Reports · Report 2026-09 · Edition 1
WordPress in Germany: hosts, versions and plugins
- Published:
- 3 October 2026
- Data:
- Common Crawl CC-MAIN-2026-39 (September 2026)
- Author:
- Nettingale
- Licence:
- CC BY 4.0
Disclosure: Nettingale is a WordPress hosting company. We used the same method for all hosts. The method and the data are public, so anyone can examine the results.
Key findings
- 47.2% of the German homepages in the crawl use WordPress. This is 470,097 of 996,727 homepages.
- Three hosting companies serve 52.2% of the WordPress sites. These companies are IONOS, ALL-INKL and Strato.
- 20.0% of the WordPress sites use a version older than 6.9. 5.7% use version 5 or older.
- 17.5% of the sites that show a PHP version use PHP 7. PHP 7 gets no security fixes after November 2022.
- 37.1% of the WordPress sites load a cookie consent plugin.
- Large cloud providers serve less than 1% of the sites. CDNs hide the real host of 2.8% of the sites.
1 Scope
This report describes the WordPress sites in Germany. It shows which companies host these sites. It also shows the WordPress versions, PHP versions, plugins and themes that the sites use.
The data set contains the homepages of all .de domains in one Common Crawl crawl. A homepage is the start page of a domain, with or without www. All numbers are for the time of the crawl, September 2026.
2 Hosting companies
A small number of companies host most German WordPress sites. IONOS, ALL-INKL and Strato together serve 52.2% of the sites. No other company serves more than 7.1%.
The share is the number of WordPress sites on a host, divided by all 470,097 WordPress sites. Hetzner appears two times, because Hetzner sells web hosting and also rents servers.
| Host | Type | Sites | Share | WooCommerce | WordPress older than 6.9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IONOS | Hosting company | 106,560 | 22.7% | 4.8% | 16.4% |
| ALL-INKL | Hosting company | 70,765 | 15.1% | 7.1% | 19.8% |
| Strato | Hosting company | 68,250 | 14.5% | 4.3% | 31.6% |
| Hetzner (servers) | Server provider | 33,174 | 7.1% | 8.0% | 15.5% |
| Host Europe | Hosting company | 20,205 | 4.3% | 5.2% | 24.9% |
| Mittwald | Hosting company | 16,893 | 3.6% | 5.7% | 16.5% |
| netcup | Hosting company | 15,482 | 3.3% | 6.2% | 17.2% |
| Hetzner (web hosting) | Hosting company | 11,576 | 2.5% | 5.8% | 15.3% |
| domainfactory | Hosting company | 8,983 | 1.9% | 5.5% | 21.5% |
| dogado | Hosting company | 8,464 | 1.8% | 6.3% | 22.4% |
| Alfahosting | Hosting company | 8,377 | 1.8% | 5.9% | 21.4% |
| Combell | Hosting company | 7,100 | 1.5% | 9.6% | 3.6% |
| Hostinger | Hosting company | 4,528 | 1.0% | 12.6% | 20.9% |
| one.com | Hosting company | 4,513 | 1.0% | 6.0% | 19.3% |
| EVANZO | Hosting company | 3,801 | 0.8% | 5.8% | 27.3% |
The WooCommerce and version columns are percentages of the sites on that host. The full table in CSV format contains 160 hosts with 50 or more sites.
Most sites use the shared or managed platform of a hosting company. 10.3% use a rented server or a cloud machine. Usually, an agency or the site owner manages this type of server. Large cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, DigitalOcean) serve less than 1% of the sites.
| Type of hosting | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting company platform (shared or managed) | 379,066 | 80.6% |
| Rented server or cloud machine | 48,460 | 10.3% |
| Other network (no rule, owner from network records) | 28,549 | 6.1% |
| Behind a CDN (real host not visible) | 13,378 | 2.8% |
| No address in DNS | 644 | 0.1% |
3 WordPress and PHP versions
57.3% of the sites use WordPress 7. 20.0% use a version older than 6.9. The current version at the time of the crawl was 7.1.
15.9% of the sites do not show a version. Thus, the real share of old versions can be higher. The share of old versions is different for each host, from 16.4% at IONOS to 31.6% at Strato. On most shared plans, the site owner starts the updates, not the host.
| Version | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 7.1 | 206,706 | 44.0% |
| 7.0 | 62,580 | 13.3% |
| 6.9 | 31,887 | 6.8% |
| 6.8 | 21,366 | 4.5% |
| 6.7 | 10,129 | 2.2% |
| 6.0 to 6.6 | 35,935 | 7.6% |
| 5.x or older | 26,675 | 5.7% |
| Not shown | 74,819 | 15.9% |
| Version | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 8.5 | 5,889 | 3.7% |
| 8.4 | 34,604 | 22.0% |
| 8.3 | 35,968 | 22.8% |
| 8.2 | 29,163 | 18.5% |
| 8.1 | 16,954 | 10.8% |
| 8.0 | 7,483 | 4.7% |
| 7.4 | 19,320 | 12.3% |
| 7.3 or older | 8,192 | 5.2% |
Only 33.5% of the sites show a PHP version. Of these sites, 17.5% use PHP 7. PHP 7.4 was the last PHP 7 version, and its security fixes stopped in November 2022.
4 Plugins, themes and web servers
Page builders and cookie consent plugins are the most frequent plugins. 37.1% of the sites load at least one cookie consent plugin. WooCommerce shops are 5.9% of the WordPress sites.
The counts include only plugins that load files on the homepage. Plugins that work only in the background do not appear. Thus, the real use of most plugins is higher.
| Plugin | Slug | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elementor | elementor | 116,416 | 24.8% |
| Contact Form 7 | contact-form-7 | 107,678 | 22.9% |
| Elementor Pro | elementor-pro | 70,465 | 15.0% |
| Borlabs Cookie | borlabs-cookie | 61,459 | 13.1% |
| Complianz | complianz-gdpr | 52,993 | 11.3% |
| Slider Revolution | revslider | 38,094 | 8.1% |
| WPBakery Page Builder | js_composer | 26,693 | 5.7% |
| WooCommerce | woocommerce | 25,984 | 5.5% |
| Cookie Notice | cookie-notice | 18,479 | 3.9% |
| CookieYes | cookie-law-info | 17,803 | 3.8% |
| WP Rocket | wp-rocket | 16,263 | 3.5% |
| The Events Calendar | the-events-calendar | 16,043 | 3.4% |
| Real Cookie Banner | real-cookie-banner | 15,035 | 3.2% |
| Honeypot for Contact Form 7 | contact-form-7-honeypot | 14,754 | 3.1% |
| WP Armour Honeypot | honeypot | 14,708 | 3.1% |
| Theme | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Hello Elementor | 44,895 | 9.6% |
| Divi | 42,101 | 9.0% |
| Astra | 23,786 | 5.1% |
| Avada | 18,097 | 3.8% |
| IONOS theme (gox) | 14,441 | 3.1% |
| Enfold | 13,852 | 2.9% |
| OceanWP | 13,448 | 2.9% |
| GeneratePress | 8,536 | 1.8% |
| Twenty Seventeen | 7,880 | 1.7% |
| BeTheme | 5,453 | 1.2% |
| Server | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Apache | 305,641 | 65.0% |
| nginx (incl. OpenResty) | 113,062 | 24.1% |
| IONOS Webserver | 16,330 | 3.5% |
| Cloudflare | 12,945 | 2.8% |
| LiteSpeed | 8,247 | 1.8% |
| Other | 10,107 | 2.1% |
| Not shown | 3,765 | 0.8% |
5 Method
5.1 Source
The source is Common Crawl, a public archive of the web. We used the crawl CC-MAIN-2026-39 from September 2026. We used the stored copy of each homepage. We did not send requests to the sites.
5.2 WordPress detection
A site counts as WordPress when its homepage shows one or more WordPress markers. The markers are the api.w.org link, the WordPress generator tag and the site's own wp-content or wp-includes paths. 95.9% of the WordPress sites show the link or the generator tag. The other 4.1% show only the paths. Links to WordPress files on other domains do not count.
5.3 Host identification
We identified the host from public DNS and network records in October 2026. The records are the IP address, the network owner of the address, the reverse name of the server and the CNAME records. A list of rules connects these records to a host. When no rule applies, the report uses the name of the network owner. When a CDN is in front of a site, the real host is not visible.
5.4 Quality check
We examined random samples of the results against the live sites. All 56 sampled WordPress sites that answered were WordPress sites. Of 43 sampled non-WordPress sites that answered, one was a WordPress site at the time of the check. This site changed its server after the crawl.
6 Limits
- One crawl does not contain all German sites. New sites and sites with few links are less frequent in the data. Thus, the totals are lower than the real numbers.
- The shares are more reliable than the totals, because the crawl includes sites from all hosts.
- The report includes only
.dedomains. German sites on.comor other domains are not in the data. - Many sites hide their WordPress or PHP version. The version tables include only the sites that show a version, or show the hidden share as a separate row.
- The DNS records are from October 2026. Some sites changed their host after the crawl.
7 Data and citation
The data for Table 1 is available as a CSV file. The file contains totals per host only. It contains no domain names. You can use the report and the data under the CC BY 4.0 licence. Give credit to Nettingale and link to this page.
Suggested citation:
Nettingale (2026). WordPress in Germany: hosts, versions and plugins. Report 2026-09, based on Common Crawl CC-MAIN-2026-39. https://nettingale.com/reports/wordpress-germany-2026-09/
To report an error, write to hello@nettingale.com. We will correct the report and record the change below.
Changes
3 October 2026: Edition 1.