This blog post is part of a detailed article series aimed at helping you grow a successful business online.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn a number of impressive statistics about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Usage And Market Share
The quick version:
- WordPress began as a blogging tool in 2003.
- WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- 22 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing 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 using a CMS application are driven by WordPress.
- Over 30 million 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 built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is continually built by volunteers. People from all over the world are at work developing and improving the WordPress software on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core functionality is continually being updated to fix bugs and improve both its ease of use and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
- WordPress currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is practically no limit to what you can do with WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a website maintenance tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website users to add, edit and manage all content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted CMS-based publishing platform in the world, used on millions of sites 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 work from home. Despite being a distributed company and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following WordPress usage statistics:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WordPress 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 using WordPress.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with the latest statistics on WordPress is difficult because the information 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 figures represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet upgraded their installations to the latest version …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, expect to see a much higher download number … perhaps even a different version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over one hundred new updates since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress releases have a tradition of being named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.3 = Dexter Gordon (September 24, 2007),
- v.3.0 = Thelonious Monk (June 17, 2010),
- v.3.5 = Elvin Jones (December 11, 2012),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
In a nutshell, all kinds of enterprises and people are using WordPress to publish content about everything and anything.
Large corporations, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous actors, educational institutions, government department sites, community organizations – even countries are using WordPress-powered sites …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, organizations and people using WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Factory Jackson, Glad, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, The Meredith Vieira Show, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, The Rolling Stones, Mötley Crüe, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, Bates College, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & Online Media: Thrive Magazine, The New Yorker, IMC TV, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Community Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available in 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 in their domain names and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business sites.
- 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 posts every second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that shows the latest activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Live Users WorldWide
In later tutorials, we address the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WordPress plugins at no cost from the WordPress plugins directory …
(WP free plugins repository)
We have written a detailed article about WP plugins here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also access over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress themes repository …
(WordPress.org free themes repository)
We have published a great article about themes here:
WordPress Translations
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 SEO”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than 35 million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched five times more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.
WordPress Services
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of WP users who answered the survey said 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 designers and developers for hire at freelancing sites like Upwork …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, WordPress is bound for continued growth for many years to come.
In other articles, we will address the following areas of WordPress:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle for growing your business online,
- Over fifty 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,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate more traffic to your website, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many ”how to” tutorials and tips of how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
References:
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
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum