WordPress – Useful Facts And Statistics

This blog post is part of a multi-part series of articles aimed at helping small businesses grow online using the WordPress CMS.

For an overview of the article series, see this post:

• A Beginner’s Guide To Growing A Small Business With WordPress

In this blog post, you will learn some impressive WordPress usage facts and figures that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world choose WordPress and what kind of people and businesses use WordPress today.

Statistics About WordPress

In short:

• WordPress began in 2003.
• WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
• 23 out of every 100 new domains registered in the U.S. are for a new WordPress website.
• There are over 60 million installations of WordPress worldwide. This number grows every day.
• WordPress powers almost 27% of the internet. Over one-fifth 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 sites worldwide using a content management system are built with WordPress.
• Over 30,000,000 searches are made on Google each month for WordPress related terms.
• The WordPress application is 100% free to download, use and modify. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is 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.
• The WordPress application is continually being updated to eliminate bugs and improve its features and security.
• WordPress can deliver your content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages.
• The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WordPress plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what can be built using WordPress.

WordPress CMS Market Dominance

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 website users to add, modify 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 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and having so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo.com, and Twitter …

(WordPress.com unique monthly visits. Source: Automattic.com)

Here are just some of the latest stats on WordPress CMS usage:

Over 60% of all websites around the world are not CMS-based. Of those that are, WordPress is the leader, with more than 60% of total market share.

WordPress usage stats

In terms of CMS market share, no other platform even comes close to WordPress …

In fact, more and more sites are being powered by the WordPress CMS platform.

*** UPDATE ***

As of June 2017, around 30% of all CMS websites in the world are built using WordPress.

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WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is difficult because the data changes so often.

For example, at the time this article was written, here is the current number of downloads of the latest WordPress version …

(Source: https://wordpress.org/download/counter)

Note: The above download numbers represents only the most recently released version of WordPress. Less than half of all current users have upgraded their WP installations to the latest release …

(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)

Even as this post was being written, the number of downloads had already shot up. If you click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you will no doubt see a much higher download figure … perhaps even an updated version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and improve or add new features.

Speaking of updates, WordPress has released over 100 new software versions to date …

(Over one hundred new WordPress versions have been made available to date)

WordPress currently releases a new update every 3-4 months …

(WordPress regularly releases new software updates honoring famous Jazz musicians)

here is an interesting fact: all major WordPress version releases have a tradition of being named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:

• v.1.2 = Charles Mingus (May 22, 2004),
• v.2.5 = Michael Brecker (March 29, 2008),
• v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
• v.3.3 = Sonny Stitt (December 12, 2011),
• v.4.0 = Benny Goodman (September 4, 2014),
• etc …

Who Uses WordPress

In a nutshell, all types of organizations and people are using WordPress to blog about every kind of topic imaginable.

Leading corporations, businesses, retail companies, celebrities, politicians, famous musicians, universities, government department sites, not-for-profits – even nations are using WordPress-powered sites …

WP Website Showcase

Here are just some of the growing number of sites, institutions and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:

• Global Brands & Companies: Aqua Hotels and Resorts, Boardshorts.com, Dassault Aviation, Group Bouygues, Hyatt Blog, etc …
• Celebrities, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé, Dallas Mavericks, Snoop Dogg, Katie Couric, Gabriel Iglesias, Sylvester Stallone, etc …
• Universities & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, The University of Mary Washington, etc.
• Magazines & Media: Fortune, The New Yorker, Facebook Newsroom, Enterprise Magazine, etc.
• Governments, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Sweden’s Official Site, Canadian Museum of History, The National Art Gallery of Maldives, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, 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 application (WordPress.org).

• Businesses often choose the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their own domains 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, WordPress blogs (blogs hosted either on WordPress.com or externally-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts per second (around 1.5 million per day).

You can see a live map showing user activity across its hosted platform …

WordPress.com – Live Activity

In later articles, we will cover the differences between WordPress.com (hosted) and WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.

General Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users can download and install over almost 40,000 free WordPress plugins from the WordPress free plugins repository …

(WordPress free plugins repository)

We have written a detailed article about WordPress plugins here:

• Add New Functionality To Your Site With Plugins

WordPress Themes

WordPress users also have access to over 1,700 free themes from the WordPress themes directory …

(WP theme directory)

We have written a great article about WP themes here:

• A Handy Guide To Understanding WordPress Themes

WordPress Language Translations

WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 languages and dialects in addition to English …

(WordPress.org languages)

WordPress Searches

The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WP themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”learn WordPress”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than 30 million …

(WP searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress is searched online five times more than Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.

WordPress Developers

According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, a quarter 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 around 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 around $10 – $500 …

(Source: Upwork.com)

As you can see from the above information, WordPress is set for continued growth for many years to come.

In other blog posts, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is an ideal platform for growing your business online,
• Over 50 great reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using the WordPress platform,
• Ways to automate your business 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 providing ongoing step-by-step tutorials and useful tips and examples on how to use WordPress to grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on the costs of website development and web design.

Subscribe below to receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help you grow your business online faster ...

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://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/

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Disclaimer: This site is not directly associated with WordPress, Automattic, or any WordPress products promoted on this website. We may receive financial benefits or affiliate commissions from purchases of any products or services advertised on this site. All images are the copyright of their respective owners, comply with all license terms and agreements of use are used solely for training and illustrative purposes.

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