This article is part of an article series designed to help small businesses succeed online with the WordPress content publishing software.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, we present some statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Facts And Figures
Below is a summary of what this blog post will cover:
- 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 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 sites worldwide using a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application each day.
- WordPress is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
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. It is currently the most downloaded self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WP CMS usage statistics:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress 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 websites and blogs are being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above numbers represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even a newer version, as WordPress 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 update versions to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress updates are named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Global corporations, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, colleges, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Coca-Cola France, DC Diaper Bank, GDF SUEZ, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Time Inc., New York Post, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (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 domain names and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business 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 externally-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 Worldwide
In other posts, we will discuss the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over almost 40,000 free plugins from the WordPress plugin repository …
(WP plugin repository)
For a detailed article about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WP themes at no cost from the WordPress free theme repository …
(WP theme repository)
For more information about themes see this post:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects 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. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than 37 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times as much as Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 33,000 users who responded to the survey stated that they make a full-time living off WordPress. 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 by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other articles, we will cover the following:
- Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a platform to grow your small business online,
- Over 50 compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing many tutorials and practical tips of how to use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
References:
The above figures 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
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)