This blog post is part of a series of articles aimed at helping you understand why the WordPress platform can help your business achieve its business goals online.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of WordPress statistics that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses are using WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Some Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage
A brief summary:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number increases every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites worldwide are built with 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 are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
- The WordPress application is completely free to download, use and modify. The WordPress application is distributed under an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress application each day.
- WordPress 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 seventy international languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can do using WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance 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 largest self-hosted CMS application 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 so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. 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 …
(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 today are being powered by the WordPress CMS application.
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 published, this is the 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 upgraded their WP installations to the latest version …
(WordPress versions currently in use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, expect to see a significantly higher figure … perhaps even an updated version, as the WordPress developer team 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 since 2003 …
(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been released in its first 11 years)
WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version updates are traditionally named in honor of Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.5 = Billy Strayhorn (February 17, 2005),
- v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
- v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress?
Who isn’t using WordPress? All different kinds of enterprises and people are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.
Large corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress sites …
WordPress.org Website Showcase
Here are just some of the many businesses, organizations and people using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Companies: Factory Jackson, Glad, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Nancy Pelosi, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Mötley Crüe, Channing Tatum, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Colleges & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Fortune, Time.com, Facebook Newsroom, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Olympic Committee, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Amnesty International Korea, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer to download 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 set up for commercial applications.
- 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).
WordPress provides a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Activity
In later articles, we will examine the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 free WP plugins …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For more information about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 themes for free …
(WP themes repository)
For more information about WordPress themes go here:
Using WordPress In Other Languages
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages in addition to English …
(WordPress languages)
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”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 37 million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times as much as Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of all 33,000 users who participated in the survey said 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 US$50.
You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to dominate the CMS landscape.
In other blog posts, we will address the following areas:
- Why WordPress is the smartest option when it comes to choosing a vehicle for growing your business online,
- Dozens of compelling reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive look at the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
- How to automate your business with WordPress,
- How to drive targeted visitors to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be publishing many ”how to” tutorials and tips of how to use WordPress to grow your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.
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Sources:
The information for this post 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