This blog post is part of an article series aimed at helping you understand how the WordPress platform can help your small business grow and succeed online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present a number of surprising WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their websites and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress Statistics
Here is a summary of what this blog post will cover:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (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 a new WordPress website.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 driven by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve both its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Usage
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application 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 a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most popular self-hosted CMS application 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 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, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique views. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest statistics on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage statistics. 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 are now using the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so frequently.
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 upgraded their WP installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
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 number … perhaps even a different version, as WordPress 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 software updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress updates have a tradition of being named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All kinds of organizations and people from all walks of life use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Well-known brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress.org Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Bata, YRC Freight, Method Products, Group Bouygues, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Nancy Pelosi, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Kobe Bryant, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Time Inc., New York Post, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of 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 own domain names and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing activities.
- 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In later tutorials, we look at the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins at no cost from the WordPress plugins directory …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
We have published a detailed article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WordPress themes for free from the WordPress themes repository …
(WP free themes repository)
For more information about themes see this post:
WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages 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. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets 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 all 33,000 WP 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 at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see from the above statistics, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS market.
In other blog posts, we will cover the following areas:
- Why WordPress is the best option in most situations when it comes to choosing a vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing ongoing step-by-step tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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References:
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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