This article is part of a series of articles designed to help you understand how the WordPress platform can help your business succeed online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Usage And Market Share
The quick version:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: 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 installing a new WordPress website.
- There are 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 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 driven by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is updated on a regular basis to eliminate bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance 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 site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most downloaded self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of sites 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 with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress CMS usage statistics:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage statistics. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more sites are using the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figures represents only the most recent 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)
Even 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 figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new software versions to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress updates are named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different types of businesses and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Well-known corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, colleges, government department sites, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites …
WordPress.org Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, organizations and people who use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Sony Music, Glad, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Pixies, Justin Bieber, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, Kobe Bryant, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers 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 on their domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing activities.
- 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress.com publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In later tutorials, we will present the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free plugins …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
We have written a great article about WordPress plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 themes for free …
(WP free themes directory)
We have written a great article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages 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”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of WP 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 developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the above facts and figures, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.
In other articles, we will address the following areas of WordPress in detail:
- Why WordPress is the smartest option in most situations when it comes to choosing 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 WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic to your site, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting loads of step-by-step tutorials and actual examples and tips of how you can use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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References:
The information for this article 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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