This blog post is part of a multi-part series of articles designed to help you grow a successful business online.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, we present some WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their websites and blogs and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Some Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage
Below is a summary of what you will learn in this article:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (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 significantly every day.
- 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 websites worldwide using a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
- The WordPress application is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy 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 using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
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 website owners to add, edit and manage content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the largest self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …
(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 CMS usage stats. 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 and more websites and blogs today are using the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest version …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
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 much higher download number … 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 one hundred new software versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress version updates are typically named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all different kinds of businesses and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Leading corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, colleges, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, companies and people who use WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Bata, Boardshorts.com, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Nancy Pelosi, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Blondie, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Thrive Magazine, The New Yorker, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, Slow Food Italia, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and 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 belonging to the WordPress network (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).
WordPress publishes a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In other posts, we will compare the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins at no cost from the WordPress free plugin repository …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
For a detailed article about WordPress plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress free themes directory …
(WordPress theme repository)
For more information about WP themes go here:
WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of users who responded to the survey stated that they make a full-time living off WordPress. 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 job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the statistics presented above, WordPress is bound for continued growth for many years to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform for growing your business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing loads of tutorials and examples of how you can use WordPress to grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.
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Information Sources:
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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