This blog post is part of a detailed multi-part series of articles designed to help you understand why the WordPress platform can help your small business achieve its online goals.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present a number of facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their websites and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Statistics About WordPress Usage
A brief summary:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly every day.
- 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 websites worldwide that use a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually worked on by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core application is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can do using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
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, edit and manage 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 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo.com …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following stats on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS usage statistics. 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 websites are being built with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this article was published, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over 100 new updates since 2003 …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress version updates are named after famous 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.3.4 = 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 from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Global brands, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, organizations and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, Glad, Panic, Groupe Vivendi, Vogue, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, William Shatner, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Fortune, The New Yorker, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domains and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business use.
- 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In later posts, we present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free plugins from the WordPress plugin repository …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For a detailed article about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 WordPress themes at no cost …
(WP free themes repository)
For a detailed article about WordPress themes go here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 37 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of WP users who responded to 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the above information, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other blog posts, we will cover the following areas in detail:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform to grow your small business online,
- Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic to your website, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing many tutorials and tips of how to use WordPress and expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
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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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