This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help small businesses succeed online using the WordPress content publishing platform.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn a number of surprising facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
Statistics About WordPress Usage
The short version:
- 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 hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over sixty 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 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 websites that use a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- The WordPress core application is continually being 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 seventy international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress Market Dominance
A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the largest 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 its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique views. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following figures on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS usage stats. 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 with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this article was published, this is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download numbers represents only the latest 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 article was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a significantly higher download number … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress developer 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 100 new software versions to date …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress version releases are named in honor of Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
In a nutshell, all types of enterprises and people from all walks of life use WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Popular brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, colleges, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries are using WordPress sites …
WP Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Bata, Public Storage Canada, Dassault Aviation, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, Kobe Bryant, Howie Mandel, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Media: Tribune Media, The Australian, IMC TV, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domains and customized 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts every second (around 1.5 million 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 Worldwide
In other posts, we will address the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins at no cost …
(WordPress.org free plugins directory)
For more information about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 WordPress themes at no cost …
(WP free themes directory)
We have written a detailed article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress language translations)
WordPress Searches
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty 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 Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of WP users who participated in the survey stated 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can see, the growth of WordPress is predicted to continue for many years to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your business online,
- Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors to your site, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide ongoing ”how to” tutorials and great examples and tips of how you can use WordPress and expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
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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