The internet behemoth shows no signs of slowing down. WordPress remains one of the most popular content management systems on the web, with a huge market share.
If you’re a WordPress developer, you already know that WordPress is an ideal tool to use when building a website. But you might be wondering how your potential clients and fellow developers are using WordPress, so it’s important to look at the WordPress statistics.
WordPress Statistics: The Basics
We start our deep dive into WordPress stats with the basics. These are the facts that everyone, developers and business owners alike, should know.
According to statistics:
- WordPress is used to power 43.2% of the internet.
- Using WordPress increases an average of 12% per year since 2011.
- Looking at websites built with a CMS alone, WordPress powers a whopping 65.2%.
- WordPress is used by 36.28% of the top 1 million websites.
- WordPress is the fastest growing CMS for 12 years in a row.
- Official WordPress plugin directory contains about 60.000 free plugins.
- There are about 31.000 WordPress themes in total, both free and premium.
When it comes to WordPress stats, there are some key questions to look at more closely:
- Who uses WordPress?
- Which WordPress version is most commonly used?
- How many people visit WordPress sites each month?
- Where in the world is WordPress used?
- How does WordPress usage compare to other content management systems?
- What devices are used to access WordPress?
- Exactly how many plugins and themes are available for WordPress?
State of the Word – WordPress Yearly Surveys
Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of WordPress, addresses some of these questions in his state of the word keynote address. Held every year, it’s a good way to track the progress of WordPress as a CMS.
There’s a presentation for every year starting in 2009. You can watch them all for free on YouTube. State of the Word 2021 was held on December 14th. You can check it out for all the latest news from Mr. WordPress himself.
There’s no word (pun intended), but there’s sure to be a State of the Word 2022 address later in the year.
Who Uses WordPress?
Not surprisingly, the range of WordPress users is wide.
WordPress is a very versatile platform, so it’s an ideal choice for businesses both large and small, as well as individual bloggers. Large corporations, well-known blogs, small businesses, and individuals flock to WordPress to create fully functioning and aesthetically pleasing websites.
Big name brands including The Walt Disney Company, Variety, and BBC America all use WordPress.
WordPress started its life as a blogging platform. Yet, there are now fewer people using WordPress solely for blogging. 69% use it only as a CMS, 20% as both blog and CMS, and 6% only as a blog.
W3techs.com provides information related to the usage among high traffic site verses low traffic sites and also provides some of the names of big companies who use WordPress. As you can see below, WordPress accounts for many of the high traffic website usage.
Which WordPress version is most commonly used?
According to data from W3Techs.com, the latest WordPress version 6 is used by 53.8% of websites running on WordPress. The previous version 5 is used by 39.1% and version 4 is used by 6.6%.
How many people visit WordPress sites each month?
WordPress.com gathers and releases various statistics about WordPress usage, including monthly pageviews and posts published. As of 2023, around 409 million people view over 20 billion pages each month through WordPress.
Users publish about 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments through the CMS per month.
Where in the world is WordPress used?
WordPress is used in over 178 countries.
2018 was the first year that non-English downloads surpassed English downloads. This has become a consistent trend for WordPress downloads worldwide.
There are also about 60 different languages available for WordPress.
How does WordPress usage compare to other content management systems?
According to w3techs, WordPress is the most popular CMS by a landslide, with 43.0% of websites using WordPress, representing a whopping 64.3% of the CMS market.
What devices are used to access WordPress?
WordPress, like any other platform, is seeing the rise of activity from mobile devices. In the past year, WordPress has made a real effort to be much more mobile responsive to all devices. This is reflected in the need to make the platform responsive and friendly to mobile devices.
Exactly how many plugins and themes are available for WordPress?
One of the best things about WordPress, aside from ease of use, is its flexibility. The wide range of plugins and themes built by developers are what give users this flexibility.
In 2016, there were 1.5 billion plugin downloads in the WordPress.org repository alone. As of 2023, there are over 60,000 plugins available through WordPress.org.
WordPress Statistics Roundup
People around the world are making a living through WordPress and there are a lot of opportunities for developers to help businesses build sites with pleasing design and high functionality.
As a developer, it’s always good to know how your WordPress statistics and how clients use WordPress. These statistical resources can help you provide better support for your clients. The things people liked most about WordPress were ease of use, community, and flexibility, which have all been improved over the years.
