This blog post is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help business owners and non-technical users succeed online with the WordPress platform.
For an overview of the article series, see this post:
In this article, you will learn a number of facts and figures about WordPress that will help you understand why millions of businesses around the world use WordPress and what kind of people and businesses are using WordPress today.
WordPress: Facts And Figures
A brief summary:
- WordPress started in 2003.
- WordPress offers users two formats: a hosted application (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 a new WordPress website or blog.
- There are 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 worldwide 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 websites worldwide that use a content management system are built with WordPress.
- Over 30,000,000 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 code is continually built and improved upon by volunteers. Thousands of people from all over the world work on developing and improving WordPress every day.
- WordPress is updated on a regular basis to eliminate bugs and improve both its features and security.
- WordPress delivers content online to visitors worldwide. WordPress has been translated and localized into over 70 international languages and dialects.
- The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free plugins, themes, and widgets to WordPress users.
- There is almost no limit to what someone can do using WordPress.
WordPress Usage
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, edit and manage content on their site.
WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the most popular self-hosted CMS application in the world, used on millions of websites 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 are home-based. Despite its distributed model and so few employees, WordPress.com (the hosted version of WordPress) currently attracts more unique monthly views than Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and Yahoo.com …
(WordPress [hosted version] monthly uniques. Source: http://automattic.com/about)
Here are just some of the latest WP CMS usage stats:
WordPress is the world’s leading CMS platform and powers over 30% of the web …
(WP CMS usage stats. 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 websites and blogs today are being powered by the WordPress CMS platform.
WordPress is so popular, that keeping up with statistics on WordPress is very difficult because the data changes so frequently.
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 latest version of WordPress. Around one third of all current users have not yet updated their installations to the latest release …
(WP versions in current use. Source: https://wordpress.org/about/stats)
As this post 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 much higher download figure … perhaps even a newer version, as the WordPress development 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 one hundred new update versions since 2003 …
(Over one hundred new versions of WordPress have been made available since 2003)
WordPress currently releases a new version every 3-4 months or so …
(WordPress regularly releases new versions named after famous Jazz musicians)
An interesting fact, is that all major WordPress releases are named after famous Jazz musicians, eg:
- v.1.0 = Miles Davis (January 3, 2004),
- v.2.2 = Stan Getz (May 16, 2007),
- v.2.9 = Carmen McRae (December 18, 2009),
- v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
- v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
- etc …
Who Uses WordPress
Who doesn’t use WordPress? All different types of businesses and people use WordPress to blog about everything under the sun.
Leading brands, businesses, technology companies, celebrities, sports stars, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, not-for-profits – even countries use WordPress …
WordPress Blog Showcase
Here are just some of the many sites, companies and people who have chosen to build their online presence with WordPress:
- Businesses & Companies: Factory Jackson, Public Storage Canada, Method Products, Group Bouygues, Vogue, etc …
- Famous People, Politicians, Sports Stars, Actors & Musicians: US Air Force General Chuck Yeager, Rush, Lily Allen, Beyoncé, The Sacramento Ballet, The Rolling Stones, Dave Matthews Band, Howie Mandel, Jason Mraz, etc …
- Universities & Educational Institutions: Georgia State University, Stony Brook University School of Journalism, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
- Magazines & News Media: Thrive Magazine, The New Yorker, InStyle News, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
- Government Sites, Not For Profits & Humanitarian Organizations: Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, Canadian Museum of History, São Paulo Carnival, AIDS Project Rhode Island, Rotary Means Business – Rotary Club, etc.
Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress offers two formats: a hosted application (WordPress.com) and as a self-hosted, downloadable software (WordPress.org).
- Businesses prefer to download the self-hosted version, which can be installed on their domain names and modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are set up for business purposes.
- 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 lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time …
WordPress.com – Activity Worldwide
In other posts, we will present the main differences between WordPress.com (hosted) vs WordPress.org (self-hosted) versions.
Additional WordPress Statistics
WordPress Plugins
WordPress users have access to over 37,000 plugins at no cost …
(WordPress.org free plugins directory)
For more information about WP plugins see this post:
WordPress Themes
WordPress users can also download and install over 1,700 free WP themes from the WordPress free theme directory …
(WP free themes directory)
For a detailed article about WordPress themes see this post:
WordPress Language Translations
WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy international languages and dialects in addition to English …
(WP languages)
Searching Online For WordPress
The search term “WordPress” alone receives around 2.7 million monthly searches on Google. Adding WordPress-related terms (e.g. “WordPress themes”, “WordPress plugins”, ”WordPress tutorials”, etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to around thirty million …
(WP-related searches online)
If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched 5 x more than Joomla and 9x more than Drupal.
WordPress Rates
According to WordPress’ own “State of the Word” 2014 survey, 25% of WordPress users who participated in the survey stated that they make a full-time living off the WordPress CMS. 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.com …
According to Upwork, the typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 – $500 …
(Source: Upwork.com)
As you can see, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow and dominate in the CMS arena.
In other blog posts, we will explore the following:
- Why WordPress is an ideal platform to grow your business online,
- Dozens of reasons why you should choose WordPress for your business website or blog, including a detailed review of the benefits, features, and advantages of using WordPress,
- Ways 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 publishing new step-by-step tutorials and practical tips on how you can use WordPress to expand your business presence online, and save thousands of dollars on web development and website design costs.
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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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