This article is part of a multi-part series of articles aimed at helping you understand how the WordPress platform can help your small business achieve its business goals online with the WordPress CMS platform.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this article, you will learn a number of impressive 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 businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress Statistics
Below is a summary of what you will learn in this article:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing 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 sites worldwide that use a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what can be built with WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has grown to be the largest self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest statistics on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage statistics. 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 and blogs are being built with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above numbers represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest release …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress developer team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over 100 new update versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress updates have a tradition of being named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
Who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All different kinds of companies and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Leading corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Factory Jackson, Public Storage Canada, GDF SUEZ, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Mötley Crüe, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, The Australian, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing activities.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, blogs that are part of the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In other articles, we discuss the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress free plugin directory …
(WP free plugins repository)
For a detailed article about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WordPress themes for free …
(WordPress free themes repository)
We have written a detailed article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of WP users who participated in 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the above facts and figures, the dominance of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform for growing your business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many tutorials and examples on how to use WordPress and expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
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Sources:
The above statistics 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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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now