloads
- AI-focused plugins showing exponential growth
Security Landscape
Security remains a challenge in the plugin ecosystem:
- 7,966 new vulnerabilities discovered in 2024
- 34% increase over 2023
- ~22 new vulnerabilities identified per day
- 96% of vulnerabilities occur in third-party plugins
- 4% in themes
- <1% in WordPress core
This concentration reflects ecosystem dependency on plugins rather than inherent platform weaknesses.
Theme Ecosystem
- Block themes crossed 1,000+ threshold
- 40% adoption rate for block themes
- Tens of thousands of traditional themes remain available
- Evolution toward modern development standards
WooCommerce & E-Commerce
WooCommerce dominates global e-commerce:
- Powers 8.9% of all websites
- Runs approximately 1/3 of all online shops globally
- Processes tens of billions in annual gross merchandise value
Enterprise Adoption
Major organizations using WordPress at scale:
Government & Institutions
- The White House
- NASA
- Princeton University
- Amnesty International
Media & Publishing
- Penske Media
- News Corp
- Al Jazeera
Enterprise
- Cox Automotive: 8 brand sites unified, 70-80% code reuse, 100% increase in lead conversions
- Standard Chartered: 150+ sites across 45 markets, up to 500 daily CMS users
- FleetNet America: Mission-critical fleet operations
- Macy’s
Technology Evolution
AI Integration
- AI becoming a primary development focus
- PHP AI Client SDK with vendor neutrality (avoids lock-in with OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)
- AI-influenced plugins represent growing category
API-First Architecture
- REST and GraphQL APIs for content distribution
- Enables content delivery beyond traditional websites:
- Mobile applications
- Progressive web apps
- Third-party platforms (Salesforce, HubSpot)
- AI agents
- Aligns with Gartner prediction: 70% of enterprises will abandon monolithic suites by 2026
Edge Computing
Leading hosts deploying with edge technologies:
- Cloudflare Workers
- Vercel Edge Functions
- Pushing personalization, A/B testing, security to network edge
- Reducing latency to milliseconds
Core Development
- WordPress 6.x powers 85% of all installations
- 900+ companies contributed to core development in 2023
- Gutenberg project continuing evolution
- Data Liberation project for content portability
- Abilities API for AI building blocks
Key Takeaways
WordPress Health Status: Strong
- Market share is growing, not declining
- Near-monopoly in CMS market (60%+)
- Strong enterprise adoption validated by White House, NASA migrations
- Thriving plugin ecosystem with accelerating growth
- Active modernization through AI, APIs, and edge computing
Main Challenges
- Plugin security - 96% of vulnerabilities in third-party plugins
- Security monitoring - 22 new vulnerabilities per day in ecosystem
- Plugin quality control - Rapid growth requires vigilance
Strategic Direction
- Building capabilities into core vs. plugin dependency
- Strengthening native SEO for AI-era search
- API-first for composable architecture
- Edge computing for performance at scale
Sources
- W3Techs CMS usage statistics
- WordPress.org official data
- State of Enterprise WordPress Survey 2025
- Gartner enterprise architecture predictions
- Industry analysis (January 2026)