This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help you understand how the WordPress content publishing software can help your business achieve its online goals.
For an overview 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 rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Market Share Of WordPress
Here is a summary of what you will learn in this blog post:
- WordPress began 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 a new WordPress site.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows 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 using a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software every day.
- The WordPress core functionality is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what can be built with WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
In simple terms, 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, modify and manage all content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the widely-used self-hosted blogging tool 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 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 Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WordPress usage stats:
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 dominance, 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 with the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so often.
For example, at the time this article was written, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download number 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 version …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article 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 number of downloads … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress developer community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new updates since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version releases are typically named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
Who isn’t using WordPress? All types of enterprises and people are using WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Leading brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, colleges, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WP Website Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Bata, Public Storage Canada, Groupe Renault, Group Bouygues, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Nancy Pelosi, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domains and customized 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts per 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
In later posts, we will present the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins at no cost …
(WordPress free plugins repository)
For more information about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WP themes …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
We have published a detailed article about WordPress themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages 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. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 WordPress users who responded to 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 developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the facts and figures above, the growth of WordPress is predicted to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best platform for growing your business online,
- Over fifty 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,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors to your site, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide new tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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Information Sources:
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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