This article is part of a detailed multi-part series of articles aimed at helping small businesses succeed online using the WordPress content publishing software.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn a number of impressive facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Statistics And Popularity
Here is a summary of what you will learn in this blog post:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (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 a new WordPress website.
- There are well 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 powered 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 worldwide that use a CMS application are built with WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is worked on by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress software 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 languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what type of site you can build with WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, modify and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has grown to 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 are home-based. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest figures on WordPress CMS usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP 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 and blogs today are being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, 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 version …
(WP versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even 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, expect to see a significantly higher number of downloads … 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 released over one hundred new software versions to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Curiously enough, all major WordPress updates are traditionally named after well-known Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All different types of businesses and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Well-known brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous actors, colleges, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress blogs …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of businesses, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Bata, YRC Freight, Method Products, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Ariana Grande, Lily Allen, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Riverdance, William Shatner, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Bates College, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain and customized 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 belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 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.com – Activity
In other posts, we discuss the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress plugins repository …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
For more information about WordPress plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 WP themes at no cost from the WordPress free themes repository …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
We have written a comprehensive article about WP themes here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages in addition to English …
(WordPress.org language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WP plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 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 average hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork.com, the typical job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, the growth and popularity of WordPress is expected to continue for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, we will explore the following areas in detail:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle for growing your small business online,
- Over 50 compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed look at the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors to your site, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll provide ongoing tutorials and useful examples on how to use WordPress to grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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Information Sources:
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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