This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow online using the WordPress CMS platform.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this article, you will learn a number of WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Statistics About WordPress Usage
In short:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (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 website.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number increases 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 sites worldwide that use a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers 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 almost no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
In simple terms, 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 all content on their site.
WordPress started 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 application 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 with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following WordPress usage figures:
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 usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites today are using the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download number represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest release …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, expect to see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even a different version, as WordPress 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 since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress updates are traditionally named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different types of companies and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Popular brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress.org Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Google Ventures, Dole, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The Australian, InStyle News, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users 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 domains and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business sites.
- 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 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
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 Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins for free …
(WP free plugins repository)
For more information about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress themes repository …
(WordPress.org theme repository)
We have written a great article about themes here:
WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-seven 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 than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire at 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 set for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas:
- Why WordPress is the best option in most situations when it comes to choosing a platform for growing your business online,
- Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing loads of ”how to” tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress and grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website 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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)