This blog post is part of an article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow and succeed online using the WordPress platform.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present some impressive WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Market Share Of WordPress
Below is a summary of what we will cover:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over sixty 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 content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35 million 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 as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core functionality is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has become the largest self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted] unique visits. 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 figures. 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 sites are now being built with the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
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 figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest version …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will 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.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new software updates since 2003 …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates are traditionally named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
Who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All different kinds of enterprises and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Large brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, universities, government sectors, community organizations – even nations use WordPress sites …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, organizations and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Bata, Public Storage Canada, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Kobe Bryant, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, The New Yorker, IMC TV, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing or sales purposes.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map showing the latest user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World
In other posts, we will look at 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 …
(WordPress plugin repository)
For more information about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress themes directory …
(WordPress themes repository)
For more information about themes go here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 30 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of WordPress 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 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.com)
As you can clearly see from the above information, the growth of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other blog posts, we will cover the following areas in great detail:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Over 50 compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide ongoing step-by-step tutorials and examples on how to use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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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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