This blog post is part of an article series designed to help you grow a successful business online.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn a number of surprising WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses and people are using WordPress today.
Statistics And Usage About WordPress
Here is a summary of what this blog post will cover:
- WordPress started as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are well over sixty million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number increases 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 websites using a content management system are driven by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for terms related to WordPress.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress code is built and improved upon by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress application is continually being updated to address bugs and improve its ease of use and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
- The WordPress repository 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 using WordPress.
WordPress Popularity
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, modify and manage all content on their site.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most downloaded 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 with so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the software) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …
(WordPress.com unique monthly views. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest stats on WordPress usage:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP 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 and more sites are powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that even keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figures represents only the latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their sites to the latest version …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even 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 no doubt see a much higher figure … perhaps even a newer 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 made available to users over one hundred new updates to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new version updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Interestingly enough, all major WordPress upgrades have a tradition of being named in honor of famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
A better question is who doesn’t use WordPress? All different types of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Popular corporations, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, educational institutions, government sectors, non-profit organizations – even countries use WordPress sites …
WordPress Website Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, institutions and people using WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Bata, Public Storage Canada, Method Products, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Garth Brooks, Ariana Grande, Nancy Pelosi, Beyoncé, Usain Bolt, Riverdance, Kobe Bryant, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Milwaukee School of Engineering’s Bridge, Bates College, Salve Regina University, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: Open.NASA.gov, Chicago Weather Center, São Paulo Carnival, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted platform (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 domains and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for marketing and promoting businesses.
- 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that shows the latest user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity
In later posts, we will present the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free plugins from the WordPress free plugin directory …
(WordPress.org plugin repository)
For more information about WordPress plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress theme repository …
(WP themes repository)
We have published a comprehensive article about themes here:
Using WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Additional WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to more than 37 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Developers
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all 33,000 WordPress users who participated in 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork.com, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS market.
In other articles, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle to grow your business online,
- Over 50 reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted traffic to your site, increase conversions, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting ongoing step-by-step tutorials and tips of how to use WordPress and grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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References:
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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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now