This article is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping you grow a successful business online with WordPress.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present a number of surprising statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Market Share About WordPress
The short version:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide are driven by WordPress.
- WordPress sites around the world publish an average of 24 posts per second.
- WordPress sites receive over 22 billion monthly pageviews.
- WordPress blogs receive around 50 million comments per month.
- WordPress has been translated into over 70 languages.
- More than 60% of all sites worldwide that use a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress every day.
- The WordPress software is updated on a regular basis to eliminate bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of websites and accessed by tens of millions of people every day.
WordPress is owned by Automattic.com, which currently employs around 300 people, all of whom are home-based. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WP CMS usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage figures. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites are powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was published, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download numbers represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, expect to see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress development team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available to users over one hundred new update versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress releases are traditionally named in honor of well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all types of companies and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Giant corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, non-profit organizations – even nations are using WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, organizations and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Sony Music, DC Diaper Bank, Panic, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Nancy Pelosi, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Dave Matthews Band, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial uses.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map that shows the latest user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity
In later articles, we cover the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins at no cost from the WordPress free plugin directory …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For more information about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WP themes for free from the WordPress theme directory …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
We have published a detailed article about themes here:
WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than thirty-seven million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all users who responded to the survey stated that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. An earlier survey conducted by WordPress (2012) also found that the median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS market.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas in detail:
- Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your business online,
- Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many ”how to” tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress to grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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References:
The above figures were sourced from various locations around the web, including the following sites:
- https://wordpress.org
- https://wordpress.com
- http://automattic.com
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress
- http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress/all/all
- http://trends.builtwith.com/cms
- http://ma.tt/2014/10/sotw-2014
- https://managewp.com/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpress-usage
- http://torquemag.io/13-surprising-wordpress-statistics
- https://websitebuilder.org/resources/amazing-facts-you-probably-dont-know-about-wordpress
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)