This blog post is part of an article series designed to help small business owners grow online using the WordPress content publishing platform.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present a number of statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
Facts And Figures About WordPress
A brief summary:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (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 worldwide. This number increases 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 sites using a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely 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 around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
- The WordPress application is updated on a regular basis to eliminate 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.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Usage
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, modify 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. WordPress is now the most downloaded self-hosted content management system (CMS) in the world, used on millions of websites 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 with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo.com, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted] 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 …
(WordPress CMS 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 websites and blogs today are powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data 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 figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest version …
(WP 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 page, you will see a much higher figure … 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 to users over 100 new update versions to date …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress version releases are named after Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different kinds of enterprises and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Leading brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Google Ventures, Boardshorts.com, Panic, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Brian Smith, Usain Bolt, The Rolling Stones, Mötley Crüe, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, Time.com, IMC TV, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Olympic Committee, São Paulo Carnival, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (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 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In later posts, we will compare the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free WordPress plugins from the WordPress plugin repository …
(WordPress free plugins repository)
For a detailed article about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free WordPress themes …
(WordPress theme directory)
We have published a comprehensive article about WordPress themes here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 35 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 nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 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 developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS arena.
In other blog posts, we will address the following areas in detail:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a platform for growing your business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing ongoing step-by-step tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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Information 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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