The read · 2026-08-31
Elementor isn't a leader, it's the substrate
This category stopped being a contest a while ago. Elementor holds 41% of the 24.2M installs tracked here, and of the twelve biggest plugins, nine exist only to extend it. Ultimate Addons, Essential Addons, ElementsKit, Premium Addons, Royal Addons, Happy Addons: each is a business built on someone else's canvas. SiteOrigin's Page Builder, at 400K+ installs and still shipping, is the last independent builder anywhere near the top, and it's an order of magnitude behind.
The incumbents aren't coasting either. Elementor shipped four days ago, and every one of its major add-ons shipped within the last two weeks. That's a moat maintained, not inherited. When a leader this dominant is also this current, there's no crack for a general-purpose newcomer to slip through.
The real growth is in accessories, and it's tiny
Look at what actually gained ground in the last 90 days and the pattern is unmistakable: a gradient-text widget, an icon pack, a Polylang language switcher, a before/after image slider. Most went from double-digit installs to triple digits. Genuine growth, but it's the growth of a supply chain, not a market. Manage is the one exception worth naming, climbing from roughly 40K to 90K installs, and it's a site maintenance tool rather than a builder at all.
Meanwhile downloads across the category fell 35.8% over the same window. A market this concentrated with demand contracting doesn't invite entrants, it squeezes the tail. The declines back that up: Move Addons slid from 3K+ to 2K+, and Kata Plus halved from 400 to 200. Small plugins, but the direction is consistent.
The directory did some pruning
Five plugins came off wp.org this month, and one of them mattered. Element Pack, with 100K+ installs, was closed on 2026-08-08 with no reason recorded. Ultimate Store Kit went on 2026-08-07, WoowGallery and Builderall on the 19th and 20th, all with 1K to 4K installs. No public reason attaches to any of them, so what links them isn't visible in the data.
One more sign of drift: Template Kit sits at 400K+ installs with its last release 760 days ago. Plenty of sites are running a component nobody has touched in over two years.
Elementor isn't a leader, it's the substrate
This category stopped being a contest a while ago. Elementor holds 41% of the 24.2M installs tracked here, and of the twelve biggest plugins, nine exist only to extend it. Ultimate Addons, Essential Addons, ElementsKit, Premium Addons, Royal Addons, Happy Addons: each is a business built on someone else's canvas. SiteOrigin's Page Builder, at 400K+ installs and still shipping, is the last independent builder anywhere near the top, and it's an order of magnitude behind.
The incumbents aren't coasting either. Elementor shipped four days ago, and every one of its major add-ons shipped within the last two weeks. That's a moat maintained, not inherited. When a leader this dominant is also this current, there's no crack for a general-purpose newcomer to slip through.
The real growth is in accessories, and it's tiny
Look at what actually gained ground in the last 90 days and the pattern is unmistakable: a gradient-text widget, an icon pack, a Polylang language switcher, a before/after image slider. Most went from double-digit installs to triple digits. Genuine growth, but it's the growth of a supply chain, not a market. Manage is the one exception worth naming, climbing from roughly 40K to 90K installs, and it's a site maintenance tool rather than a builder at all.
Meanwhile downloads across the category fell 35.8% over the same window. A market this concentrated with demand contracting doesn't invite entrants, it squeezes the tail. The declines back that up: Move Addons slid from 3K+ to 2K+, and Kata Plus halved from 400 to 200. Small plugins, but the direction is consistent.
The directory did some pruning
Five plugins came off wp.org this month, and one of them mattered. Element Pack, with 100K+ installs, was closed on 2026-08-08 with no reason recorded. Ultimate Store Kit went on 2026-08-07, WoowGallery and Builderall on the 19th and 20th, all with 1K to 4K installs. No public reason attaches to any of them, so what links them isn't visible in the data.
One more sign of drift: Template Kit sits at 400K+ installs with its last release 760 days ago. Plenty of sites are running a component nobody has touched in over two years.
