This blog post is part of an article series aimed at helping small businesses grow and succeed online using the WordPress content publishing application.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this article, you will learn some statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Useful Facts And Statistics
In short:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows significantly every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core program is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
- WordPress can deliver your 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 plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, modify and manage all content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has grown to become the largest self-hosted blogging tool 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest statistics on WordPress:
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 and more websites and blogs are now powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is 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 download figures represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest version …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post 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 should expect to see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress development team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available over 100 new updates to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress upgrades are named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
Who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All different kinds of companies and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Global corporations, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress …
WordPress.org Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Google Ventures, Glad, Method Products, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, The Meredith Vieira Show, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Mötley Crüe, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Tribune Media, The New Yorker, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, 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 on their domain and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing or sales purposes.
- 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map showing user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In other articles, we will address the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 WP plugins at no cost …
(WordPress free plugins repository)
We have published a comprehensive article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress theme repository …
(WordPress theme directory)
For more information about themes see this post:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 33,000 WP users who answered 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 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 between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see from the above facts and figures, the dominance of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.
In other articles, we will explore the following areas in more detail:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide loads of tutorials and practical examples and tips of how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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Sources:
The above statistics 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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