This blog post is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping small business owners grow online with the WordPress CMS.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present a number of impressive WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Usage And Popularity
The short version:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 sites worldwide using a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality each day.
- The WordPress application is continually being 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 WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can build with WordPress.
WordPress CMS 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 users to add, edit and manage all content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has grown to become the largest self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted] unique monthly 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 …
(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 websites and blogs are now being built with the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even 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 site, you should expect to see a significantly 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.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available to users over one hundred new updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates are named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All different types of organizations and people use WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Global corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, universities, government sectors, community organizations – even countries use WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites and blogs …
WP Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, companies and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Coca-Cola France, Dole, Groupe Renault, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Time Inc., Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain and 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, blogs that are part of 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 showing user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress.com – Activity
In other articles, we compare 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 plugins at no cost …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress free theme repository …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
For more information about WordPress themes see this post:
Using WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 WP users who answered the survey said 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.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS market.
In other blog posts, we will address the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle to grow your business online,
- Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing ongoing step-by-step tutorials and great examples of how you can use WordPress to expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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References:
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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