This blog post is part of a series of articles aimed at helping you succeed online.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this article, we present some WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress to power their business websites and blogs and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
Statistics And Market Share About WordPress
In short:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly every day.
- 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 websites using a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress software 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 70 languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Usage
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, edit and manage content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most popular 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 its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com unique visits. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following figures on WordPress CMS usage:
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 market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites today are powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so often.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest version …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article 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 number of downloads … perhaps even a newer version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Regarding updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new software updates to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress version releases are traditionally named after Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
In a nutshell, all different types of businesses and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Leading brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the businesses, companies and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, Dole, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Lily Allen, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Mötley Crüe, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, Bates College, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, The New Yorker, IMC TV, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain names and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing or sales purposes.
- 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 blog posts per 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 Around The World
In later posts, we address the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free WordPress plugins …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes for free from the WordPress free theme directory …
(WP free themes repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about WP themes here:
WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects 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. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty-five million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times 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 33,000 WP users who participated in the survey stated that they make a full-time living off WordPress. 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 at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS market.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best platform to grow your small business online,
- Over 50 reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide ongoing step-by-step tutorials and practical examples of how you can use WordPress and expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and web 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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