This article is part of a multi-part article series aimed at helping you understand why the WordPress platform can help your small business succeed online using the WordPress platform.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present a number of WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
Impressive Statistics About WordPress
A brief summary:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing 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 worldwide using a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
- The WordPress software is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress can deliver your 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 virtually no limit to what you can do using WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage all content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has grown to become the largest self-hosted blogging tool 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress CMS usage stats:
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 market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites are now being built with the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded 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 page, you will see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated 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 made available over 100 new software updates to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress updates are named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All kinds of enterprises and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Large corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites …
WP Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Factory Jackson, Dole, Dassault Aviation, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Bates College, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, The New Yorker, IMC TV, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Chicago Weather Center, Slow Food Italia, 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 software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain names 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map showing user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Live Activity
In other tutorials, we will discuss the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress free plugin repository …
(WordPress plugin repository)
For more information about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress free themes directory …
(WP theme repository)
For more information about themes go here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 37 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all WP users who answered the survey said 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 by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, the growth and popularity of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other blog posts, we will address the following areas of WordPress in more detail:
- Why WordPress is the best vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors to your site, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing lots of step-by-step tutorials and practical tips and examples on how to use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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References:
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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