This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping business owners and non-technical users succeed online using the WordPress content publishing software.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present a number of statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Statistics And Market Share
In short:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 worldwide that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress every day.
- The WordPress core functionality is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress can deliver your 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 can be built with WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
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 users to add, modify and manage content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the most popular self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 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 Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following statistics on WordPress CMS usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS 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 and more websites today are powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes 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 download number represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you should expect to see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress 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 software versions to date …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress upgrades are named in honor of famous 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.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different types of businesses and people use WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Global brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, companies and people who use WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Factory Jackson, YRC Freight, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Pixies, Justin Bieber, Dallas Mavericks, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Kobe Bryant, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Fortune, Time.com, Facebook Newsroom, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, 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 application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing activities.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress provides a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In other articles, we will explain the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WordPress plugins for free from the WordPress plugin repository …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
For more information about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WP themes at no cost from the WordPress theme directory …
(WP themes repository)
We have published a detailed article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
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”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 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 average 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 around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the above information, 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 platform to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing lots of step-by-step tutorials and practical examples of how to use WordPress and grow 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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