This article is part of a multi-part series of articles designed to help business owners and non-technical users succeed online.
For more information about of the article series, go here:
In this blog post, you will learn some WordPress facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
How Popular Is WordPress? Surprising Statistics About WordPress Usage
A brief summary:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress is available in two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress site.
- There are well over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number is growing everyday.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 that use a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 37,000,000 searches made each month on Google are for WordPress related terms.
- WordPress is completely free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
- WordPress is built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality on an ongoing basis.
- The WordPress core functionality is updated on a regular basis to fix bugs and improve both its usage and security.
- WordPress delivers 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 practically no limit to what can be built using WordPress.
WordPress Market Share
A content management system (CMS), is a website tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical website owners to add, modify and manage content on their website.
WordPress began in 2003. It was originally written by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Since then, WordPress has become the largest self-hosted CMS application 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter …
(WordPress [hosted version] unique visitors. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Consider the following stats on WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP usage figures. Source: trends.builtwith.com/cms)
In terms of CMS dominance, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …
(WordPress Market Share. Source: w3techs.com)
In fact, more and more websites and blogs today are being built with the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the numbers change so often.
For example, at the time this article was published, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above download figure represents only the most recent version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest version …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads is already increasing. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter site, you will see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress developer community continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add new or improved features.
Speaking of updates, WordPress has made available over 100 new update versions in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available to date)
WordPress currently releases a new updated version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions honoring famous Jazz musicians)
Incidentally, all major WordPress version releases have a tradition of being named after Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.1 = Ella Fitzgerald (January 22, 2007),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.7 = Count Basie (October 24, 2013),
- v.3.9 = Jimmy Smith (April 16, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress?
Who doesn’t use WordPress? All types of companies and people from all walks of life are using WordPress to publish content about every kind of topic imaginable.
Global brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, educational institutions, government department sites, non-profit organizations – even countries use WordPress to publish web content and run their official sites …
WordPress Showcase
Here are just some of the growing number of sites, organizations and people who are using WordPress:
- Global Brands & Corporations: Bata, Dole, Groupe Renault, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
- Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Ariana Grande, Pixies, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Mötley Crüe, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Nicholls State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, Lafayette College, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, The New Yorker, IMC TV, CBS New York, etc.
- Government Sites, Public Services & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, UK Government Cabinet Office Digital Team, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as 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 domain and 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 belonging to the WordPress network (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million posts per day).
You can see a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress (Hosted Version) – Live Users WorldWide
In other articles, we examine the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
General Statistics About WordPress
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WP plugins for free from the WordPress free plugin directory …
(WordPress.org free plugins repository)
For a detailed article about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free themes …
(WP theme repository)
For a detailed article about themes go here:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WordPress.org languages)
WordPress Searches Online
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Including WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of online searches for WordPress terms to around 37 million …
(WordPress-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and nine times more often than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, one quarter of all users who answered 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 by searching on 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 poised for continued growth for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform to grow your business online,
- Over fifty 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 CMS platform,
- Ways to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to drive more traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting new tutorials and great tips and examples of how you can use WordPress and grow your business presence online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of web development and web design.
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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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