This blog post is part of a comprehensive multi-part article series designed to help small business owners grow online.
For an overview 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.
WordPress: Facts And Statistics
The short version:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (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 website or blog.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 using a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% 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 around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- 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 CMS Usage
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 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 largest 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 and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress.com unique visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest stats on WordPress CMS usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS usage stats. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more sites are now being built with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, here is the 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 updated their installations to the latest release …
(WordPress 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 were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a significantly higher download number … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new update versions to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress upgrades have a tradition of being named after Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All kinds of businesses and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Leading brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who are using WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Sony Music, Public Storage Canada, Dassault Aviation, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Katie Couric, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Chicago Weather Center, Slow Food Italia, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing or sales purposes.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, blogs belonging to 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 posts per day).
You can see a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity
In later posts, we will explain the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WordPress plugins for free from the WordPress plugin repository …
(WordPress free plugins repository)
We have published a great article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress themes repository …
(WordPress themes repository)
We have written a great article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the information above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your small business online,
- Over 50 reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing lots of step-by-step tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress to grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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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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