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As you probably know, WordPress actually supports nearly half of all websites on the Internet. But I thought it would be interesting to dig a little deeper into the trends that are impacting the WordPress community.

WordPress usage remains dominant and stable

Since its inception in 2003, the number of WordPress users has continued to grow:

Experienced WordPress consultants may remember that Drupal and Joomla used to be big favorites and dominated a large part of the market, but things are different now.

Since peaking in about 2015, use of both has declined considerably:

Outdated software is still heavily used in the WP community

As we'll see next, because many servers have outdated versions of PHP, three out of every four WordPress sites may be a security risk.

Also, while nearly 20% WordPress sites are still using very old versions, there's good news: these older versions of WordPress will still be updated to fix security issues.

Outdated versions of WordPress installations

Because WordPress has such a large user base, there will always be people who for some reason are unwilling or unable to update their technical systems.

Currently, about 5% WordPress sites are still using the old 4.x version, which means that roughly 1.7 million sites around the world are still stuck on this version. And this version was last released in 2017.

There are also about 13% WordPress sites using version 5.x, which was last updated in January 2022.

Overall, at least 18% WordPress sites have not been upgraded to the latest 6.x version.

Outdated PHP versions

Approximately 75% of WordPress websites use a version of PHP that is no longer supported. If your site is still using PHP 8.0 or older, this means that the PHP you are using is "out of date" and may not receive security updates.

jQuery still high

Why wouldn't anyone like jQuery? It makes it easy to code beautiful animations and other effects, and you don't need to know JavaScript completely.

It's not quite clear whether jQuery is widely used because of technical indebtedness or because of new code additions, but one thing is for sure, jQuery is one of the most used tools in WordPress.

React usage on the top 1 million sites has risen

Since the launch of the Gutenberg editor in 2018, the use of React as a program library has increased considerably (just as an example: Gutenberg's modules are required to use React).

WordPress competitors are rocking

You've probably heard of the two main competitors to WordPress, Squarespace and Wix. in fact, they're both doing pretty well.

Squarespace is on the rise (mostly):

Recently, the HubSpot web builder has seen a decrease in usage, but it still holds a large portion of the market.

What about e-commerce?

WooCommerce and Shopify are competing to be the most popular e-commerce platforms.

According to BuiltWith.com, there are about 2.75 million websites using WooCommerce's payment pages, but it's worth noting that there are still a lot of WooCommerce sites that may not have a standard payment process in place or may not have a payment feature set up at all.

On the other hand, Shopify also has about 2.75 million websites that use its platform.

While Shopify's usage has been high, it has declined since 2022.

WooCommerce eCommerce trends are similar to Shopify:

Mailchimp has fallen, Zoho Mail and Google Business are rising

Mailchimp's declining usage seems to coincide with its acquisition by Intuit in 2021:

At the same time, Zoho Mail continues to surprise users with its low-cost and high-functionality business solution (you can think of Zoho as an "affordable version" of Google Business).

The use of Zoho Mail is increasing:

Meanwhile, traditional options aren't lagging behind.Google Apps for Business is becoming more popular:

How's our old friend PHP doing?

Although the use of PHP has greatly diminished over the past six years, it still supports about 35 million websites, most of which are probably WordPress.

About the data

I have gathered this information from credible sources on the Internet and have provided links to the sources. However, like all data, this information may not be completely accurate or may not cover all situations.

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