This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help small business owners grow online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn some impressive WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
Statistics And Market Share About WordPress
A brief summary:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: 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 or blog.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly 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 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 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 around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
- The WordPress software is regularly updated to eliminate 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 WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage all content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the largest self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress.com unique visitors. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress 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 and more websites are now using the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so often.
For example, at the time this post was published, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figures represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest version …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article 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 should expect to see a significantly higher download figure … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress developer 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 one hundred new update versions to date …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress updates are traditionally named after Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
A better question is who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All types of companies and people from all walks of life use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Large corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress sites …
WP Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Bata, Public Storage Canada, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, Time.com, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, Slow Food Italia, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domains and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business activities.
- 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that shows the latest user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In later tutorials, we will explain the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
We have written a great article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free themes …
(WordPress.org themes repository)
For a detailed article about WordPress themes go here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects 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. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 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 designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, WordPress is set for continued growth for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will address the following areas:
- Why WordPress is the best option in most situations when it comes to choosing a platform to grow your business online,
- Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing new tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress to grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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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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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum