This article is part of a detailed article series designed to help small business owners grow online using the WordPress platform.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, we present a number of statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Facts And Figures
A brief summary:
- 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).
- 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows every day.
- 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 CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress every day.
- The WordPress application is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages.
- WordPress 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 Usage
A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, edit 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 CMS-based publishing platform 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 being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following WP CMS usage statistics:
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 dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites and blogs today are powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information 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 numbers represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest release …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new software updates since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress upgrades are named in honor of well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different types of businesses and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Leading corporations, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, non-profit organizations – even nations are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Glad, Panic, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Dave Matthews Band, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Time Inc., Time.com, InStyle News, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing or sales 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 posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress.com publishes a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In other articles, we compare the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free plugins …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress theme repository …
(WP free themes repository)
We have written a great article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 30 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all 33,000 users who answered the survey said 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 …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly 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 arena.
In other articles, we will address the following areas of WordPress in detail:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress and expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
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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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