This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping you understand why WordPress can help your small business achieve its business goals online using the WordPress CMS platform.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn some statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Some Facts And Figures
Below is a summary of what this article will cover:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (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.
- There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number increases everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world are driven 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 content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is worked on by volunteers. People from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software each day.
- The WordPress software is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve 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.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what you can do using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Usage
A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical website owners to add, edit and manage all content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique visits. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following WP usage statistics:
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 usage, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites are now powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so often.
For example, at the time this post was written, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figures represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their sites to the latest release …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will see a much higher figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress development community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new software versions to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress updates are traditionally named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
Who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All different kinds of organizations and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Giant brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, companies and people who are using WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Sony Music, YRC Freight, Groupe Renault, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Pixies, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, William Shatner, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The Australian, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers 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 in their domain and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for marketing or 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 posts every 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 (Hosted Version) – Activity Around The World
In later posts, we 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 WP plugins from the WordPress plugins directory …
(WP plugin directory)
We have published a detailed article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 WP themes for free …
(WordPress themes repository)
For a detailed article about WordPress themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
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”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty-seven million …
(WordPress 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 than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one 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 median 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 between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the above statistics, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other articles, we will cover the following:
- Why WordPress is the best platform for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic to your site, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting loads of tutorials and tips of how to use WordPress to expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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Information 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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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now