This article is part of an article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow and succeed online with the WordPress CMS platform.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present some statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress Usage Statistics
Here is a summary of what you will learn in this post:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing everyday.
- 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 that use a CMS application are powered by 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 as 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 software each day.
- The WordPress core software is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, edit and manage all 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 most downloaded self-hosted CMS application in the world, used on millions of sites 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress CMS usage figures:
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 market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more sites are being built with the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so often.
For example, at the time this article was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download 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 in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will see a much higher figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new software versions since 2003 …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress upgrades are typically named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all types of organizations and people use WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Global corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, colleges, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even nations use WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Sony Music, Glad, Panic, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The Australian, Facebook Newsroom, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, Slow Food Italia, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial use.
- 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 posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that shows user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Around The World
In other posts, we cover the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free plugins …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For a detailed article about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WordPress themes for free …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
For a detailed article about WP themes see this post:
Translations Of WordPress
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 monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 WordPress users who responded to the survey stated that they make a full-time living off WordPress. An earlier survey conducted by WordPress (2012) also found that the average hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the above information, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform for growing your small business online,
- Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing new 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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Information Sources:
The information for this post 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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