This article is part of a detailed series of articles aimed at helping business owners and non-technical users grow online using the WordPress CMS.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present some WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Statistics And Market Share
In short:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (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 over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing everyday.
- 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 using a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application each 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 seventy languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can do using WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
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 started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has become the widely-used 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 its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following stats on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS usage stats. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites are now being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so often.
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 download figures represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest release …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will no doubt see a significantly higher download figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress developer community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over 100 new software versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version updates have a tradition of being named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all types of enterprises and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Well-known brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, organizations and people who use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Boardshorts.com, Dassault Aviation, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Ariana Grande, The Meredith Vieira Show, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Mötley Crüe, Gabriel Iglesias, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domains and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business activities.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In later articles, we examine the main differences 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 free WP plugins from the WordPress free plugin repository …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
We have written a great article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free WP themes …
(WordPress free themes directory)
For a detailed article about WordPress themes see this post:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org 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. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-seven million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all users who responded to 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 by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the facts and figures presented above, WordPress is poised for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, we will explore the following:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling 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 marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors to your website, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing many step-by-step tutorials and great tips and examples on how you can use WordPress to grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
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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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