This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow online using the WordPress CMS platform.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present some statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
WordPress: Facts And Statistics
A brief summary:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: 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 or blog.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly everyday.
- 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 sites using a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually worked on by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress every day.
- The WordPress core software is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve both its usage 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 practically no limit to what you can do using WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage all content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most popular 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 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 Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress.com unique views. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP CMS usage stats:
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 dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites and blogs are now powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this post was published, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP 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 were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will no doubt see a significantly higher download number … 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 software updates to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress updates are traditionally named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Leading brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, universities, government sectors, local organizations – even countries are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WordPress Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, institutions and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Sony Music, Glad, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, The Rolling Stones, Blondie, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, Bates College, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Time Inc., Time.com, InStyle News, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Chicago Weather Center, Slow Food Italia, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain and customized 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog 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.com – Activity
In later articles, we discuss the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins at no cost from the WordPress free plugins directory …
(WP plugin directory)
For more information about WordPress plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress themes directory …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
We have published a great article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
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 SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-seven million …
(WP 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, one quarter of all 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 median 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.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide loads of step-by-step tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
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Information Sources:
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
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