This article is part of a detailed series of articles designed to help business owners and non-technical users succeed online with the WordPress content publishing platform.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present some WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
Impressive Statistics About WordPress Usage
The brief version:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of 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 website.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing 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 worldwide that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core program is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can build using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
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 easier for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage all content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has become the largest self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following stats on WordPress:
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 dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more sites are now powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so often.
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 download number represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even 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 page, you should expect to see a much 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 released over 100 new software updates since 2003 …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress updates are typically named in honor of well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different types of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Global brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, companies and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Glad, GDF SUEZ, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, Dave Matthews Band, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain names and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress publishes a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress.com – Live Activity
In later tutorials, we cover the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WP plugins for free from the WordPress free plugin directory …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For a detailed article about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WordPress themes …
(WordPress.org themes repository)
We have published a great article about WordPress themes here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 30 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched five times more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of WordPress users who participated in the survey stated that they make a full-time living off WordPress. 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 designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, WordPress is set for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas of WordPress in great detail:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide many step-by-step tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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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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