This article is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping business owners and non-technical users succeed online with the WordPress CMS.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present a number of WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: Usage And Popularity
A brief summary:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. 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 that use a content management system are driven 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. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress each day.
- The WordPress application is updated on a regular basis to eliminate bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can build using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage content on their website.
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 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 being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WordPress CMS usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS 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 and blogs today are being built on WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their 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 site, expect to see a much higher download figure … perhaps even a newer version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available to users over one hundred new update versions since 2003 …
(Over one hundred 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)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates have a tradition of being named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
Who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All different kinds of organizations and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Global brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, institutions and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Coca-Cola France, Boardshorts.com, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, The Australian, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, Slow Food Italia, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Amnesty International Korea, 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 on their own domain and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for marketing and promoting businesses.
- 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 posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Around The World
In other tutorials, we will look at the difference 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 free WordPress plugins …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes for free …
(WP theme directory)
We have published a great article about themes here:
Using WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WP 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. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all WordPress users who answered 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 designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, the growth and popularity of WordPress is expected to continue for many years to come.
In other articles, we will cover the following areas of WordPress in detail:
- Why WordPress is the smartest option when it comes to choosing a platform to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic to your website, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing loads of tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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References:
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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