This blog post is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you grow a successful business online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
Facts And Figures About WordPress
Here is a summary of what we will cover:
- 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 installing a new WordPress site.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows 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 sites that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application each day.
- The WordPress software is continually being updated to address bugs and improve both its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
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 website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has grown to be the most downloaded self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo.com …
(WordPress.com unique monthly views. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following figures on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage statistics. 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 and more websites today are powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above numbers 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 article was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will no doubt see a significantly higher download figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress developer community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new software versions to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress version updates are traditionally named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- 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.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
A better question is who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All different types of businesses and people are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Global brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, colleges, government department sites, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Glad, Groupe Renault, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Nancy Pelosi, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., The New Yorker, FiveThirtyEight, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, 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 platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain names and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business sites.
- 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 blog posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map that shows user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In later articles, we look at the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free WordPress plugins …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
We have published a detailed article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes for free …
(WordPress free themes repository)
For a detailed article about WordPress themes go here:
Translations Of WordPress
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 monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 33,000 WordPress users who answered the survey stated 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)
As you can see, WordPress is set for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, we will cover the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is the best vehicle to grow your business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more visitors to your website, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide lots of tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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References:
The above figures 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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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now