This article is part of an article series designed to help you grow a successful business online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn a number of 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.
Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage
In short:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number is growing everyday.
- 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 using a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
- WordPress is continually being updated to address 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.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical users to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the widely-used 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
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 …
(WordPress CMS 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 websites and blogs today are using the WordPress CMS platform.
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 post was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figure represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest version …
(WordPress versions in current 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 page, you will no doubt see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over 100 new update versions to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress releases are named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All different types of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Leading brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, colleges, government sectors, humanitarian organizations – even nations use WordPress to run their official websites …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people who use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Google Ventures, Boardshorts.com, Groupe Renault, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Tribune Media, The New Yorker, InStyle News, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses 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 set up for commercial applications.
- 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).
You can see a live map showing user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In other posts, we compare the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free plugins …
(WP plugin directory)
For more information about WordPress plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 WordPress themes at no cost …
(WordPress free themes directory)
We have published a great article about WP themes here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WP languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 37 million …
(WordPress-related 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, one quarter of all WordPress users who responded to 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 average 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.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can 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 in detail:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your business online,
- Over fifty 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 platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing new step-by-step tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress and grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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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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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum