This article is part of a comprehensive multi-part series of articles designed to help you understand how the WordPress platform can help your business achieve its business goals online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present some WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Some Useful Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage
In short:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (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 sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number increases everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world are powered 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 CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core application is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what type of site you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical users to add, edit and manage content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most popular self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of websites and seen 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 WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique views. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following statistics on WordPress usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP 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 and more sites today are using WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the current 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 updated their sites to the latest version …
(WP versions in current 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 page, you will see a much higher figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress developer team 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 update versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress upgrades have a tradition of being named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of businesses and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Popular corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, universities, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even nations are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Bata, YRC Freight, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, The Meredith Vieira Show, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Snoop Dogg, Kobe Bryant, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Time Inc., The Australian, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain 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, blogs that are part of the WordPress network (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) – Activity Around The World
In other posts, we will address the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free WordPress plugins …
(WP free plugins directory)
For more information about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WP themes for free from the WordPress free theme repository …
(WP free themes repository)
We have published a great article about WordPress themes here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
WordPress Searches Online
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 SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 WordPress users who participated in 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 designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, WordPress is set for continued growth for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle for growing your business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
Information 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
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum