This blog post is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help small business owners succeed online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present some WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
Some Surprising Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage
In short:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (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 installing a new WordPress website.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 using a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- WordPress 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 seventy languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
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 owners to add, edit and manage all content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the widely-used self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest stats on WordPress:
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 websites are now being built on the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so often.
For example, at the time this article was published, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download numbers represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites 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 were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a significantly higher download figure … 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.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new updates to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates are traditionally named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
In a nutshell, all types of businesses and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Popular corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, universities, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, institutions and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Google Ventures, Glad, Panic, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, The Meredith Vieira Show, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Katie Couric, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Fortune, The Australian, IMC TV, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In other articles, we examine the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress free plugins repository …
(WordPress plugin repository)
For a detailed article about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes for free …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
For more information about WordPress themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
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”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 users who participated in 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the statistics above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS arena.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best platform for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing new tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress and grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
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
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum