This blog post is part of a detailed series of articles aimed at helping small businesses succeed online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of impressive facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Usage And Popularity
In short:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 23 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 worldwide. This number grows significantly every day.
- 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 CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core application is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage all content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has grown to be the most popular self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. 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 …
(WordPress CMS 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 are being powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a much higher download number … 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 one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress updates are typically named after Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of companies and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Popular corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government department sites, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …
WP Site Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Factory Jackson, Boardshorts.com, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Kobe Bryant, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The Australian, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, São Paulo Carnival, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business applications.
- 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 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In later tutorials, we look at the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WordPress plugins at no cost from the WordPress plugins repository …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
We have published a comprehensive article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress themes repository …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
We have written a great article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
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”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 WordPress users who answered the survey stated that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. 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 designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, 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 an ideal vehicle to grow your business online,
- Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors to your site, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing lots of tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress and expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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References:
The information for this post was 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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