This blog post is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping small businesses succeed online with the WordPress CMS.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn some surprising statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage
In short:
- 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).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number increases 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 using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve both its usage and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what can be built using 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 easy for non-technical users 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. Since then, it has become the widely-used self-hosted CMS application 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress CMS usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress 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 sites today are powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this article was written, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figure represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations 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 shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a much higher figure … perhaps even a newer version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new software updates since 2003 …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress upgrades are named after famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
Who isn’t using WordPress? All different types of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Well-known corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress sites …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, companies and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Factory Jackson, Boardshorts.com, Groupe Renault, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, The Meredith Vieira Show, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, The Australian, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: 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 in their own domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial use.
- 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 posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com publishes a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Around The World
In later tutorials, we discuss the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free plugins from the WordPress plugin directory …
(WP plugin repository)
For more information about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org theme directory)
For a detailed article about WordPress themes go here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched five times as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 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 cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the statistics above, the growth and popularity of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the smartest option when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing new ”how to” tutorials and useful tips and examples on how to 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 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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