This blog post is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you understand how the WordPress platform can help your small business achieve its business goals online with the WordPress platform.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn a number of facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
Some Useful Statistics About WordPress
A brief summary:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows 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 sites using a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application each day.
- The WordPress core functionality is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress 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 owners to add, edit and manage content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has grown to become the most downloaded self-hosted CMS application in the world, used on millions of websites 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WP CMS usage statistics:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS 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 and more websites today 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 information changes so often.
For example, at the time this article was written, this is the current 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 sites 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 increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, expect to see a much higher download figure … perhaps even a different version, as WordPress 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 updates to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates are named after famous 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.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
Who isn’t using WordPress? All different kinds of organizations and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Large corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, universities, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even nations use WordPress-powered sites …
WP Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, companies and people who are using WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Boardshorts.com, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Lily Allen, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Mötley Crüe, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and freely 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map showing the latest user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In other tutorials, we will explain 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 almost 40,000 free WP plugins from the WordPress free plugin directory …
(WordPress plugin directory)
For a detailed article about WordPress plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress themes repository …
(WordPress.org themes repository)
We have published a comprehensive article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WP languages)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched five times as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all WP users who participated in 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, the dominance of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other articles, we will cover the following:
- Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your business online,
- Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic to your site, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing lots of tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)