This article is part of a detailed series of articles designed to help you understand how the WordPress content publishing application can help your business achieve its business goals online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present some surprising statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress Usage Statistics
In short:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly every day.
- 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 that use a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality each day.
- WordPress is regularly updated to address 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 70 languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can build with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage all content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the most downloaded self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 are home-based. Despite being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WP usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress 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 and more websites and blogs are now using the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, here 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 recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress development 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 one hundred new updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress releases are traditionally named after famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of organizations and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Large brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, universities, government sectors, community organizations – even countries use WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Site Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Factory Jackson, Dole, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Mötley Crüe, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Tribune Media, The New Yorker, Facebook Newsroom, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users 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 in their domain names and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business activities.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, blogs that are part of the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map that shows the latest user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In other articles, we address the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free WordPress plugins from the WordPress plugins directory …
(WP free plugins repository)
We have written a great article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 themes at no cost from the WordPress themes directory …
(WP themes repository)
For more information about WordPress themes go here:
Using WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international 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. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all 33,000 users who responded to 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 designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the above information, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS landscape.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a vehicle to grow your business online,
- Over 50 compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing many tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
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Sources:
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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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now