Hello Elementor, a Nearly Blank Theme, Runs 9.6% of WordPress Sites, More Than Any Other

Open the Appearance menu on a newly built WordPress site and there is a good chance the theme is called Hello Elementor. It adds almost nothing of its own: no layout, no styling to speak of, just a clean base for the Elementor page builder. The design the visitor sees lives entirely in the builder.

A WordPress theme controls how a site looks and is laid out. For years, choosing a theme meant choosing a design. The results here show that on a large share of WordPress sites the theme has become a shell, and the real design tool is the page builder on top. That matters to a business owner because the theme and builder decide how fast the site loads, how often it needs updates and how much of the design survives a future change.

Hello Elementor is the most used named theme, on 9.6% of WordPress homepages. Astra, a lightweight theme built to pair with page builders, is second at 6.7%, and Divi, a theme and page builder in one, is third at 6.4%. Together these three cover 22.6% of WordPress sites, more than one in five.

We used the public HTTP Archive crawl from September 2026, which records the technology behind millions of website homepages. Of those, 4,945,342 run on WordPress. We counted the homepages using each named theme and divided by the WordPress total, so every share is a share of WordPress sites.

A theme is the template package that sets a WordPress site's layout and styling. A builder-first theme is one designed to be used with a page builder, a plugin for designing pages by drag and drop, and to stay out of its way. A default theme is one of the free themes WordPress releases each year and installs on new sites, named after the year, such as Twenty Seventeen.

All three leading themes are tied to visual page builders. Hello Elementor is made by the company behind Elementor and exists to host it. Astra markets itself as a fast base for builders like Elementor. Divi is a theme and a builder in one package, and its 316,679 theme installs match the Divi builder count exactly, a sign that the two work as a single product.

After the top three, the list drops sharply to themes with 1% to 2% each. GeneratePress at 2%, Kadence at 1.3%, OceanWP at 1.2% and Blocksy at 0.9% are lightweight themes popular with developers who care about page speed. Together those four run 269,808 WordPress homepages, less than Hello Elementor on its own.

Hello Elementor pairs with the Elementor builder, which runs on 34% of WordPress homepages in our companion study. About 28% of Elementor sites use Hello Elementor as their theme, so more than a quarter of Elementor users have chosen a theme that exists only to host the builder. Bricks shows the same pattern: it appears as both a theme and a builder, with the same 20,095 homepages in each list.

For a site owner, this pairing changes what "theme" means. When the theme is a shell, switching themes changes little, and switching page builders changes everything, because every page's layout is stored in the builder. A theme that is also a page builder, like Divi, ties the content to that builder in the same way. The real decision is the builder, and the theme follows it.

Twenty Seventeen, Twenty Twenty-One and Twenty Twenty, WordPress's default themes from 2016 to 2020, together run on 53,394 WordPress homepages. Twenty Seventeen alone runs on 22,155, more than Neve, Bricks or Lightning, themes that people choose on purpose.

A default theme is what WordPress installs on a new site, so a homepage still running one from 2016 is often a site that was set up and then left as it was. That is not a problem while the theme keeps receiving updates, but it is a sign that the site's plugins, content and security settings deserve a look too.

Find out which theme your site runs: in WordPress, go to Appearance, then Themes, or ask your developer. If it is a builder-first theme like Hello Elementor or Astra, your design lives in the page builder, so keep the theme, the builder and any builder add-ons updated together, and test updates on a staging copy of the site first.

If your site runs an old default theme, check that it still receives updates and works with your current plugins. If you are planning a redesign, treat the theme and builder as one decision: pick the builder your team will edit with for the next several years, then the lightest theme that supports it. A theme change is also the right moment to review speed and accessibility, since both depend on the theme's code.

Themes and builders need the same regular care as the rest of the site. Regular wordpress maintenance services that update the theme, builder and plugins together, on a staging copy first, keep a builder-first site from breaking after an update.

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