Companies Using Wordfence

TechnologyChecker.io monitors Wordfence alongside every major Security Tools competitor. This analysis breaks down where Wordfence stands and why.

1. Growth Trajectory

Wordfence's detection history begins in 2009 with a single domain and stayed below 200 active sites until April 2014. From there, growth was explosive: the plugin hit 5,000 active domains by April 2015, 50,000 by mid-2018, and peaked at 103,679 in March 2025. The acceleration between 2014 and 2018 tracks directly with a spike in WordPress brute-force attacks and the launch of Wordfence Premium's real-time threat intelligence feed. Since mid-2025, active domains have dropped to roughly 87,000, which likely reflects hosting providers bundling server-level security (Imunify360, Cloudflare) rather than a decline in WordPress security needs.

Sales Signal: The dip in active domains doesn't mean fewer WordPress sites need protection. It means the buying decision is shifting from site owners to hosting providers. Sales teams selling complementary security services should target both individual WordPress site owners (who still install Wordfence manually) and managed hosting providers evaluating application-layer security bundles.

2. Customer Profile

Among our 55,778 enriched Wordfence companies, the identifiable organizations skew large: Samsung, Toyota, Mayo Clinic, Mercedes-Benz, REI, and LexisNexis all appear in our detection data. The dominant company types are educational institutions (28.6% of top companies), public companies (28.6%), and government agencies (14.3%). The age distribution shows 42.8% of companies were founded in the 2010s, followed by 22.5% in the 2000s. These aren't tiny blogs. They're mid-to-large organizations running WordPress as one piece of a broader web infrastructure, typically for blogs, microsites, or portals.

Sales Signal: Wordfence's enterprise footprint is larger than its "WordPress plugin" label suggests. Companies like Samsung and Toyota don't use Wordfence on their primary domains. They use it on subdomains running WordPress for specific functions. Sales teams targeting these organizations should focus on the IT security or web operations teams managing WordPress-based properties, not the central CISO office.

3. Industry and Geographic Concentration

Higher education is Wordfence's most concentrated vertical among identifiable large companies, with institutions like McGill University, Boston University, University of Houston, and Kent State University all running the plugin across multiple subdomains. Government administration follows, with agencies from the US, Canada, Spain, and Brazil. Geographically, US-based organizations dominate at roughly 54% of top companies, with Canada at 11% and Brazil at 9%. The European presence includes the UK, Germany, France, Sweden, and Spain.

Sales Signal: Higher education and government represent high-value verticals because they manage dozens of WordPress subdomains per institution. A single university contract can mean 5-20 Wordfence licenses. Sales teams should target university IT departments and government web operations teams, especially in the US and Canada where adoption is already strong.

4. Migration Patterns

Wordfence's migration data shows an interesting two-way flow with Imunify360. Wordfence gained 4,688 companies from Imunify360 but lost 4,965 to it, a near-even 1:1.06 exchange ratio. The gains happened primarily in the last year (3,027 of 4,688), suggesting recent movement back toward application-layer security. The second-largest migration partner is hCaptcha, where Wordfence gained 690 but lost 2,642, a 1:3.8 loss ratio. This is misleading, though, since hCaptcha is a CAPTCHA service that complements rather than replaces Wordfence.

Sales Signal: The Imunify360 churn is bidirectional and hosting-provider-driven. Companies leaving Imunify360 for Wordfence are likely moving from shared hosting (where Imunify360 is bundled) to self-managed WordPress installations. Companies doing the reverse are consolidating onto managed hosting with built-in security. Target companies in the middle of a hosting migration.

5. Technology stack

The Wordfence tech stack reveals a classic WordPress power-user profile. Yoast SEO (52.6% overlap) and Yoast SEO Premium (52.1%) show these are sites that care about both security and search visibility. Google Tag Manager (62.6%) and Google Analytics (59.5%) confirm active measurement. WooCommerce at 18.4% means nearly one in five Wordfence sites runs an online store. On the infrastructure side, Apache (46.9%) leads, followed by Nginx (29.1%) and LiteSpeed (17.7%). The Let's Encrypt overlap at 63.9% indicates cost-conscious operations, while Cloudflare (18.1%) confirms many sites layer network-level protection on top of Wordfence's application-level firewall.

Sales Signal: The WooCommerce overlap (18.4%) identifies a subset of Wordfence users who are running revenue-generating stores. These sites have higher security stakes and are more likely to upgrade from Wordfence Free to Premium ($149/year). Target WooCommerce + Wordfence Free users as the highest-probability conversion segment.

6. Key Takeaways

Wordfence is the dominant application-layer security plugin for WordPress, protecting everything from Fortune 500 subdomain blogs to university research portals. Its market position at 1.18% of all security tools understates its WordPress-specific dominance. The customer base skews toward organizations founded in the 2010s (42.8%) with strong representation in higher education, government, and healthcare. The bidirectional migration with Imunify360 reflects a broader industry shift toward server-level security bundling, but Wordfence's 5 million+ install base shows application-layer protection remains critical for self-managed WordPress sites.

7. Sales Applications

Prospecting Template: "Hi [Name], I noticed [Company] runs Wordfence on [subdomain]. Our data shows [Company] is one of [X] organizations in [Industry] using WordPress security plugins. Are you evaluating your security stack for 2026? We help teams like yours [specific value prop]."

Targeting Strategy: On TechnologyChecker.io, filter for Wordfence + WooCommerce overlap to find ecommerce sites with elevated security needs. Narrow by company size (1,001-10,000 employees) to identify mid-market organizations likely to have budget for premium security services but not yet locked into enterprise contracts.

Competitive Angle: The 4,965 companies that moved from Wordfence to Imunify360 are consolidating to hosting-provider security. If you sell application-layer security services. These companies may have gaps that server-level tools don't cover, like WordPress-specific malware scanning and login protection.

Explore the full Wordfence dataset at TechnologyChecker.io, including 103,590 active domains and 55,778 enriched company profiles with filtering by industry, size, country, and tech stack.

What G2 Reviewers Say

For sales teams, the review data is a goldmine. Users consistently call out solid security features as Wordfence's top strength. The most common frustration: occasionally block legitimate traffic. That lines up with what we see in our crawl data across 103,590 active domains -- clear strengths that drive adoption, alongside known limitations that buyers should evaluate against their specific needs.