This article is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping you understand how WordPress can help your business achieve its online goals.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present some facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
WordPress Usage Statistics
A brief summary:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: 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 a new WordPress website.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows 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 worldwide using a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress each day.
- The WordPress core program is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can build using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the largest self-hosted CMS application in the world, used on millions of sites and seen 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 being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress.com unique visitors. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following figures on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage statistics. 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 sites are being built with 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 article was written, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a significantly 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 one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress releases are typically named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All different kinds of companies and people are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Popular brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, colleges, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even countries use WordPress-powered sites …
WP Website Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, companies and people who use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Bata, Public Storage Canada, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Pixies, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, Time.com, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business sites.
- 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 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress.com publishes a live map showing user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity
In other tutorials, we compare the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free plugins from the WordPress free plugins repository …
(WordPress plugin repository)
For more information about WordPress plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WordPress themes at no cost from the WordPress free themes repository …
(WordPress theme repository)
For more information about themes see this post:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WordPress 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 Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all WordPress 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 at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is 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.
In other articles, we will address the following areas of WordPress in detail:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing ongoing tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)