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In this blog post, you will learn a number of impressive statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress Statistics
In short:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available as 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 over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number increases every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 that use a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core program is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has grown to be the most downloaded self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of sites 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted] unique visitors. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WP usage figures:
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 market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites and blogs are being built on the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so often.
For example, at the time this post was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure 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 …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post 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, you will see a significantly 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.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over 100 new software updates since 2003 …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress version releases are traditionally named after Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Leading brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, community organizations – even nations use WordPress to run their official sites …
WordPress Blog Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, DC Diaper Bank, Groupe Renault, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Katie Couric, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, The New Yorker, Facebook Newsroom, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, Slow Food Italia, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain and freely modified 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map that shows user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World
In other posts, we will discuss the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WordPress plugins at no cost from the WordPress plugin directory …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
We have published a detailed article about WordPress plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress free theme repository …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
We have written a detailed article about themes here:
WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month 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 around 35 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 users who answered the survey stated that they make a full-time living off WordPress. 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 at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, the dominance of WordPress is expected to continue for many years to come.
In other articles, we will cover the following:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors 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 you can use WordPress and grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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Information 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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