This blog post is part of a comprehensive multi-part article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users succeed online with the WordPress CMS platform.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present a number of impressive WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Figures
In short:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (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 installing a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number increases everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide are built with 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 that use a CMS application are driven by 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 continually built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software every day.
- The WordPress application is continually being updated to address 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 70 languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can build with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website 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 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 widely-used 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 are home-based. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com unique visits. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WordPress CMS usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage statistics. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS usage, 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 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 current 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 upgraded their WP installations to the latest release …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
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 no doubt see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress development community 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 software versions to date …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress releases have a tradition of being named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
Who doesn’t use WordPress? All types of businesses and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Large brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WP Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, organizations and people who use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, Dole, Panic, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Pixies, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, Kobe Bryant, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The Australian, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, 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 often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for running some form of business.
- 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 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In later tutorials, we will cover the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins for free …
(WP free plugins repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes at no cost from the WordPress free themes repository …
(WP free themes directory)
For a detailed article about WP themes go here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 37 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all 33,000 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 median 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.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the statistics presented above, WordPress is poised for continued growth for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will cover the following areas:
- Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a vehicle to grow your business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing new step-by-step tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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Sources:
The above figures 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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