This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help small businesses grow and succeed online using WordPress.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present a number of impressive WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their websites and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Facts And Figures
Here is a summary of what you will learn in this post:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide are built with 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 that use a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software every day.
- The WordPress application is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what type of site you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical website owners to add, edit and manage content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is currently the most popular self-hosted CMS application 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 are home-based. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WordPress usage figures:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP 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 sites are now being powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information changes so often.
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 download number 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 …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a much higher number of downloads … perhaps even an updated version, as WordPress 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 software versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version releases 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.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All different types of enterprises and people use WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Well-known corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, community organizations – even nations use WordPress …
WordPress.org Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Google Ventures, Glad, Dassault Aviation, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, Lily Allen, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Blondie, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Bates College, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Tribune Media, The Australian, Facebook Newsroom, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domains and 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, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog 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.com – Live Users WorldWide
In later tutorials, we will present the main 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 plugins for free from the WordPress free plugins repository …
(WordPress free plugins directory)
For more information about WordPress plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WordPress themes from the WordPress free theme directory …
(WP free themes directory)
We have written a detailed article about WordPress themes here:
WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of WordPress users who participated in 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best vehicle for growing your business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic to your site, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide many ”how to” tutorials and actual examples and tips on how to use WordPress and expand your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
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Sources:
The above figures 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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