This blog post is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help small business owners grow online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present a number of surprising facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Figures
Here is a summary of what we will cover:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows significantly everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world are powered 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 content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% 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. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress every day.
- The WordPress application is regularly updated to address bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can do using WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, edit and manage all content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has grown to be the widely-used self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress CMS usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP 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 today are powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so often.
For example, at the time this article was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above numbers represents only the latest 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 grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will no doubt see a much higher figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress developer team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress version releases are traditionally named after Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of businesses and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Popular corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress.org Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, companies and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Coca-Cola France, Boardshorts.com, Groupe Renault, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Pixies, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, Katie Couric, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Amnesty International Korea, 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 the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain names and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for running some form of business.
- 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per 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 posts, we examine the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WordPress plugins for free …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For a detailed article about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress free themes directory …
(WP free themes repository)
We have published a detailed article about WordPress themes here:
WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WP languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …
(WP-related 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 Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of WordPress 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, 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 choice when you need a platform for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing lots of tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
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Information Sources:
The above statistics 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