This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping you grow a successful business online with the WordPress CMS.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of surprising facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress Usage Statistics
In short:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world are driven 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 that use a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core application is continually being 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 languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is 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. Since then, WordPress has become the most popular self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of websites 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, 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 CMS usage figures. 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 and more websites and blogs today are being built on the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figure represents only the most recently released 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)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a significantly higher number of downloads … 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 to users over one hundred new update versions to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress releases have a tradition of being named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
In a nutshell, all types of enterprises and people are using WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Leading corporations, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress blogs …
WP Website Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, institutions and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Factory Jackson, DC Diaper Bank, GDF SUEZ, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, Blondie, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, The New Yorker, IMC TV, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, 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 often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain names and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business purposes.
- 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 blog posts every 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 posts, we examine the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free WP plugins …
(WordPress.org free plugins directory)
For more information about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes for free …
(WP free themes directory)
We have published a great article about WP themes here:
WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
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. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched five times more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all users who participated in 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 designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle to grow your business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors to your site, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing many step-by-step tutorials and great tips and examples of how you can use WordPress to expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
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References:
The information for this article 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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