This article is part of an article series 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 article, you will learn a number of impressive WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their websites and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
Statistics About WordPress
In short:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (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 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 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 using a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress is worked on by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is regularly updated 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 70 international languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can build with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, modify and manage content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by 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 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique monthly views. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress CMS usage:
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 dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites are now being built with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was published, this is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their WP installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a much higher download number … perhaps even a newer 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 made available to users over one hundred new update versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress releases are named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different types of businesses and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Leading corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations use WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress.org Blog Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Factory Jackson, Glad, Method Products, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, Katie Couric, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., The Australian, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: 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 own domains and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business sites.
- 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map showing user activity across its hosted platform …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Activity
In later posts, we compare the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins for free from the WordPress free plugins directory …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes at no cost from the WordPress free themes repository …
(WordPress themes directory)
We have published a great article about WordPress themes here:
Using WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international 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 searches per month 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 around thirty-five million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched five times more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% 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 …
According to Upwork.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see from the statistics presented above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, we will address the following:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Over 50 reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting lots of step-by-step tutorials and actual examples on how to use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and website design.
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References:
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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