This blog post is part of a comprehensive multi-part series of articles aimed at helping small business owners grow online.
For more information about 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 people and businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress Usage Statistics
The quick version:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred 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 is growing every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 powered by WordPress.
- Over 37 million searches made each month on Google are 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 continually worked on by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application every day.
- The WordPress software is regularly updated to address 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 WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what someone can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
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 users to add, modify and manage all content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has become the most popular self-hosted blogging tool 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 its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo.com, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following stats on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS usage figures. 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 and more websites are now being built with the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, this is the current 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 …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has made available over one hundred new software versions since 2003 …
(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 updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress upgrades are traditionally named after famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
In a nutshell, all different types of enterprises and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Global corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, DC Diaper Bank, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, Nancy Pelosi, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, William Shatner, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, The Australian, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Olympic Committee, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of 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 in their own domains 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com provides a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity Around The World
In other posts, we will cover the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free plugins from the WordPress plugin directory …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For more information about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress themes directory …
(WordPress theme repository)
We have written a great article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org 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 SEO”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online five times as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all 33,000 WordPress users who answered 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other blog posts, we will explore the following areas of WordPress in great detail:
- Why WordPress is the best option in most cases when it comes to choosing a vehicle for growing your business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing loads of step-by-step tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress and expand your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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Sources:
The information for this post 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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