This article is part of a multi-part article series designed to help you grow a successful business online with the WordPress CMS platform.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn 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 people and businesses are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Market Share Of WordPress
The brief version:
- 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 software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for 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 around the world 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 content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is worked on by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is continually being updated to address bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress Usage
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical 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. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique visitors. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following statistics on WordPress usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS 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 and more sites today are using WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figure represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest release …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, expect to see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress development team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available over 100 new software updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress releases have a tradition of being named after famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All different types of businesses and people are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Well-known corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even nations use WordPress …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, institutions and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Sony Music, Glad, Groupe Renault, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, Mötley Crüe, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, New York Post, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Chicago Weather Center, 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 software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domains and freely 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, WordPress blogs (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).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World
In later posts, we compare the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress free plugins repository …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
We have written a detailed article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WP themes for free …
(WordPress.org themes repository)
For a detailed article about WordPress themes see this post:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all 33,000 WordPress users who answered 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, the growth of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best option in most cases when it comes to choosing a platform to grow your business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing new ”how to” tutorials and actual examples of how to use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
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Information Sources:
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://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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