This blog post is part of an article series aimed at helping you understand how the WordPress CMS platform can help your business grow online with WordPress.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn some surprising facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
Statistics About WordPress
The short version:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of 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 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 sites worldwide that use a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed as 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 WordPress every day.
- WordPress is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is virtually no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Dominance
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy 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. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites 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 work from home. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WordPress usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress CMS usage statistics. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more websites are now being powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with statistics on WordPress is quite 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 numbers represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already increased. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, expect to 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 released over one hundred new update versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over 100 new versions of WordPress have been released since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress releases are typically named after Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
Who isn’t using WordPress? All types of businesses and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Giant brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, educational institutions, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress-powered sites …
WP Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, organizations and people using WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, DC Diaper Bank, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Lily Allen, Brian Smith, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Gabriel Iglesias, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Tribune Media, Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, Slow Food Italia, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new 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.com – Activity Around The World
In other posts, we look at the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 plugins for free from the WordPress plugin directory …
(WordPress plugin repository)
We have published a detailed article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free themes …
(WP free themes directory)
For a detailed article about WordPress themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WP searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of 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.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, WordPress is poised for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best option in most situations when it comes to choosing a platform to grow your business online,
- Over fifty compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting new tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress and grow your business online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.
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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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