Companies Using WPML

WPML is the easiest of the big WordPress translation plugins to detect and the hardest to count properly. I look after the detection side of our crawler, so I'll start with what it sees. A domain counts when its pages carry WPML's plugin files, its generator tag or its language cookie. In a random sample of 300 live WPML domains, 255 of the 264 homepages that loaded showed one of those markers, and two more forwarded to Bitly's own WPML page. That gives 272,552 domains in our October 2026 crawl, 195,269 matched to a company, and first place in Translation & Localization with 32.66%.

Domains are not sites

Two things inflate the count. The small one is Bitly. Its branded short-link domains send their bare address to a Bitly landing page that runs WPML, so at least 1,826 domains (0.67% of the clean count) carry Bitly's page title instead of a site of their own. The bigger one is aliases. When we followed 354 random WPML domains that answered, 49 (13.8%) ended up on a different domain, often a company's country or retired domain pointing at its main site. Polylang's figure was 4 of 328 (1.2%), GTranslate's 35 of 383 (9.1%).

Sales signal: dedupe a WPML list by final URL before you count accounts. On distinct sites, WPML's 7,847-domain lead over Polylang probably disappears.

What the monthly line shows

The chart reads 221,555 in June, 249,772 in July, 256,823 in August, 269,742 in September and 272,552 in October. That isn't a 23% rush of new licences. The domains we crawl turn over every month, with dead sites leaving and new ones arriving, and our coverage and detection widened through the summer. Since we started tracking WPML on 16 March 2026, 26,597 domains dropped it on at least one hostname. When I rechecked, 4,037 of them (about 15%) still ran it somewhere else on the same domain.

"WPML's lead over Polylang is real in domains and doubtful in websites. One WPML domain in seven forwards somewhere else, and Polylang's rarely do." - David Thomson, CTO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales signal: treat WPML as a large, settled pool of 272,552 domains. The monthly line gives you no reason to rush outreach.

Paid-only, so versions show who renews

WPML has no free plan. Its pricing page lists Multilingual Blog at €39, Multilingual CMS at €99 and Multilingual Agency at €199, each with a year of updates and support (checked 15 October 2026). WPML writes its version into a generator tag, and 127,921 domains showed one in the last 45 days. 54.92% ran 4.9 or later, released from February 2026 on, and 66.25% ran 4.7 or later, from 2025. 20.75% ran something older than 4.6, which shipped in March 2023, and 5.85% a version from before June 2018, according to WPML's release pages. On a paid-only plugin, a site three years behind has most likely stopped renewing, or stopped being maintained. Another 136,707 domains hide their version, so the versioned half is the less hardened half, not a clean sample.

Sales signal: the sites on pre-2023 releases are WPML's renewal list, and the obvious switching list for Polylang Pro and Weglot.

Who the customers are

49.07% of matched companies with a known size have 1 to 10 employees and 29.45% have 11 to 50, a little bigger than Polylang's base (55.3% at 1 to 10). Age separates them more. 37% of WPML companies were founded before 2000, against 27% on Polylang's profile and 29% on GTranslate's, and only 12.21% date from the 2020s. The 3,841 companies above 1,000 staff often run WPML on one property: TD, Edward Jones and Travelers on careers sites, NVIDIA on its blog, Michelin on its purchasing portal. Brazil has a cluster of its own. Listed companies there put their investor-relations sites on MZ Group's platform, and 250 of the 260 domains loading MZ Group's scripts run WPML, Caixa, Sicredi and Assaí among them.

Sales signal: at large accounts the WPML buyer owns one site, usually in HR, investor relations or communications, or is the agency that built it. Find that team before you call the central web group.

Europe first, and bilingual markets

Spain (24,626 matched companies), Italy (23,318) and Germany (19,704) lead. Canada is fourth with 12,424, 2.6 times Polylang's 4,756 there, and Switzerland (7,244) and Belgium (6,292) are in the top ten. All three have more than one official language. The United States is seventh with 8,623. By industry, Hospitality leads at 4.08%, but the two machinery categories add up to 4.25% (2.35% and 1.9%), which looks like exporters translating product catalogues.

Sales signal: translation agencies should start with WPML sites in Canada, Switzerland and Belgium, where a second language is a requirement rather than a growth project.

Rivals on the same site

WPML rarely shares a site with a rival. 899 domains run WPML and Polylang today, out of 2,289 that ran both at some point since March. 612 run WPML and GTranslate, and 196 run WPML and Weglot. None of these pairs passes our switching tests, because sites moved both ways in similar numbers or still run both. A WordPress site picks one translation plugin and keeps it.

"Once a WordPress site has chosen its translation plugin, it almost never adds a second. Only 899 of the 272,552 WPML domains run Polylang beside it." - David Thomson, CTO at TechnologyChecker.io

Sales signal: displacing WPML means migrating translated content, not swapping a tag. Pitch it at a redesign or a rebuild, and bring the migration plan with you.

The stack around it

Across the 271,491 clean live domains in our stack base, WordPress shows on 99.63% and Google Analytics on 64.26%, against 52.55% on Polylang's domains. Elementor is the most common builder at 27.98%, then Divi (8.03%) and WPBakery (4.62%). 18.88% of live WPML domains run WooCommerce (51,351 of 272,004), and 32 of 264 sampled homepages loaded WPML's WooCommerce add-on. Cookiebot is on 5.56%, more than double its share on Polylang's domains.

Sales signal: WPML sites are better-funded WordPress builds than Polylang's, with more analytics, more stores and more paid consent tools. WooCommerce extension sellers and WordPress agencies will find bigger budgets here.

Key takeaways

1. 272,552 domains, first in Translation & Localization with 32.66%, 7,847 ahead of Polylang.

2. 13.8% of sampled WPML domains forward elsewhere, against 1.2% for Polylang, so the lead shrinks on distinct sites.

3. Paid-only: 54.92% of versioned sites run 4.9 or later, 20.75% a release older than March 2023.

4. Older, European customers: 37% founded before 2000, with Spain, Italy and Germany ahead of a seventh-placed United States.

5. 18.88% of live domains run WooCommerce, against 13.35% of Polylang's.

How to use this list

Filter by country and company size, then dedupe by final URL. For the full list of 272,552 WPML domains with company, size and stack data, explore TechnologyChecker.io.