This blog post is part of an article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users grow and succeed online.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of surprising WordPress usage statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Some Surprising Facts And Figures About WordPress
Here is a summary of what this post will cover:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers 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 60 million installations of WordPress. This number grows significantly everyday.
- 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 driven by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress 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 work on developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
- WordPress is regularly updated to fix bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
In simple terms, 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 owners 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. Since then, it has grown to be the most popular self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform 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 the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly views. 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 …
(WP 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 websites and blogs today are using the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download number represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will see a much higher download figure … perhaps even a different version, as WordPress 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 updates since 2003 …
(Over 100 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 updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress releases have a tradition of being named in honor of well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who isn’t using WordPress? All kinds of enterprises and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about everything under the sun.
Popular brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, community organizations – even countries use WordPress to publish web content and run their official websites and blogs …
WordPress Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, organizations and people who use WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Factory Jackson, YRC Freight, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Vogue, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Rush, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, The Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Washington University’s School of Law, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, Facebook Newsroom, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domains and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business use.
- More than half of all WordPress users use the hosted version on WordPress.com
- In 2014, blogs belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog 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) – Live Activity
In other articles, we will cover the main 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 plugins …
(WP plugin directory)
For a detailed article about plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes at no cost from the WordPress free themes repository …
(WordPress.org themes repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about themes here:
Using WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 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. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than 37 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of 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 around US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, the dominance of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will cover the following areas in more detail:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted traffic, increase conversions, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing lots of tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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References:
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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