Download websites that use WPML

About WPML

Most WordPress plugins are free, and a free plugin tells you almost nothing about the budget behind a site. WPML is not free. Installing it required a purchase, and keeping it updated requires a renewal, which is why a detection here carries more commercial weight than a plugin detection normally does.

The second thing a detection implies is scope. Nobody buys a multilingual layer for a one-market brochure site. The plugin exists to translate posts, pages, custom types, taxonomies, and theme strings, so its presence says the owner has content in more than one language and an audience outside a single country. Put those two implications together and the population resolves into something quite specific: WordPress sites with a real budget, a real content operation, and international ambitions already acted on. Translation agencies, localization platforms, cross-border payment and shipping vendors, and international SEO consultancies are all selling into precisely that description.

Geography supports the reading. As of September 2026 we detect WPML on 408,337 sites, and while United States contributes 94,193 of them, a large remainder sits outside that one country. A tool bought specifically to reach other markets ends up more evenly distributed than the average WordPress add-on, and .com being common in the suffix mix reflects international brands choosing a generic suffix over a national one rather than any single market dominating.

The version column has an unusual meaning for paid software. We see 267 distinct strings, with 4.9.7 the common one. On a commercial plugin, updates are gated behind an active license key, so a site stranded on an old release is often a site whose subscription lapsed rather than a site that chose to freeze. Lapsed subscriptions are a renewal problem for the vendor and an opening for everyone else, and the version distribution is the only externally visible trace of it.

OnTheGoSystems has developed the plugin since 2008 and it runs as PHP inside WordPress, which means detection depends on what the plugin leaves in the delivered page: language switchers, alternate link markup, and path or parameter conventions for translated URLs.

What the downloadable list adds over a per-domain check is the ability to ask about the whole segment at once. How many sites in a given country run a paid multilingual layer, which is a rough proxy for how many businesses there are exporting through their website. Which of those sites also run commerce software, separating publishers from sellers. How the installed base splits between current and stale releases before a competitor decides whether a switching campaign is worth funding. Where the plugin is common relative to the size of the local WordPress population, which is the sort of question a market entry decision actually turns on. A lookup confirms one site. A list supports a plan.

Two caveats follow from how that detection works. A site can run the plugin with translation only partially configured, so presence proves the tool is installed and not that a full second language exists. And multilingual WordPress is built in several other ways, including separate installs per market, subdirectory networks, and competing plugins, so this count is not a count of multilingual WordPress sites. Reading it as the installed base of one commercial product, which is what it actually is, keeps the analysis honest.