This blog post is part of an article series designed to help small businesses grow and succeed online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present some WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Usage About WordPress
In short:
- WordPress began 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 application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 websites worldwide using a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application each day.
- The WordPress core application is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve its features 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 WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can build using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical website owners to add, modify and manage all 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 blogging tool 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com unique views. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP usage figures:
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 usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites and blogs are being built on WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that 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 written, here is the 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 updated their installations to the latest version …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a much higher figure … perhaps even an updated version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new update versions since 2003 …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress releases are typically named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All types of companies and people from all walks of life use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Large brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, colleges, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even nations are using WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Factory Jackson, Glad, GDF SUEZ, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Kylie Minogue, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, Katie Couric, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, The Australian, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as 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 in their own domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business uses.
- 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 per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com publishes a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Live Activity
In later articles, we compare the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free WP plugins from the WordPress plugin directory …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
We have published a great article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress free themes directory …
(WP free themes directory)
We have published a great article about WordPress themes here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 37 million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all 33,000 WordPress users who participated in the survey said 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 around 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 around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the above information, 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 cover the following areas of WordPress in more detail:
- Why WordPress is the best vehicle for growing 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 platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing ongoing step-by-step tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress to expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
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://wptrainme.com
- 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
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum