This blog post is part of an article series aimed at helping you understand how the WordPress CMS can help your small business grow and succeed online with the WordPress content publishing application.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, we present some WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
Statistics About WordPress Usage
The brief version:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (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 installing a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 websites worldwide that use a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application each day.
- WordPress is regularly updated to address bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application 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. It is currently the most downloaded self-hosted content management system (CMS) in the world, used on millions of sites 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS usage stats. 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 and more websites and blogs are now powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. 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 an updated 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 software updates since 2003 …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress releases have a tradition of being named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all types of enterprises and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Giant brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, community organizations – even nations use WordPress-powered sites …
WP Site Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, institutions and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, Glad, GDF SUEZ, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, The Meredith Vieira Show, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Bates College, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, The Australian, IMC TV, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own 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, blogs that are part of the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress provides a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In later articles, we will look at the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free WordPress plugins from the WordPress plugin repository …
(WP plugin directory)
We have published a great article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free themes …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
For a detailed article about WP themes see this post:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 37 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 33,000 WordPress users who participated in the survey said that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. 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 by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the information above, 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 an ideal vehicle to grow your business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors to your website, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting new ”how to” tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress to expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
Information Sources:
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
***
"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