This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help small businesses grow and succeed online using WordPress.
For more information about of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn 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 websites and blogs and what kind of businesses and people use WordPress today.
Some Facts And Figures About WordPress
A brief summary:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available as 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 a new WordPress website.
- There are well over 60 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 that use a CMS application are powered by WordPress.
- Over 30 million searches are made on Google each month for terms related to WordPress.
- WordPress is 100% free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- The WordPress software is regularly updated to eliminate bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
- WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress CMS Market Share
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, edit and manage all content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most popular self-hosted content management system (CMS) 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com unique monthly views. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following WordPress CMS usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS usage figures. 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 websites and blogs are being built with WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.
For example, at the time this article was written, this 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 WP installations to the latest version …
(WP 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 will no doubt see a significantly higher number of downloads … 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 over one hundred new updates to date …
(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been released to date)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress releases are traditionally named after well-known Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.1 = Django Reinhardt (February 23, 2011),
- v.3.6 = Oscar Peterson (August 1, 2013),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
Who isn’t using WordPress nowadays? All types of enterprises and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Large corporations, business of all sizes, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous musicians, universities, government sectors, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress blogs …
WordPress Site Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people using WordPress:
- Businesses & Corporations: Factory Jackson, Glad, GDF SUEZ, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Riverdance, Blondie, Channing Tatum, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, International Relations Online at American University, Washington University’s School of Law, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Time Inc., The Australian, Facebook Newsroom, CBS New York, etc.
- Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Chicago Weather Center, Slow Food Italia, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, 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 and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are business marketing activities.
- 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 blog posts per 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.com – Activity
In other articles, we explain the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and 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 repository …
(WP plugin directory)
We have published a comprehensive article about plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress theme directory …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
We have published a comprehensive article about themes here:
Using WordPress In Different Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million searches per month on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times as much as Joomla and nine times 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 the WordPress CMS. 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 job cost ranges for WordPress are around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, we will address the following areas:
- Why WordPress is the best choice when you need a vehicle to grow your business online,
- Over 50 great 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,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more visitors, get more leads, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many step-by-step tutorials and examples on how you can use WordPress and grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and web 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