This article is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping small businesses grow and succeed online using the WordPress content publishing platform.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn some WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Statistics About WordPress
In short:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (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 a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly 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 sites that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 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 as 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 the WordPress software each day.
- The WordPress application is updated on a regular basis to address bugs and improve its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
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 users to add, modify and manage all content on their website.
WordPress began 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 blogging tool 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following WordPress usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage statistics. 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 sites are powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the current 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 upgraded their WP installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will no doubt see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress developer team 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 update versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version releases are named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all types of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Global brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, universities, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress …
WP Website Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Glad, Groupe Renault, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Kobe Bryant, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, New York Post, IMC TV, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community 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 offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domains and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business uses.
- 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 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In other articles, we present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free WordPress plugins from the WordPress plugin directory …
(WP plugin directory)
For more information about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress themes repository …
(WordPress.org free themes directory)
We have written a great article about themes here:
WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WP languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of 33,000 WP 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, the dominance of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will cover the following areas:
- Why WordPress is the best option when it comes to choosing a platform to grow your business online,
- Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting ongoing step-by-step tutorials and tips on how you can use WordPress to expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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Sources:
The information for this article 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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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)