This blog post is part of a multi-part article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow and succeed online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present a number of WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Facts And Figures
The quick version:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are over 60 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 worldwide that use a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 37 million 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 code is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is updated on a regular basis 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 70 international languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can do using WordPress.
WordPress Usage
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance 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 began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most downloaded 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 are home-based. 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 Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted] unique monthly views. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WordPress usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage stats. 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 being built on the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so often.
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 number represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites 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 grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, 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.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new software versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress upgrades have a tradition of being named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All types of enterprises and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Large corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even countries use WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …
WP Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, organizations and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Sony Music, DC Diaper Bank, GDF SUEZ, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Katie Couric, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, IMC TV, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (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, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts every 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) – Activity Around The World
In other articles, we will examine the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WP plugins at no cost from the WordPress plugins repository …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
For a detailed article about themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org 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”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, 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 online 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the above information, 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, we will address the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is the best vehicle to grow your business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors to your website, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting new ”how to” tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress and expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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Information Sources:
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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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group