This article is part of a detailed article series designed to help small business owners grow online using the WordPress content publishing application.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present a number of WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Facts And Figures
Below is a summary of what this post will cover:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide are powered 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 websites worldwide using a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress every day.
- The WordPress application is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, edit and manage content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of websites and seen 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 being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com unique visitors. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS usage stats. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more sites are using WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so often.
For example, at the time this post was written, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figures represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available over 100 new update versions to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates have a tradition of being named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different kinds of organizations and people from all walks of life use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Large corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, humanitarian organizations – even nations are using WordPress …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Google Ventures, Glad, Dassault Aviation, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, The Rolling Stones, Katie Couric, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for running some kind of business.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress provides a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In later tutorials, we explain the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free plugins …
(WP free plugins directory)
For more information about WordPress plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes at no cost …
(WordPress free themes repository)
For more information about themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 30 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all users who answered the survey said that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. An earlier survey conducted by WordPress (2012) also found that the average hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the statistics presented above, the dominance of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform to grow your business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors, 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 and expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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References:
The information for this article was 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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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group