This blog post is part of a detailed multi-part article series designed to help you grow a successful business online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present some surprising statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their websites and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Usage And Market Share
The brief version:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are well 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 built with 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 worldwide using a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application 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 around the world work on developing and improving WordPress every day.
- The WordPress software is continually being updated to address bugs and improve both its features 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 WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical website owners to add, modify and manage all content on their website.
WordPress began 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 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 Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest statistics 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 and more websites and blogs are being built with the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest release …
(WP versions currently in 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, expect to see a much higher download number … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress community 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 in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available to date)
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 upgrades are traditionally named after Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of companies and people are using WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Giant corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, non-profit organizations – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WP Site Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, companies and people who use WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Bata, Boardshorts.com, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Kobe Bryant, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Bates College, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, InStyle News, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, 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 often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domains and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial activities.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, blogs belonging to 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 posts per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map showing the latest user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In other posts, we will examine the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WordPress plugins for free from the WordPress plugins directory …
(WordPress.org free plugins directory)
For more information about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 themes for free …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
For more information about themes see this post:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy 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 SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 33,000 WP users who responded to the survey stated 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.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the statistics above, the growth of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your small business online,
- Over fifty reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide many ”how to” tutorials and great examples on how to use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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Information Sources:
The above statistics 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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