This blog post is part of a detailed series of articles aimed at helping you grow a successful business online with the WordPress content publishing application.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present some WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Statistics About WordPress
The quick version:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (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 installing a new WordPress site.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world are driven 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 websites worldwide that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is updated on a regular basis to eliminate bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
In simple terms, 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 users to add, modify and manage all content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the largest self-hosted content management system (CMS) in the world, used on millions of sites and accessed 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 being a distributed company with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …
(WordPress [hosted] unique visitors. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress usage figures. 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 and blogs today are being built on WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figures represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest release …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a much higher figure … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress developer team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new software versions to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions 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 version updates are typically named after well-known Jazz music artists, 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.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
A better question is who isn’t using WordPress? All different types of companies and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Leading brands, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, educational institutions, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress sites …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, companies and people who use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Public Storage Canada, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, Blondie, Gabriel Iglesias, Russell Brand, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their domains and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial use.
- 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 posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In later tutorials, we will compare the main 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 WordPress plugins …
(WP free plugins repository)
For more information about WordPress plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 WP themes at no cost from the WordPress free theme directory …
(WP free themes directory)
For more information about themes see this post:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 37 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 WordPress 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 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 cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the information presented above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS market.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle for growing your business online,
- Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic to your site, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting ongoing step-by-step tutorials and practical tips and examples on how you can use WordPress to expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and web design costs.
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References:
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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"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