This article is part of an article series aimed at helping small business owners grow and succeed online with WordPress.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: How Popular Is It? Some Useful Statistics About WordPress
A brief summary:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (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 worldwide. This number increases 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 CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- WordPress is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, edit and manage all content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most downloaded 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest stats on WordPress CMS usage:
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 websites and blogs today are being built on the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite 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 figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you were to 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 a different version, as the WordPress development community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over 100 new software versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress releases are named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of organizations and people from all walks of life use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Well-known corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, educational institutions, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even nations use WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, institutions and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Google Ventures, YRC Freight, Method Products, Group Bouygues, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, William Shatner, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Fortune, New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: 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 on their own domains and freely 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 that are part of the WordPress network (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).
WordPress.com provides a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Activity Worldwide
In other posts, we examine the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress free plugins repository …
(WordPress plugin directory)
For more information about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WP themes …
(WP free themes repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about WP themes here:
WordPress Translations
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 monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than 35 million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 33,000 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 by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, the growth of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will cover the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform for growing your small business online,
- Over 50 reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing loads of tutorials and actual tips and examples on how you can use WordPress and expand your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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Information Sources:
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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