This article is part of a detailed series of articles aimed at helping you understand why the WordPress CMS can help your small business succeed online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, we present some surprising statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress Usage Statistics
A brief summary:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number increases every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide are built with 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 CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
- WordPress is regularly updated to address bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a web 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. WordPress is now the largest self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest stats on WordPress CMS usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS usage figures. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites are now being built with the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest release …
(WP 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 page, you should expect to see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even a newer version, as WordPress 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 one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress version updates are traditionally named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 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.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Leading corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, universities, government department sites, local organizations – even nations use WordPress to run their official websites and blogs …
WP Site Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, organizations and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Google Ventures, Dole, Panic, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Katie Couric, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., Time.com, InStyle News, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: 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 in their domain names and 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 posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map showing user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In later articles, we cover the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free WP plugins from the WordPress plugins directory …
(WordPress free plugins directory)
We have written a detailed article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress free themes repository …
(WP theme directory)
For more information about WordPress themes go here:
WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than thirty-seven million …
(WordPress-related 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 Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all WordPress 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire at 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 see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS market.
In other blog posts, we will address the following areas in detail:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform for growing your business online,
- Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic to your website, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide ongoing ”how to” tutorials and tips on how to use WordPress to expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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Sources:
The information for this post was 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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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group