This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help small businesses grow and succeed online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, we present some surprising WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Market Share Of WordPress
Below is a summary of what you will learn in this article:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows significantly 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 using a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is worked on by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress software is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most popular 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 are home-based. 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, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] 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 …
(WordPress 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 and blogs today are being built on the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download numbers represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions in current 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 page, you should expect to see a significantly higher download number … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress development team 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 updates to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress version releases are traditionally named after famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
In a nutshell, all types of businesses and people from all walks of life use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Global brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even countries are using WordPress blogs …
WP Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, institutions and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Google Ventures, Glad, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Kobe Bryant, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, 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 & News Media: Time Inc., The Australian, InStyle News, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, 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 domains and freely 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress publishes a live map showing the latest user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In later tutorials, we will explain the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins for free from the WordPress plugins repository …
(WP plugin repository)
For a detailed article 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 …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
We have written a detailed article about WP themes here:
WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all WordPress 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see, the dominance of WordPress is predicted to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will address the following:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing new tutorials and practical tips and examples of how you can use WordPress and expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.
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Information 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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