This blog post is part of an article series aimed at helping you grow a successful business online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present a number of WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
Statistics About WordPress Usage
In short:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 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 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 using a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- The WordPress core functionality is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its usage 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 can be built using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
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 content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo.com, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following stats on WordPress:
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 market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites are now powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above 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 in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even 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 page, you should expect to see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress development community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new updates since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress releases have a tradition of being named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 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 everything and anything.
Popular corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress.org Site Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, DC Diaper Bank, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, The Meredith Vieira Show, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, William Shatner, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Time Inc., New York Post, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (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 customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In other articles, we cover the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress plugin directory …
(WP plugin repository)
For a detailed article about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress themes repository …
(WordPress free themes directory)
For a detailed article about themes go here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
WordPress Searches
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 SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all users who responded to the survey stated 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 designers and developers for hire at 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 from the above statistics, WordPress is bound for continued growth for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will address the following:
- Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a vehicle for growing your business online,
- Dozens of great 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 platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide lots of step-by-step tutorials and tips of how to use WordPress and expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website 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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