This blog post is part of a comprehensive multi-part series of articles designed to help you understand how the WordPress platform can help your small business achieve its business goals online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, we present some statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to power their business websites and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Usage About WordPress
Below is a summary of what you will learn in this blog post:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress site.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing everyday.
- 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 sites worldwide that use a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 35 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving the WordPress application on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the largest self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of websites and seen 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com 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 …
(WP 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 are now powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above number represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you should expect to see a much higher download figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress development community 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 one hundred new updates to date …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates named after famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress upgrades are named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
A better question is who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All kinds of businesses and people from all walks of life use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Leading brands, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, colleges, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress blogs …
WordPress.org Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, organizations and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Public Storage Canada, Groupe Renault, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Dave Matthews Band, Channing Tatum, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, 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 prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts per 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 Users WorldWide
In later articles, we will look at the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free plugins …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For a detailed article about plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 themes at no cost …
(WordPress.org theme directory)
For a detailed article about themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WP plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than thirty-five million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of WordPress 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 by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the facts and figures presented above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, we will address the following areas of WordPress in great detail:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform to grow your small business online,
- Over 50 reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide loads of step-by-step tutorials and tips on how to use WordPress and grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.
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Sources:
The above figures 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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