This blog post is part of a detailed article series designed to help small businesses grow online with the WordPress CMS platform.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this blog post, we present a number of surprising WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world rely on WordPress and what kind of businesses use WordPress today.
WordPress: How Popular Is It? Some Useful Facts And Figures About WordPress Usage
In short:
- WordPress began in 2003.
- WordPress is available as a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- 23 out of every hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
- There are over sixty million installations of WordPress. This number grows every day.
- WordPress powers over 30% of the internet. Over one-third of all websites around the world 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 sites worldwide using a content management system are powered by WordPress.
- Over 35,000,000 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 worked on by volunteers. People from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality every day.
- The WordPress software is updated on a regular basis to eliminate 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 international languages.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what you can build using WordPress.
WordPress Usage
In simple terms, a content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is a web application designed to make it easy for non-technical users to add, edit and manage all content on their website.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally written by 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 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 having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique visitors than Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo.com …
(WordPress.com monthly uniques. Source: Automattic.com)
Here are just some of the latest WordPress CMS usage statistics:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS 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 sites are now being built on the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the numbers change so frequently.
For example, at the time this post was written, here is the number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …
(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)
Note: The above figure 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 …
(WordPress versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this article was being written, the number of downloads has already grown. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will no doubt see a significantly higher number of downloads … perhaps even a different version, as the WordPress development team 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 software updates in its first 11 years of existence …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new software update every 3-4 months …
(WordPress regularly releases new software versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress upgrades are typically named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:
- v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
- v.2.7 = John Coltrane (December 10, 2008),
- v.2.8 = Chet Baker (June 11, 2009),
- v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
- v.3.8 = Charlie Parker (December 12, 2013),
- etc …
Who Is Using WordPress
A better question is who isn’t using WordPress? All different kinds of enterprises and people from all walks of life use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.
Leading corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, universities, government department sites, local organizations – even countries are using WordPress blogs …
WordPress Web Site Showcase
Here are just some of the sites, institutions and people who have built their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Coca-Cola France, Public Storage Canada, GDF SUEZ, McDonald’s Singapore, Mercedes-Benz, etc …
- Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, Steve Blake, LA Lakers, Katie Couric, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Fortune, Time.com, FiveThirtyEight, LinkedIn, etc.
- Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: San Pellegrino Terme, Chicago Weather Center, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, CURE International, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers users the choice of two formats: a hosted platform (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable application (WordPress.org).
- Businesses clearly prefer the self-hosted version, which can be installed in their own domain names and customized to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for running some kind of business.
- 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 externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).
You can see a live map that shows user activity across its hosted service …
WordPress.com – Activity
In other posts, we address the difference between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Other WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins at no cost from the WordPress plugin directory …
(WordPress.org free plugins directory)
For a detailed article about WP plugins go here:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 themes at no cost …
(WordPress free themes repository)
We have written a great article about WordPress themes here:
Translations Of WordPress
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WP language translations)
WordPress Searches
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”, “WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than thirty million …
(WordPress searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and nine times more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter of all WordPress users who responded to 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.com, the typical cost for WordPress jobs is around $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can clearly see from the above information, WordPress is poised for continued growth for a long time to come.
In other blog posts, you will learn:
- Why WordPress is an ideal vehicle to grow your business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the unique benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
- How to generate targeted visitors, get more leads, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
- Plus, we’ll be regularly posting many ”how to” tutorials and useful examples and tips on how you can use WordPress and expand your business online, and save thousands of dollars on website development and website design costs.
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Information Sources:
The above figures 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://wptrainme.com
- 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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