This blog post is part of a series of articles designed to help you understand how the WordPress content publishing application can help your business grow and succeed online using the WordPress CMS.

For more information about of the article series, see this post: How To Grow Your Small Business With WordPress

In this article, we present some statistics about WordPress 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.

WordPress: Facts And Figures

A brief summary:

• 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 one hundred new domains registered in the U.S. are for installing a new WordPress website.
• There are over 60 million installations of WordPress. This number is growing everyday.
• Over one-sixth of all websites around the world are driven by WordPress.
• More than 60% of all sites worldwide using a content management system 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. WordPress is built using an open source content management system.
• WordPress code is continually built by volunteers. Thousands of people from all around the world work on developing and improving WordPress functionality each day.
• WordPress 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 70 international languages and dialects.
• The WordPress repository currently makes available thousands of free WP plugins, themes and widgets to WordPress users.
• There is virtually no limit to what you can do with WordPress.

WordPress CMS Popularity

A content management system (CMS), is a web tool for non-technical users. It is designed to make it easier for non-technical users to add, modify and manage content on their website.

WordPress started in 2003. It was originally a simple program developed by co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is now the widely-used self-hosted CMS application 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 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 Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter and eBay ...

(WordPress.com unique views. Source: https://automattic.com/about)

Here are just some of the latest statistics on WordPress usage:

Over 60% of all websites around the world do not use a CMS. Of those that do, WordPress is the clear leader, with more than 60% of all market share.

WP CMS usage stats

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

In fact, more and more websites are being built with the WordPress CMS platform.

WordPress is so popular, that trying to keep up with the latest statistics on WordPress is quite difficult, because the data changes so frequently.

For example, at the time this post was written, here is the current 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. Less than half of all current users have upgraded their installations to the latest release ...

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

As this post was being written, the number of downloads was already increasing. If you were to click on the link above and visit the WordPress download counter page, you you will see a much higher download figure ... perhaps even a newer version, as WordPress continually updates the software to fix security issues and bugs, and add improved or new features.

Regarding updates, WordPress has made available over 100 new software updates to date ...

(Over 100 new WordPress versions have been made available to date)

WordPress currently releases a new software version every 3-4 months or so ...

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

Interestingly enough, all major WordPress version updates are named in honor of famous Jazz music artists, eg:

• v.2.0 = Duke Ellington (December 31, 2005),
• v.2.6 = McCoy Tyner (July 15, 2008),
• v.3.2 = George Gershwin (July 4, 2011),
• v.3.4 = Grant Green (June 13, 2012),
• v.4.1 = Dinah Washington (December 18, 2014),
• etc ...

Who Is Using WordPress

A better question is who doesn't use WordPress nowadays? All kinds of organizations and people use WordPress to blog about everything and anything.

Popular corporations, business of all sizes, technology companies, celebrities, politicians, famous artists, colleges, government sectors, not-for-profits - even nations use WordPress-powered sites ...

WordPress.org Site Showcase

Here are just some of the many sites, companies and people who are using WordPress:

• Businesses & Companies: Sony Music, YRC Freight, Groupe Renault, McDonald's Singapore, Vogue, etc ...
• Celebs, Politicians, Sports Stars, Artists & Musicians: Alanis Morissette, Rush, Kylie Minogue, Brian Smith, The Sacramento Ballet, The Rolling Stones, William Shatner, Howie Mandel, Russell Brand, etc ...
• Colleges & Educational Institutions: University of Manitoba Today, International Relations Online at American University, UCF College of Medicine, MIT Sloan Management Review, etc.
• Magazines & News Media: Time Inc., New York Post, FiveThirtyEight, Dusty Cartridge, etc.
• Governments, Public Services & Community Organizations: Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art, Chicago Weather Center, Maryland National Road Association, CURE International, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, etc.

Earlier, we mentioned that WordPress is available as 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 on their domain and freely modified to suit their needs. In fact, most WordPress self-hosted installations are used for business 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 self-hosted WordPress sites) published on average 17 new blog posts every second (around 1.5 million per day).

WordPress.com publishes a live map that lets you see blog post updates around the world in real-time ...

WordPress (Hosted Version) - Activity Woldwide

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

General Statistics About WordPress

WordPress Plugins

WordPress users have access to over 37,000 WordPress plugins at no cost ...

(WP plugin directory)

We have published a comprehensive article about plugins here: Using WordPress Plugins Extend Your Website's Features

WordPress Themes

WordPress users can also access over 1,700 themes at no cost ...

(WordPress.org themes repository)

For more information about themes go here: Understanding WordPress Themes - A Practical Guide For Newbies

WordPress Translations

WordPress has been translated and localized into over seventy languages in addition to English ...

(WordPress.org languages)

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", "WP plugins", "WordPress tutorials", etc. brings the total number of searches online for WordPress terms to more than thirty-seven million ...

(WP searches online)

If you compare searches for WordPress to other CMS platforms, WordPress gets searched online 5 x as much as Joomla and 9x more often than Drupal.

WordPress Developers

According to WordPress' own "State of the Word" 2014 survey, 25% of all users who answered 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 median hourly rate of WordPress projects is US$50.

You can find WordPress designers and developers for hire by searching on freelancing sites like UpWork (formerly oDesk) ...

According to Upwork, typical WordPress job cost ranges are between $10 - $500 ...

(Source: ODesk)

As you can see from the facts and figures presented above, there is no end in sight for how much further WordPress can continue to grow.

In other blog posts, you will learn:

• Why WordPress is the best platform for growing your business online,
• Over fifty reasons why you should choose WordPress for your website or blog, including a comprehensive breakdown of the benefits, features and advantages of using the WordPress CMS platform,
• How to automate your business marketing with WordPress,
• How to generate targeted traffic, get more leads and subscribers, and how to sell more products and services with WordPress.
• Plus, we'll provide lots of tutorials and examples of how to use WordPress to grow your business online, while also saving thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs.

References:

The information for this article was sourced from various locations around the web, including the following sites:

• https://wordpress.org
• https://wordpress.com
• https://automattic.com
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress
• https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress/all/all
• https://trends.builtwith.com/cms
• https://wptrainme.com
• https://ma.tt/2014/10/sotw-2014/
• https://managewp.com/14-surprising-statistics-about-wordpress-usage
• https://torquemag.io/13-surprising-wordpress-statistics/

Next Steps:

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