This article is part of a detailed series of articles aimed at helping small businesses grow online with the WordPress content publishing software.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
Some Useful Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage
Here is a summary of what we will cover:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: 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 a new WordPress site.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number is growing 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 driven by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core functionality is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its ease of use 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 plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what type of site you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy 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. It is currently the most popular 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 are home-based. Despite being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com unique visitors. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress usage statistics:
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 dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites are powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so often.
For example, at the time this post was written, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figures represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP 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 increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress developer community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over 100 new software updates to date …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress releases are traditionally named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different kinds of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Leading corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, educational institutions, government department sites, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WordPress.org Site Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Google Ventures, Boardshorts.com, Panic, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Ariana Grande, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, The New Yorker, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as 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 in their domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial use.
- 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 blog 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) – Activity Around The World
In other tutorials, we present the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins for free …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
For more information about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress themes directory …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
We have published a detailed article about themes here:
Using WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects 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. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-seven million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of WP 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 …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the facts and figures above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best platform for growing your business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing loads of step-by-step tutorials and examples on how to use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and web 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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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group