Author: WP Compendium

This article is part of a detailed multi-part series of articles designed to help you succeed online.

For more information about of the article series, see this post:

• Everything You Need To Know About Growing Your Small Business With WordPress

In this article, you will learn a number of facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.

WordPress Usage Statistics

A brief summary:

• WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
• WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress site.
• There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly every day.
• WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 using a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
• Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
• WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality each day.
• The WordPress software is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
• WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
• The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is practically no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.

WordPress CMS Usage

A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, edit 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. It is currently the most popular self-hosted content management system (CMS) in the world, used on millions of sites 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …

(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)

Consider the following stats on WordPress:

WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …

(WP CMS 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 websites are being powered by the WordPress CMS application.

WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so frequently.

For example, at the time this post was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …

(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)

Note: The above download number represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest version …

(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 click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even a newer 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 over 100 new software versions in its first 11 years of existence …

(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)

WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …

(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)

Interestingly enough, all major WordPress updates are named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
• v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
• v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
• v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
• v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress

In a nutshell, all different types of enterprises and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.

Giant corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress …

WordPress Showcase

Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people using WordPress:

• Businesses & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Dole, GDF SUEZ, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
• Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
• Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, The Australian, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
• Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Amnesty International Korea, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).

• Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain names and freely 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).

WordPress provides a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …

WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity

In later tutorials, we will present the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

Other Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free …

(WordPress.org free plugins repository)

For more information about WP plugins go here:

• Add New Functionality To Your Blog With WordPress Plugins

WordPress Themes

WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WP themes for free from the WordPress free themes repository …

(WordPress free themes repository)

We have written a great article about themes here:

• About WP Themes – A Practical Guide For Business Owners

WordPress Translations

WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …

(WordPress languages)

WordPress Searches Online

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …

(WordPress-related searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.

WordPress Rates

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all 33,000 WP users who responded to the survey said 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 …

According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork)

As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS landscape.

In other blog posts, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform to grow your business online,
• Over fifty reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
• Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to drive more visitors to your site, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we’ll be regularly posting loads of step-by-step tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress to expand your business presence online, while also saving 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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