The read · 2026-08-17
The top of this category isn't a contest
Three plugins carrying WooCommerce's name hold roughly two thirds of every install tracked here, with WooPayments alone at 27% of the category. Then the floor drops out. Fourth place, Payment Plugins for Stripe, is an order of magnitude behind the leader at 100K+ installs, and nothing in the movement data comes anywhere near closing that. This is a moat of the default-bundle kind, where the gateway reaches the store owner before they've thought to look for an alternative.
The independents are running better shops
Quality inverts the install picture. The Payment Plugins gateways for Stripe and PayPal both shipped releases within the last ten days and carry ratings close to 4.8. WooCommerce Tax, with five times the installs of either, sits at 2.2. The incumbents aren't asleep, WooPayments and the WooCommerce Stripe gateway both updated 12 days ago, they're just not liked much. That's the one genuine opening in the category, and it's a slow one, because ratings shift installs at nothing like the speed distribution does.
The rot is real further down. elegro Crypto Payment still carries 20K+ installs on a release last shipped 2,460 days ago, close to seven years, and it's one of the twelve biggest plugins here. Installs are a lagging measure of trust, and in payments that lag has teeth.
Everything actually moving is tiny
Growth exists, and all of it sits below a thousand installs. Sublium Subscriptions went from around 200 to 600 over the window, and the Authorize.net gateway made the same jump. Crypto rails churn in both directions, ShieldClimb and Card2Crypto climbing while AURPAY and ForumPay shed users, which suggests merchants are trying crypto checkout and mostly not keeping it. Regional processors show the same volatility, with Nave doubling and Nimbbl and Tazapay falling back.
Category downloads dropped 34.4% across these three months. That's a big move against a stable install base, and nothing in the data explains it yet.
The top of this category isn't a contest
Three plugins carrying WooCommerce's name hold roughly two thirds of every install tracked here, with WooPayments alone at 27% of the category. Then the floor drops out. Fourth place, Payment Plugins for Stripe, is an order of magnitude behind the leader at 100K+ installs, and nothing in the movement data comes anywhere near closing that. This is a moat of the default-bundle kind, where the gateway reaches the store owner before they've thought to look for an alternative.
The independents are running better shops
Quality inverts the install picture. The Payment Plugins gateways for Stripe and PayPal both shipped releases within the last ten days and carry ratings close to 4.8. WooCommerce Tax, with five times the installs of either, sits at 2.2. The incumbents aren't asleep, WooPayments and the WooCommerce Stripe gateway both updated 12 days ago, they're just not liked much. That's the one genuine opening in the category, and it's a slow one, because ratings shift installs at nothing like the speed distribution does.
The rot is real further down. elegro Crypto Payment still carries 20K+ installs on a release last shipped 2,460 days ago, close to seven years, and it's one of the twelve biggest plugins here. Installs are a lagging measure of trust, and in payments that lag has teeth.
Everything actually moving is tiny
Growth exists, and all of it sits below a thousand installs. Sublium Subscriptions went from around 200 to 600 over the window, and the Authorize.net gateway made the same jump. Crypto rails churn in both directions, ShieldClimb and Card2Crypto climbing while AURPAY and ForumPay shed users, which suggests merchants are trying crypto checkout and mostly not keeping it. Regional processors show the same volatility, with Nave doubling and Nimbbl and Tazapay falling back.
Category downloads dropped 34.4% across these three months. That's a big move against a stable install base, and nothing in the data explains it yet.
