If you want to sell or buy something, the best way to do it is through the awesome power of the internet. You get to access more people, and you get to target the right kind of people with your offers.
This is where WooCommerce comes in – a powerful, yet versatile e-store tool. Following in WordPress’s footsteps, WooCommerce has made it easier than ever to turn your website into a commercial one.
But how big is the ecommerce platform?
We’ve gathered some WooCommerce stats to show you just that.
Here are some numbers to get you in the mood:
Amazing WooCommerce Facts:
- 4,414,537 live websites are currently using WooCommerce.
- WooCommerce is used by 7.4% of all websites.
- WooCommerce powers over 28.19% of all online stores.
- 22% of the top 1 million ecommerce sites use WooCommerce.
- 93.7% of all WordPress ecommerce websites use the WooCommerce plugin.
- WooCommerce is the most popular plugin/module on the entire internet – with 68% usage distribution.
- There are 1,321 WooCommerce themes on ThemeForest alone.
- There are 1,453 plugins for WooCommerce on WordPress.org alone.
If you think that’s impressive, wait until you see the rest.
But first, it may be a good idea to see what WooCommerce is exactly?
What Is WooCommerce and How It Works
WooCommerce is an open-source, fully customizable ecommerce platform for entrepreneurs worldwide (in the words of the developers themselves). It’s built on WordPress and is regularly audited by Sucuri.
What makes it so successful?
WooCommerce, by working on top of WordPress, successfully integrates commerce with content. You can create your site the way you want it, depending on the products you’re selling. On top of that, the platform tries to keep everything lean so you can add just the options you need.
Still, undeniably the best thing about WooCommerce is that it is entirely open-source. The user can modify anything and everything. You can add unlimited products and users, and take unlimited orders. All you need is a good WP hosting that supports the ecommerce activity and some experience with WooCommerce.
But how did it all begin?
The platform started as just another WordPress plugin in 2008. It was developed by a company called WooThemes. After a routine start, WooCommerce took off and experienced steady growth until 2015. In April that year, the platform reached 7 million downloads – which did not go unnoticed.
Instantly, the guys behind WordPress recognized the potential and made WooCommerce part of their family in May 2015. Since then, the plugin became one of the leading shopping cart apps with nearly 70 million downloads (to date), powering 28% of all online stores.
Alright, so let’s see how far the platform has come by looking at the WooCommerce stats for 2022.
WooCommerce Usage Statistics, 2022
Let’s hit it off with some raw numbers. They will make it immediately obvious why this platform is that big of a deal.
1. There are currently 4,414,537 live websites using WooCommerce.
(Source: BuiltWith)
And it’s not just about quantity. In the top one million sites, there are 61,311 sites using WooCommerce (or 6.13%), which is an increase since last year. Considering this is a highly targeted platform, mostly visited by users with buyer’s intent – 6.13% is actually a huge deal!
2. WooCommerce is used by 7.4% of all websites.
(Source: w3techs)
This is the percentage of websites using WooCommerce as of January 2021. In comparison, WordPress is used by 39.7% of all sites.
Back in 2018, 5.7% of all websites were using the plugin, and in 2019 just about 4.7%. As other WooCommerce statistics also suggest, the WordPress plugin is constantly growing.
3. WooCommerce has 82.5 million downloads (and counting).
(Source: WooCommerce)
As you can imagine, the number is constantly changing. There are over 82 million downloads in January 2021.
Even though WooCommerce is free, the number is still impressive. For 70 million businesses to decide to trust the plugin – there’s bound to be something to it.
4. WooCommerce powers over 29.35% of all online stores.
(Source: Datanyze)
According to 2021 statistics from Datanyze, WooCommerce is a clear-cut winner. The second-largest market share goes to Squarespace Online Stores with 21.15%, followed by Shopify with 12.69%.
Further analysis of the information in the Datanyze Universe, reveals that WooCommerce is number one because it currently supports 629,227 websites. Squarespace has 453,474, while Shopify falls behind with 272,146.
5. WooCommerce powers 22% of the top 1 million ecommerce sites.
(Source: BuiltWith)
The platform leads the way as the most popular choice among the top 1 million ecommerce sites. It’s ahead of both Shopify and Magento, with 18% and 13% respectively.
This is an especially good stat for the platform and speaks well of the WooCommerce market share. And it’s even more impressive considering that a lot of these 1 million ecommerce sites, generating the most traffic, have big budgets and probably rely on enterprise solutions. Whereas, WooCommerce and its mother platform WordPress are usually more popular with smaller sites.
Let’s see how this looks in numbers.
In the top 100,000 sites, the leader is Shopify with 21% and WooCommerce is third with 12%. In the top 10,000 sites, Shopify is again at the lead with 23% and WooCommerce shares 4th place with Oracle Commerce with 6%.
WooCommerce is shaping up to be an extremely popular option among smaller businesses. Companies with higher revenue tend to favor Shopify instead.
6. WooCommerce is the second-fastest-growing content management system (CMS).
(Source: w3techs)
330 sites that are powered by WooCommerce climb into the top 10 million every day. WordPress is the leader here with 984 daily additions.
WordPress, WooCommerce included, is still the most popular content management system by far – supporting 33% of all websites. That amounts to a WordPress market share of 60.6% among all CMSs. If you think the number couldn’t be more astounding, consider that Joomla, the second most popular CMS is trailing behind with a market share of only 5.1%.
7. 93.7% of all WordPress ecommerce websites use the WooCommerce plugin.
(Source: barn2)
When it comes to WordPress ecommerce plugins, WooCommerce is a clear winner. With more than 3.3 million sites using the subsystem, all competitors lag far behind.
So how many sites use those other WordPress plugins? We’ve already mentioned WooCommerce is used by 7.4% of all websites.
Even Ecwid, which is the second most popular WordPress ecommerce plugin, comes nowhere near WooCommerce. Ecwid supports a total of 122,062 live sites and powers only 0.09% of the top 1 million.
If we do a quick search about WP eCommerce (yet another ecommerce plugin), we’ll see it’s used by less than 0.1% of all sites and only 0.02% of the top 1 million.
WooCommerce vs the Competition
In order to get a real sense of how popular this plugin is, we must put it against the competitors.
8. With a 68% usage distribution, WooCommerce is the most popular plugin/module on the entire internet.
(Source: BuiltWith)
That’s right, we’re talking about the entire internet.
The second place is for the other big name in ecommerce plugins – Ecwid! With usage distribution of 17%, it lags far behind WooCommerce. Still, it’s gaining speed.
This plugin has experienced a huge rise in popularity recently – almost 100,000 more sites started using it over the past year – but it has a long way to go before it gets even close to the leader.
9. WooCommerce is used by 2.4 million more sites than Magento.
(Source: BuiltWith)
Magento is one of the biggest ecommerce platforms. As part of the Adobe Company, the platform has integrated all the useful Adobe tools and services – such as Adobe Experience Cloud. Magento handles over $100 billion in gross merchandise volume every year. Plus, there's a whole slew of hosting providers focused on the hosted version of Magento.
However, the platform is not as popular as you might think – that’s what Magento and WooCommerce stats are telling us. The former powers only 890,550 sites, compared to the astonishing 3,317,205 relying on the latter. If we look at the top 1 million sites on the entire internet, the advantage remains – 5.25% of websites are built using WooCommerce and only 1.5% using Magento.
Alright. Still, comparing all websites isn’t fair. After all, shopping sites have a much more specific audience. So who’s the winner among just ecommerce sites? This is where it gets tricky.
Usage distribution stats among the top 1 million ecommerce sites show that a clear winner within the group is WooCommerce, with 22% of that million. Magento is third with only 12%. However, among the top 100,000 sites, Magento is ahead of WooCommerce with 15% to 12% respectively.
Finally, among the top 10,000, Magento is second with 10%, while Woo falls to fourth with a 6% share.
10. Shopify is still the leader among all eCommerce sites with 27% distribution.
(Source: BuiltWith)
This is it – the big battle. WooCommerce vs Shopify in a showdown for the ecommerce world…
OK, that might be a little too much.
But it is a close call. According to BuiltWith, Shopify is a winner among ecommerce websites with 27% distribution, followed by WooCommerce with 24%.
However, in the top 1 million sites, WooCommerce is the leader with 29% and Shopify is second with 20%. And if we zoom even closer, we’ll see that Shopify regains the leader position by some distance. In the top 100,000, Shopify has 20%, while Woo falls second with 16%.
Finally, in the top 10,000, the difference is even greater. Shopify is a firm leader with 19%, while WooCommerce only has a 8% share.
All in all, there isn’t one way to look at it. Big enterprises and small businesses definitely have different preferences, though.
What Makes WooCommerce Stand out?
Let’s look at what is so special about WooCommerce’s interface. After all, there has to be a reason (or two) for why it is so widely popular.
11. There are 1,321 WooCommerce themes on ThemeForest alone in 2022.
(Source: barn2)
It’s almost impossible to find out how many themes out there include support and styling for WooCommerce. The е-commerce plugin has become that big in terms of size and influence.
However, we’ve collected the data from some of the more famous theme sites, just to give you an idea of the countless options users have. So, ThemeForest offers 1,321 WooCommerce-ready themes, WordPress Theme Directory currently has 1,453, and Mojo Themes has 212. Add to that the 14 themes offered on the WooCommerce website, and you get a total of 3,100 themes just from these four sources.
Many of the themes offer a different approach to inventory management, so there’s something for everyone.
12. Flatsome, the most popular WooCommerce theme on ThemeForest, has more than 180,000 sales in 2022.
(Source: ThemeForest)
The theme requires no additional coding and it’s ready to use. But what if you don’t want to pay for a theme?
There are many free options as well. Probably the most popular is Storefront – developed by the guys behind WooCommerce themselves. According to the platforms’ official site, their main free theme has been downloaded over 5.5 million times so far.
13. There are 980 plugins for WooCommerce on WordPress.org alone.
(Source: barn2)
You can find everything from simple payment integrations, over various marketing extensions, to complex membership plugins.
CodeCanyon goes even further – it sells 1,583. Granted, there is certainly a lot of overlap between the two. Still, there’s a hidden implication here that says a lot about the state of the platform.
Namely – that third parties are finding it profitable to develop plugins for WooCommerce.
The ecommerce platform has crossed a crucial threshold, where now other companies and developers are actively supporting its development.
14. Amazon Affiliates is the most popular WooCommerce plugin on CodeCanyon with more than 25,000 sales to date.
(Source: CodeCanyon)
The plugin allows you to easily sell any Amazon product as an affiliate. This is an enticing opportunity, considering the wide range of products Amazon offers (to put it mildly).
There are also many free plugins that are ready to use. On the WooCommerce site, the top 3 are Google Ads for WooCommerce, WooCommerce Bookings, and WooCommerse Membership.
15. WooCommerce’s GitHub repository has 1,069 contributors.
(Source: GitHub)
They have made 31,153 commits to date. Also, there are 158 dedicated branches and 348 releases.
That’s the beauty of open-source platforms – there’s always someone ready to help you out.
16. WooCommerce currently supports 65 languages.
(Source: wpbeginner)
Among others, they include 3 versions of Chinese (Mandarin, simplified and traditional versions for Hong Kong and Taiwan), 3 versions of Portuguese (from Angola, Brazil, and Portugal), 5 versions of Spanish (from Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain) and also Basque and Catalan.
In addition, WooCommerce is integrated with 140 region-specific gateways, including choices like Stripe, PayPal, Square, AmazonPay, ApplePay, and GooglePay.
What’s in Store for WooCommerce in 2022?
The platform is constantly changing and evolving. Let’s have a look at some of the most important numbers!
17. 419,458 is the all-time record for WooCommerce downloads in a single day.
(Source: WordPress.org)
According to WordPress’ WooCommerce reports page, it happened on April 17, 2019, and is the peak in a long-running trend of growth. In addition, the peak in active installations growth was on February 24, 2019, at 0.9%.
18. WooCommerce offers integration with more than 30 payment gateways for automatic recurring payments.
(Source: WooCommerce)
WooCommerce Subscriptions are one of the most popular extensions for the platform. It allows you to offer subscription-based products on your online store, which helps you capture recurring revenue. And with so many payment options, there’s something suitable for everyone.
19. Smart Coupons plugin is used by more than 15,000 sites.
(Source: WooCommerce)
The WooCommerce Smart Coupons plugin allows you to manage everything around coupons, credits, and gift certificates, which is an essential part of the marketing strategy for every business owner.
WooCommerce is constantly striving to provide flexible and easy ways for users to sell their products. Options like subscription-based products and offering discounts, as well as many others.
20. With more than 3,000 installations, Metorik is the most popular WooCommerce analytics and reporting plugin on WordPress.
(Source: WordPress.org)
Being able to analyze what’s happening on your ecommerce site gives you invaluable insights. That’s why there are a number of plugins to help you with that.
For example, Advanced WooCommerce Reporting has more than 3,500 sales on CodeCanyon. With so many plugins to choose from, it should be fairly easy to find one that fits your style.
21. WooCommerce powered sites generated between $10 and $15 billion in sales in 2018.
(Source: WPTavern)
In addition, WooCommerce revenue from the extensions for the platform is growing. Sales of additional plugins generated more than $30 million last year.
With the constantly growing number of ecommerce sites using WooCommerce, and with its increasing market share, the platform is definitely here to stay.
Conclusion
WooCommerce is one of the most successful WordPress plugins. It offers entrepreneurs the ability to easily open an online store and sell their products to anyone.
The platform is entirely open-source and constantly evolving. New themes and plugins for WooCommerce are coming to life every day, giving shop owners new ways to increase their profits.
All of this adds up to a strong presence in the market and bright prospects for the future of the platform.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these WooCommerce stats!
Sources
Unaware that life beyond the internet exists, Nick is poking servers and control panels, playing with WordPress add-ons, and helping people get the hosting that suits them.