This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small businesses grow and succeed online with the WordPress platform.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, we present a number of WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Usage About WordPress
Here is a summary of what you will learn in this article:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (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 installing a new WordPress site.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 worldwide using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is continually being 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 international languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what can be built with WordPress.
WordPress Usage
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical 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. It is currently 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 being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest stats on WordPress:
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 usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more sites today are being built on the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, this 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 sites to the latest release …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a significantly higher download number … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress development team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new software versions to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress releases are typically named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 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.
Well-known corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Bata, YRC Freight, Panic, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Lily Allen, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Mötley Crüe, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, Facebook Newsroom, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, 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 clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain and freely 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In other tutorials, we will cover the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free plugins …
(WP plugin repository)
We have published a comprehensive article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress theme repository …
(WordPress.org theme directory)
We have written a detailed article about WordPress themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of WordPress users who participated in 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see, WordPress is poised for continued growth for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will address the following:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle to grow your business online,
- Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide new ”how to” tutorials and practical tips and examples on how you can use WordPress and grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
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References:
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
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