Last month, we analyzed 15,000 stores to get a clearer picture of how WooCommerce sites evolve over time. We looked at things like store lifespan, page speed, and whether stores are adopting block-based features.
Now, we’ve done something similar!
This time, we analyzed 5,000 WooCommerce stores to learn more about the plugins they run. With more than 60,000 free plugins available, it’s easy to install just about anything — but that can also lead to unnecessary bloat and performance issues.
We wanted to see whether the average WooCommerce store stays lean and healthy, how much they spend on plugins, and which plugins store owners rely on most. This article is a summary of our findings.
About the data
For this post, we analyzed 13,232 active plugins used across 5,000 WooCommerce stores. We grouped them into 9 different categories, so we could ultimately split between free and paid plugins.
To keep the data as accurate as possible, we removed staging, test, and development sites, as well as duplicate TLDs (for example, stores with both a .com and .de domain) to avoid counting the same store multiple times.
Plugin distribution
Let’s dive in with some numbers!
- On average, stores have 30 active plugins.
- They use 21 free plugins, 7 paid plugins, and 2 other plugins (usually companion plugins for themes, hosting, or external services).
- The highest number of active plugins we found on a single store was 110.
- Active plugin distribution:
- 2.7% (or 134 sites) use less than 10 plugins.
- 37.3% (or 1,866 sites) use between 10-25 plugins.
- 51.8% (or 2,590 sites) use between 25-50 plugins.
- 7.6% (or 380 sites) use between 50-75 plugins.
- 0.56% (or 28 sites) use 75+ plugins. Two stores use 100+ plugins.
Having 50+ plugins isn’t a problem when they’re well-coded and careful about the features they introduce, but as a general rule, less is more. You should always strive to install as little plugins as possible.
We firmly believe in prioritizing performance over anything else when choosing which plugins to install. That’s why we test our plugin against the competition and make sure they come out on top.
The most popular plugins
Here are the top 10 most popular plugins (free and paid versions have been grouped together):
- Elementor runs on 49.3% of the sites. The paid version is used on 37.2% of the sites.
- Yoast SEO runs on 39.6% of the sites.
- WP Mail SMTP runs on 35.1% of the sites.
- Code Snippets runs on 29.1% of the sites.
- Advanced Custom Fields (free or paid) runs on 28.8% of the sites. This is the only freemium plugin where the paid version runs on more sites than the free version, which is not surprising considering the value it offers!
- The WooCommerce Update Manager runs on 27.4% of the sites.
- Google Site Kit runs on 27.3% of the sites.
- Contact Form 7 runs on 27.2% of the sites.
- Google for WooCommerce runs on 23.5% of the sites.
- WooCommerce PayPal Payments runs on 23.1% of the sites.
Despite thousands of available plugins, a relatively small set dominates usage. That suggests a strong “default stack” exists in WordPress.
Should Code Snippets be in the top 5? Using a plugin to add code feels like a security risk (and a small performance hit). You can just as easily add the code to your theme’s functions.php file.
Elementor has a massive market share and might have been responsible for WordPress’ growth at one point, so it’s no surprise that half of the tested sites rely on it. That share will shrink as Full Site Editing (FSE) matures and more themes support it. While we can’t compare it to a full page builder yet, it’s certainly the fastest!
Popular WooCommerce plugins
Let’s take a look at WooCommerce-specific plugins (aside from the Update Manager):
- Google For WooCommerce runs on 23.5% of the sites.
- WooCommerce PayPal Payments runs on 23.1% of the sites.
- Stripe is used by 22.7% of the sites.
- WooPayments runs on 21.4% of the sites.
- PDF Invoices & Packing Slips runs on 20.1% of the sites.
- WooCommerce Tax runs on 16.3% of the websites.
- Google Site Kit runs on 27.3% of the sites.
- Contact Form 7 runs on 27.2% of the sites.
- Google for WooCommerce runs on 23.5% of the sites.
- WooCommerce PayPal Payments runs on 23.1% of the sites.
Most of these plugins are free, except for 3 freemium plugins that still offer generous free versions.
Only 3.6% (183 sites) sell subscriptions, which is less than I expected.
Plugin costs
With some quick napkin math, we can (roughly) estimate what the total plugin costs are to run a small-to-medium sized WooCommerce store.
We analyzed the WooCommerce marketplace to determine the average price of paid plugins. Across 1,166 paid entries, the average cost of a plugin is $65.2 USD per year.
Many of these plugins have no adoption. When focusing only on the top 150 most popular plugins of the marketplace, the average price increases to $88.73 USD per year.
Plugins listed on the WooCommerce marketplace tend to be more expensive than those sold outside it. Looking at the top 50 paid plugins outside any marketplace, the average cost drops to $73.80 USD per year.
Combining those prices, we get an average of $75.91 per year for a plugin.
As mentioned earlier, a typical store uses around 7 paid plugins, which brings the total plugin cost to $531 per year.
You can often find cheaper alternatives if you’d like to reduce costs. For example, our own WooCommerce plugins are usually priced below the average.
Page Builders
3,382 sites (that’s 67.6%) use a page builder. The remaining 32% uses either a niche theme that doesn’t need a page builder, WordPress’ built-in Full Site Editing, or a custom-coded theme.
Below is the distribution of page builders.
Note: some sites have 2 page builders active. For example, SeedProd used to be a “maintenance mode” plugin but was rebranded as a page builder in 2023. Out of 115 sites using it, 70 also use another page builder, which suggests these sites still use it primarily as a maintenance plugin rather than a page builder.
That skews the stats a little bit, but not by a significant amount!
Let’s take a look at the distribution list:
- 72.9% (2,466 sites) use Elementor (either free or paid).
- 9.7% (327 sites) use WPBakery. This plugin is still included in a lot of niche themes from ThemeForest.
- 9.6% (323 sites) use Divi (either a Divi theme or the Divi Builder plugin).
- 3.2% (108 sites) use SeedProd. As explained earlier, this number should be lower as not everyone uses it as a page builder.
- 2.3% (79 sites) use Bricks.
- 2.1% (70 sites) use Beaver Builder.
- 1.9% (64 sites) use Breakdance.
- Oxygen is installed on 44 websites (1.3%).
It will be interesting to run this experiment again in a couple of years to see if FSE progressed.
Caching plugins
58.4% (or 2,920 websites) use a caching plugin. 381 sites use 2 or more cache plugins, for example, WP Rocket is often used in combination with Redis Cache. Below are the most popular plugins:
- LiteSpeed Cache is used on 933 sites (28.6%).
- WP Rocket is used on 619 sites (19%).
- Redis Cache and SiteGround’s Speed Optimizer are used on ±345 sites (10.5%)
Caching plugins are widely used. They serve a purpose, but store owners should realize performance requires a multi-layered approach:
- Choose hosting that specializes in WooCommerce. They typically include performance optimizations specifically for WooCommerce under the hood. We’ve had good experience with Rocket.net or Kinsta (not affiliated).
- Full-page caching, ideally via a CDN. Some hosts provide this out of the box (e.g. Rocket.net or Kinsta). Proper setup and use may require technical knowledge due to the dynamic nature of e-commerce sites.
Properly caching WooCommerce sites requires some technical knowledge. Installing WP Rocket and hoping for the best may not be enough.
For contrast, Wombat Plugins doesn’t run any caching or performance plugins! We’re in the process of moving hosts and will rely only on full-page caching on the CDN.
Security plugins
Another popular category within WordPress are security plugins. 1,972 sites – or 39.4% of total sites use a security plugin. Here are the numbers:
- 45.9% (1,029 sites) use WordFence.
- 17.7% (396 sites) use Really Simple Security. In 2025, the plugin rebranded from Really Simple SSL to include security features. It’s likely that many of these sites are not intentionally using it for its security functionality.
- 13.3% (298 sites) use Security Optimizer by SiteGround.
- 6.9% (154 sites) use Kadence Security (formerly iThemes Security).
You don’t need WordFence
Controversial! I know. And it directly contradicts these numbers.
WordFence is heavy and slows down your site. Moreover, it doesn’t really guarantee a secure site (it will often find issues after the fact). That’s not to say WordFence is bad, they actually do great work! But in my opinion, the plugin is not worth the performance tradeoff for most sites.
Many security issues are privately reported to authors first, so they have time to fix it before it becomes public knowledge.
If you don’t splurge on themes or plugins, and properly maintain your site, chances of security issues are low. Keep plugins and theme(s) updated, read changelogs, and maybe keep up with some wider security news from the community.
You also don’t need a firewall plugin. That logic is supposed to run on the server before the request hits your site.
Does that mean you don’t need a security plugin? Not quite! Plugins that limit the number of login attempts, or add 2FA to prevent brute force attacks are a great addition.
Other statistics
With such a treasure throve of information, we can deduct a few unexpected statistics:
- 5.6% use a plugin from CodeCanyon. I’m happy to see that’s less than I expected.
- 1,076 stores (21.56%) are using a free plugin that has been closed on WordPress.org — either permanently by the author or temporarily by the moderation team due to security vulnerabilities. We tracked 547 closed plugins. That’s a lot! All 80 plugins by WPFactory are currently closed because of security concerns. Once those issues are resolved, this number is expected to decrease.
- 1,606 (32%) sites have a theme that installs at least 1 companion plugin to offer extra features. It’s good practice to keep functionality in plugins!
- Contact Form 7 is the most popular forms plugin, despite lacking styling or a beginner-friendly UI. It’s followed by WP Forms, and Gravity Forms.
