When you are thinking about building a new website, one name you will hear very often is WordPress. Whether you want to start a personal blog, launch a website for your business, or create an online store, you might naturally wonder: Just how popular is WordPress, really?
This article will look at the latest numbers for early 2025, compare WordPress to other website platforms, and explain what its popularity means for you if you are considering using it.
What Percentage of the Internet Uses WordPress Today?
According to recent data from sources like W3Techs (a company that regularly scans millions of websites to see what technologies they use), WordPress is used by about 43% of all websites on the internet. This impressive number includes all kinds of websites – those that use a known content management system (CMS) and even those that don’t.
When you look only at websites that are built using a known CMS, WordPress has an even bigger share of the market. It powers over 63% of all websites that use a CMS. To put it simply, this means that more than 6 out of every 10 websites built with a content management system choose to use WordPress.
These statistics are usually updated frequently by these survey sites and are based on analyzing a huge number of live websites from across the entire internet.
How WordPress Compares to Other CMS Platforms
WordPress is far ahead of its competitors in the CMS market. Here’s a general idea of how its market share compares to some other well-known CMS platforms (based on recent data for all websites):
|
Platform |
Estimated Market Share (All Websites) |
Estimated Market Share (CMS Market Only) |
| WordPress | ~43% | ~63-64% |
| Shopify | ~4-6% | ~6-7% |
| Wix | ~2-3% | ~3-4% |
| Squarespace | ~2% | ~3% |
| Joomla | ~1-2% | ~2-3% |
| Drupal | ~1% | ~1-2% |
As you can see, WordPress’s share of all websites is significantly larger than the next most popular CMS platforms like Shopify or Wix. Its dominance in the CMS-specific market is even more pronounced.
Why Do So Many Websites Use WordPress?
There are many good reasons why so many people, businesses, and organizations around the world choose WordPress for their websites:
- It’s Free and Open-Source: The basic WordPress software is completely free for anyone to download, use, and modify as they wish. This means you can start building your website without paying any initial fee for the platform itself.
- Very Flexible for Any Project: You can use WordPress to create almost any type of website you can imagine. This includes personal blogs, professional business sites, online portfolios to showcase your work, community forums, membership sites, and even large online stores (e-commerce sites).
- Thousands of Plugins to Add Features: Plugins are like apps for your website. There are tens of thousands of WordPress plugins available (many are free, and some are paid) that let you add new features and functions to your site easily, often without needing to write any code. For example, you can add contact forms, tools to help with search engine optimization (SEO), extra security features, image galleries, social media feeds, and much more.
- Countless Themes for Design and Layout: WordPress uses “themes” to control the overall look, feel, and layout of your website. You can find an enormous number of themes, ranging from simple and clean designs to very complex and feature-rich layouts. This makes it easy for you to find a design that fits your specific needs and brand.
- Large and Helpful Community Support: Because so many people use WordPress, there is a huge and active global community. This means if you have a question or run into a problem, you can easily find help through online forums, watch countless video tutorials, read helpful blog posts, and get support from other users and professional developers.
- Regular Updates for Security and Performance: WordPress is actively developed and updated by a large community of contributors. These updates often include important improvements to security, new features, and better performance, helping to keep your website safe, modern, and running smoothly.
- User-Friendly (Even for Beginners): While WordPress is a very powerful platform, you don’t necessarily need to know how to code to build or manage a website with it. Many themes and popular “page builder” plugins offer drag-and-drop interfaces, making it much easier for beginners to create and update their own websites.
What This Popularity Means for You (New Users or Businesses)
If you are a new user or a business thinking about using WordPress for your website, its widespread popularity brings you some very real advantages:
- Lots of Help and Learning Resources Are Available: Because so many people use WordPress, it’s very easy for you to find online tutorials, helpful articles, and step-by-step videos if you want to learn how to do something specific. If you need professional help, there are many WordPress developers, designers, and agencies available for hire around the world.
- More Choices for Features and Design: The vast number of available plugins and themes means you have an incredibly wide range of choices to add almost any feature you can think of and to customize your site’s look exactly how you want it. Popular plugins and themes are also often well-supported by their developers and regularly updated.
- Focus on Better Security and Performance: As a platform used by millions of websites, the WordPress core development team and the wider community place a heavy emphasis on security and performance. You directly benefit from these ongoing efforts and regular updates that help protect your site from threats and ensure it loads quickly for your visitors.
- Long-Term Reliability and Stability: WordPress has been around since 2003 and continues to grow in popularity and capability each year. This means it’s a very stable and mature platform that is extremely unlikely to disappear or become unsupported anytime soon. You can trust it as a solid foundation for your online presence for the long term.
Final Thoughts
With approximately 43% of all websites on the entire internet running on WordPress, and over 63% of sites using a CMS choosing it, it’s clear that a huge number of people and organizations around the world trust this platform. This overwhelming popularity is a strong signal of its flexibility, power, ease of use, and long-term reliability.
Whether you are just starting with a small personal blog or planning a large, complex website for your growing business, WordPress is one of the most dependable and well-supported choices you can make online today.
So, if you are thinking about building a new website, remember that WordPress is not just a popular option; it’s a platform that has truly proven itself over many years and continues to lead the way.
Are you surprised by how many websites use WordPress? Or are you one of the millions already using it? Share your thoughts or questions in the comments below!