This blog post is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help small businesses grow and succeed online with the WordPress platform.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present a number of facts and figures 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 use WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Statistics
In short:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows significantly everyday.
- 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 websites using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress 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. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress each day.
- The WordPress core functionality is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its features 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 WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, edit 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 widely-used self-hosted blogging tool 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 software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique views. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WP usage statistics:
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 market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more sites today are being built with the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest version …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a significantly higher download number … perhaps even an updated 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 released over one hundred new updates to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress version updates are named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 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 Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different types of businesses and people use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Large brands, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, universities, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even countries use WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, institutions and people who use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Sony Music, Dole, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, Facebook Newsroom, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domains and customized 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, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In other posts, we will present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WordPress plugins at no cost …
(WordPress.org free plugins directory)
We have published a great article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes for free …
(WP themes directory)
For a detailed article about WordPress themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WordPress 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 Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of users who answered 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the facts and figures above, the dominance of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle for growing your business online,
- Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing many tutorials and tips of how to use WordPress and expand your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
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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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