This blog post is part of a comprehensive multi-part series of articles designed to help small business owners grow online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn some impressive 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.
WordPress: Facts And Statistics
The brief version:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool 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 site.
- There are well 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 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 that use a content management system are driven 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 built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software every day.
- WordPress is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its usage 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 WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
In simple terms, 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, modify and manage all content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most downloaded self-hosted blogging tool 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 so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP usage stats:
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 dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites are being built on the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the data changes 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 figures represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest release …
(WP versions in current 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, you will no doubt see a significantly higher number of downloads … 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 made available over 100 new updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress upgrades are traditionally named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- 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 Is Using WordPress
In a nutshell, all types of organizations and people are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Large corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, universities, government department sites, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Sony Music, Boardshorts.com, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, The Rolling Stones, William Shatner, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, The Australian, IMC TV, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain names 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In other posts, we will compare the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free plugins from the WordPress plugin repository …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
For more information about WordPress plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free WP themes …
(WP themes directory)
We have written a great article about themes here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than 35 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all WP 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, the growth and popularity of WordPress is predicted to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will explore the following:
- Why WordPress is the best vehicle to grow your business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing many step-by-step tutorials and useful examples and tips on how to use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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Sources:
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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