This blog post is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping you grow a successful business online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, 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
A brief summary:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing every day.
- 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 websites that use a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is regularly 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.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
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 easy for non-technical website owners to add, edit and manage all 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 grown to be the most popular self-hosted CMS application 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 with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo.com, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress usage stats:
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 websites are being built with the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded 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 shot up. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a much higher figure … 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.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new software updates to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress releases are named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all kinds of companies and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Popular brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government department sites, local organizations – even countries are using WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Blog Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, companies and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, Dole, Panic, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Nancy Pelosi, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Kobe Bryant, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, IMC TV, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses 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 set up for commercial 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 every second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map showing the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In other posts, we will compare the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free plugins …
(WP plugin repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WP themes at no cost from the WordPress free themes repository …
(WordPress.org themes directory)
For more information about WP themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org 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. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than thirty-seven million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all WP 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 median 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, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the information above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Over 50 compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors to your website, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing lots of ”how to” tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress and expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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References:
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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"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