{"id":6078,"date":"2021-06-01T12:07:26","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T11:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/?p=6078"},"modified":"2022-06-08T07:39:35","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T06:39:35","slug":"popular-wordpress-plugins-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/popular-wordpress-plugins-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Most popular WordPress plugins: 2021 stats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WordPress would be very different without its vast library of plugins. There have been over 1.5 billion downloads of them! But which are the most popular?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being a WordPress hosting<\/a> company, we\u2019re in the privileged position of being to able to check our servers and see how many downloads each plugin has had. So I thought it would be interesting to see which plugins were the most popular with our customers, then compare it with the official WordPress figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sites hosted at 20i cover all the uses of WordPress: blogs to businesses and more. So it\u2019s a decent sample from which we can extrapolate the most popular plugins:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t
Position<\/th>Plugin<\/th>Percentage of 20i users with Plugin Installed<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
1<\/td>StackCache*<\/td>99%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>Contact Form 7<\/td>33%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>Yoast SEO<\/td>30%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>Classic Editor<\/td>25%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>Elementor Website Builder<\/td>24%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>WooCommerce<\/td>20%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/td>Really Simple SSL<\/td>19%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/td>Akismet Spam Protection<\/td>18%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
9<\/td>Slider Revolution<\/td>18%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
10<\/td>All-in-One WP Migration<\/td>16%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
11<\/td>Visual Composer<\/td>15%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
12<\/td>Wordfence Security<\/td>13%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
13<\/td>Elementor Pro<\/td>12%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
14<\/td>Jetpack<\/td>11%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
15<\/td>UpdraftPlus Backup Plugin<\/td>9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
16<\/td>WPForms<\/td>9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
17<\/td>Duplicator - WP Migration<\/td>8%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
18<\/td>Duplicate Page<\/td>8%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
19<\/td>Yoast Duplicate Post<\/td>7%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
20<\/td>Smush<\/td>7%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n

Note: these figures only cover installations, not active installations, unlike those on WordPress.org. For example, while users might have used a migration tool to move to us, it may not be currently active for them, but they haven\u2019t deleted it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*StackCache<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The obvious outlier here is StackCache: this won\u2019t be as popular as it seems in the global WordPress user base: it\u2019s a plugin that\u2019s only available exclusively through 20i. That\u2019s why so many are using it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

StackCache is an edge-caching plugin. It speeds up your pages by serving your page from the network \u2018edge\u2019 on fast caching servers. Once someone has visited the page, it will load faster for subsequent visitors. It works alongside our free global CDN<\/a> to ensure that you get the fastest website loading times. If you\u2019re not with 20i, you won\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most popular at 20i<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Out of the others, what\u2019s popular makes sense to me: contact forms, SEO, site building tools, ecommerce, security and so on. They\u2019re all the kind of \u2018universal\u2019 tools that might be used for any kind of site. It’s understandable that they have so many downloads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A massive 1 in 3 20i customers use Contact Form 7, while Yoast, Classic Editor and Elementor are all very popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparing them with popular plugins from WordPress<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You can see which plugins are the most popular globally by visiting WordPress.org<\/a> or filtering by the \u2018Popular\u2019 tab in WordPress admin. Here\u2019s their results:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t
Position<\/th>Plugin<\/th>Active Installations*<\/th>Number of reviews<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
1<\/td>Yoast SEO<\/td>5000000<\/td>27340<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>Really Simple SSL<\/td>5000000<\/td>6935<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>Jetpack<\/td>5000000<\/td>6876<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>Elementor Website Builder<\/td>5000000<\/td>5761<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>WooCommerce<\/td>5000000<\/td>3722<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>Contact Form 7<\/td>5000000<\/td>1889<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/td>Classic Editor<\/td>5000000<\/td>955<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/td>Akismet Spam Protection<\/td>5000000<\/td>905<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
9<\/td>WPForms<\/td>4000000<\/td>9012<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
10<\/td>Wordfence Security<\/td>4000000<\/td>3692<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
11<\/td>WordPress Importer<\/td>4000000<\/td>294<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
12<\/td>All-in-One WP Migration<\/td>3000000<\/td>6663<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
13<\/td>UpdraftPlus Backup Plugin<\/td>3000000<\/td>4878<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
14<\/td>MonsterInsights<\/td>3000000<\/td>2315<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
15<\/td>Yoast Duplicate Post<\/td>3000000<\/td>487<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
16<\/td>WP Mail SMPTP<\/td>2000000<\/td>2071<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
17<\/td>All In One SEO<\/td>2000000<\/td>1553<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
18<\/td>XML Sitemaps<\/td>2000000<\/td>2118<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
19<\/td>WP Mail SMPTP<\/td>2000000<\/td>2071<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
20<\/td>WP Super Cache<\/td>2000000<\/td>1267<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not like comparing apples to apples: as noted above, these cover active installations. So they don’t cover plugins that you may have deactivated in the WordPress-admin menu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Wondering why so many seem to have the same numbers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t get exact figures from WordPress: active installations are rounded to the nearest significant digit. So many of the top performers are \u20185 million+\u2019 installations and so on. I\u2019ve ranked those with more reviews higher, if they have the same reported number of installations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently WordPress do have more accurate figures, but choose not to share them. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if they did this to avoid it becoming too competitive. They don\u2019t want to encourage the \u201chire us to give you 1000 active installations a day for $100\u201d people!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The active installation figures come from when plugins \u2018ping\u2019 the servers to check whether they need updating. When you go in to the WordPress dashboard, your active installations make this check.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interesting differences<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The top 10 installed plugins at 20i are very similar to those at reported at WordPress. In this group, the variances can be explained by the WordPress figures not being exact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s later, from position 10 onwards where the differences become more pronounced. Here’s some highlights:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slider Revolution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Despite its name, this plugin that\u2019s popular at 20i isn\u2019t just used for creating sliders. Like Elementor, it\u2019s a complete site creation solution, with a particular focus on modern effects like animation and video. So it\u2019s popularity may be due in part to the demographics of our users – lots of web designers, and other creatives – who want to create modern-looking, very visual websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn’t reported on WordPress.org as it\u2019s not available from there. It\u2019s the same with other paid plugins, like Elementor Pro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jetpack<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This plugin is used to speed up websites, primarily. Due to the various speed-boosting technologies on the 20i platform<\/a> – like StackCache, optimised PHP, the CDN and Web Acceleration Suite – there\u2019s less need to use it. So it\u2019s less popular with our customers than globally. It also has security features, which are worth looking at if you’re not using 20i secure web hosting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

XML sitemaps<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

XML sitemaps have been available in WordPress core since version 5.5 \u2013 so it\u2019s good to see that our customers are on the ball and have removed the plugin, if they don\u2019t need it. It could also be because other popular plugins like Yoast provide them too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Updraft plus<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A bit of a strange one, this. I\u2019m not sure why this is so popular with our customers when automatic and manual backups are included with our all our WordPress hosting plans<\/a>. Perhaps it\u2019s just something people are familiar with, even though they don\u2019t need it \ud83d\ude42 ? Let me know if you know why!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WordPress plugin download stats<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

WordPress also offer a different set of information: download stats. These are separate figures from the number of active installations, reported above. You can get to these by going to the plugin\u2019s page on WordPress.org, and clicking \u2018Advanced View\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"WordPress<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The number of ‘downloads’ is a bit misleading, as this includes updates. So that plugin that seems to need updating every time you enter the dashboard (you know the one\u2026), will have many more \u2018downloads\u2019 than one that doesn\u2019t need to be updated so often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can see this clearly with example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018spikes\u2019 in this chart aren\u2019t the result of a sudden surge in popularity. It will be to do with updates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So while these stats are useful \u2013 especially for plugin developers – they aren\u2019t the best measures of popularity. A plugin with lots of downloads might only have a handful of active installations. It might just update a lot!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, they are worth looking at. In the example above, the fact that almost 1.5 million updates were made in one spike in May shows that this plugin has a lot of users. While overall, it appears to have had 181 million downloads. Just note that these ‘download’ figures are not unique downloads of the plugin; it includes updates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Popular \u2260 good<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Like most things in life, popularity isn\u2019t always a guarantee of quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may be true that a really poor plugin is unlikely to have a huge amount of active installations. But that doesn\u2019t mean that a plugin with a small number of installations is \u2018bad\u2019 in any way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may only have a niche use case. Or it could be new and relatively unknown, but still a functional, worthwhile package. It might be more suitable for the way you want to use it than one of the more popular ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So don\u2019t feel like you shouldn\u2019t download a plugin just because it\u2019s not popular. If you ever have any doubts about a plugin, it\u2019s worth checking its reviews and doing a Google search on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hidden gems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The really popular plugins have a kind of inertia: they\u2019re really popular, so people assume they\u2019re good – and to be fair, they often are! You only stay popular for a long time if you have a decent product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are many good alternative plugins available<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we\u2019d recommend experimenting with different ones. If everyone only installed the most popular plugins then there would never be any innovation. No new plugins would be developed and without competition, the popular plugin makers wouldn\u2019t feel the need to improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So while it\u2019s interesting to look at what\u2019s popular, you should try to find the time to experiment with alternatives: you might find a hidden gem!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you found a \u2018hidden gem\u2019 plugin for your WordPress website? Or do you have any opinion on the stats above? Let us know below.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A deep-dive into the most popular WordPress plugins, using global figures from WordPress and comparing them to local figures from 20i.","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51,60],"tags":[92,76],"class_list":{"0":"post-6078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"category-web-design-dev","9":"tag-self-hosted-apps","10":"tag-wordpress","11":"cs-entry"},"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Popular-plugins-WordPress.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Richard Chambers","author_link":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/author\/richardchambers\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6078"}],"version-history":[{"count":54,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8615,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6078\/revisions\/8615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}