This article is part of a multi-part series of articles designed to help small business owners succeed online with the WordPress CMS platform.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present a number of surprising WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
Surprising Statistics About WordPress
The brief version:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are well 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 worldwide 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 websites using a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is worked on by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- The WordPress core application is continually being updated to fix 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.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, edit and manage 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 accessed 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 WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(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 …
(WP usage stats. 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 websites and blogs are using the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so often.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the current 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 shot up. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, expect to see a much higher download figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress development community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over 100 new update versions to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress releases are traditionally named in honor of well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All types of enterprises and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Giant corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, educational institutions, government department sites, humanitarian organizations – even countries are using WordPress …
WP Blog Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, institutions and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Bata, Dole, Groupe Renault, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Bates College, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Olympic Committee, Maryland National Road Association, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer to download 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 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 new blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress provides a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Around The World
In later posts, we cover the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress free plugin directory …
(WP free plugins repository)
For a detailed article about WordPress plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WordPress themes at no cost …
(WordPress themes repository)
For more information about WP themes go here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven 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 Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 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 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 around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform to grow your business online,
- Over fifty great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic to your website, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide loads of step-by-step tutorials and tips on how to use WordPress to expand your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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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://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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