This blog post is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping business owners and non-technical users grow online with the WordPress CMS platform.
For an overview of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, we present a number of surprising WordPress facts and figures 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 businesses and people are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Market Share Of WordPress
A brief summary:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted application (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 a new WordPress site.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide 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 sites worldwide that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built by volunteers. People from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is continually being 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 70 international languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easy for non-technical users to add, edit and manage all content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, it has grown to be the most downloaded 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 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 visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo.com, Twitter, and eBay …
(WordPress [hosted] monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Consider the following WP usage statistics:
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 and blogs are now being powered by WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is quite difficult because the information changes 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 most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their WP installations to the latest release …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a much higher figure … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress developer team continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available to users over 100 new software updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress upgrades are typically named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
Who doesn’t use WordPress nowadays? All kinds of organizations and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Global brands, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress sites …
WordPress.org Site Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people who have chosen to use WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Factory Jackson, Boardshorts.com, GDF SUEZ, Groupe Vivendi, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Kylie Minogue, Justin Bieber, The Sacramento Ballet, Snoop Dogg, William Shatner, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, Bates College, Carleton University, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Time Inc., Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Olympic Committee, Maryland National Road Association, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domain names and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for commercial use.
- 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).
WordPress.com publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In later tutorials, we will present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over 37,000 free plugins …
(WordPress.org plugin directory)
We have written a detailed article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free themes …
(WP themes repository)
For a detailed article about WP themes go here:
WordPress Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 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. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around 30 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all 33,000 WordPress users who responded to the survey stated that they make a full-time living off WordPress. An earlier survey conducted by WordPress (2012) also found that the average hourly rate of WordPress projects is around US$50.
You can find WordPress developers and designers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see from the above information, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform for growing your small business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a detailed breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors to your site, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be providing ongoing step-by-step tutorials and tips on how to use WordPress and expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and website design.
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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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