This blog post is part of a comprehensive multi-part series of articles designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow and succeed online using the WordPress CMS platform.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this article, you will learn some statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their websites and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
Some Useful Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage
The brief version:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every 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 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 websites that use a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress each day.
- The WordPress software is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
- WordPress 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
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical website owners 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 largest self-hosted blogging tool 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 WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo.com, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WP CMS usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP 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 are now being powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was published, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download numbers represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest release …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, expect to see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even a newer 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 100 new updates since 2003 …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress upgrades are named in honor of well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- 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 types of enterprises and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Leading corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, universities, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even nations use WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Google Ventures, Boardshorts.com, Panic, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Mötley Crüe, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, The Australian, Facebook Newsroom, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new 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.com – Live Activity
In later posts, we discuss the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins at no cost from the WordPress free plugin repository …
(WP plugin directory)
We have written a comprehensive article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes for free …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
For more information about WordPress themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches 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 37 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all 33,000 WP users who responded to 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS arena.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors to your site, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many step-by-step tutorials and actual examples of how to use WordPress and expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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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
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