35 WordPress Statistics for the Informed Digital Marketing Expert

Very few things have disrupted the digital marketing scene as greatly as WordPress has in the last decade. Thanks to the platform’s free and simple content management system, it’s possible for anyone, regardless of their technical knowledge, to create impressive websites. The seemingly endless library of themes and plugins further enhances this possibility.

If you want an online presence today, you need to learn more about WordPress. To help you out, we put together all the important WordPress statistics you need in 2019. Some of these showcase the extent of worldwide WordPress domination and also help explain the key reasons behind its popularity, while others give you some important general statistics to understand this potent CMS better. These statistics are important because WordPress plays a crucial role in the online business environment.

The platform’s capabilities encourage companies of all sizes to use it, thus leveling the playing field. Your creativity is the prime determiner of how effective your WordPress site is, not the cash in your bank. This makes it possible even for small businesses to compete with large, global companies and their massive marketing budgets.

WordPress Statistics (Editor’s Choice)

• 59.4% of all websites using a known content management system use WordPress.
• 34% of the world’s 10,000 most popular websites use WordPress.
• WordPress 4.9 has been downloaded over 159M times.
• WooCommerce is used by 13.2% of all websites that use WordPress.
• It takes as little as $60 a year to host a good WordPress site.
• WordPress is available in 57 languages.
• WordPress takes care of 80–90% of the mechanics of SEO.

1. WordPress powers 32% of the web.

It’s quite remarkable that something that was an obscure content management system until a few years back now powers at least 32% of the web. The platform’s versatility, allowing it to be used as a small personal blog or a major corporation’s website, is the main reason behind this widespread adoption.

Source: W3Techs

2. 59.4% of all websites using a known content management system use WordPress.

WordPress’s CMS has by far the largest market share worldwide. There are about 46.2% sites that don’t utilize a CMS; among the rest, well over half rely on WordPress.

Source: W3Techs

3. How many websites use WordPress in absolute terms? Close to 64M, according to conservative estimates.

There’s no definitive number for the websites using WordPress, partly because there isn’t one for the total number of websites. We are basing this figure on the number of active websites in the world (approximately 200 million) according to Netcraft.

Source: Internet Live Stats

4. WordPress is responsible for an additional 1.1M domain registrations every 6 months.

This is a data point from 2015. The actual figure today is likely to be higher since the number of domain registrations, as well as the market penetration of WordPress, have increased.

Source: Built With

5. 34% of the world’s 10,000 most popular websites use WordPress.

Figures on how much of the internet is WordPress based get even more striking when only the most successful websites are considered. These popular sites include TED, Etsy, Whitehouse.gov, Reuters, Yelp, The New Yorker, TechCrunch, and People. Globally admired celebrities like Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, Katy Perry, Stephen Fry, and Jay Z also use WordPress for their sites.

Source: Winning WP

6. Joomla, the second most widely used CMS, has a market share of 5.7%.

It’s rare to see such a heavily skewed market where there are many competitors, but one of them has taken a massive lead. There’s no definite answer to the query, “What is the best CMS?” but the figures do tell a story. Joomla is followed by Drupal, Squarespace, and Shopify with market shares of 3.7%, 2.5%, and 2.4%, respectively.

Source: W3Techs

7. WordPress 4.9 has been downloaded over 159M times.

WordPress 4.9 is one of the most downloaded pieces of software in the world. By the time you read this, the count might have surpassed 160M. The counter tracks downloads in real time, so you can see for yourself how fast the number moves.

Source: WordPress

8. WordPress users produce about 70.5 million new posts and 52.1 million new comments each month.

WordPress.com stats on blogging are quite impressive. The blogging platform continues to encourage a large number of people worldwide to add new content and to spark discussions about it.

Source: WordPress

9. WordPress gets almost as many unique monthly visitors as Twitter does.

Twitter statistics show that it gets 152 million unique monthly visits in the US, while WordPress gets 149 million. In fact, until recently, both Twitter and Amazon (currently at 199 million) had lower numbers than WordPress. You realize how impressive this data is when you compare the different roles these three entities play on a business level.

Source: Automattic

10. Over 409 million people view more than 21.1 billion pages each month on WordPress sites.

An even higher number use WordPress blogs for regular content consumption. These blogging stats come from the integrated stats system included in every WordPress.com blog.

Source: WordPress

11. WooCommerce has a 27.7% market share among e-commerce platforms.

This is important information for online businesses. E-commerce platforms allow merchants to build digital storefronts to facilitate transactions over the web. WooCommerce, the WordPress-based e-commerce platform, is also growing much faster than its main competitors, like Squarespace and Shopify.

Source: Datanyze

12. WooCommerce is used by 13.2% of all websites that use WordPress.

WordPress has evolved from being mainly a blogging tool into the lifeline of global e-commerce. Of all the site-building elements like photo galleries, chat forums, and social networking platforms, WordPress website stats reveal that WooCommerce is the most widely used.

Source: W3Techs

13. Akismet blocks 7.5M spam comments every hour.

Akismet is one of the more popular WordPress plugins, which saves users from having to deal with spam, one of the major nuisances on the internet today. As the site tells us, Akismet stops twice as much spam every single hour as there are people in Los Angeles!

Source: Akismet

14. The top 3 WordPress plugins in 2017 were the All in One SEO Pack, WordPress Importer, and WooCommerce.

According to the 2017 edition of the annual State of the Word address by Mike Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, the most popular WordPress plugin is the one that boosts the platform’s SEO capabilities. These WordPress statistics point to how seriously people take the search engine placement of their content now and why WordPress is the CMS of choice for many.

Source: Word Camp

15. There’s a difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

For people new to WordPress, the two versions can be confusing. WordPress.org is meant for WordPress software, which is a free, open-source CMS. You install it and host it on your own server. WordPress.com, on the other hand, is a blogging platform based on the WordPress.org software. You can sign up for an account on it and have a working blog/website right away. Both are owned by Automattic.

Source: Theme Isle

16. It takes as little as $60 a year to host a good WordPress site.

This might be another reason WordPress usage is so prevalent. There are many great hosting plans that get you going with sufficient storage and unmetered bandwidth. If you are running a high-traffic site, you might need options that are slightly more expensive.

Source: Winning WP

17. A typical domain name costs around $10.

That’s the average price of a .com domain. The exact price depends on the domain extension you choose and the company selling the registration. The bottom line is that between hosting and buying a domain name, your WordPress site can run for a full year for about $70.

Source: Winning WP

18. WordPress is platform agnostic.

One of the factors that aid wide WordPress usage is that it has native applications for all common platforms, including iOS, Android, WebOS, Windows Phone, and Blackberry. You can make use of its many functions irrespective of what system you’re used to.

Source: Wikipedia

19. WordPress is available in 57 languages.

Similarly, WordPress consistently works toward making its software accessible to people across the world. A quick look at WordPress’s translation website shows that out a total of 180 locales identified by the WordPress team, it’s available with 100% functionality across 57 languages. It may not be very long before WordPress is available in virtually every language in existence.

Source: WordPress

20. WordPress currently offers 47,350 active plugins.

The Plugin Directory currently lists 56,311 plugins for WordPress, of which 47,350 are active, according to the latest WordPress site stats. These have been downloaded 633,274,305 times. Over 2,000 of these plugins are now offered with a language pack, allowing people around the world to use them in the language they are most comfortable with.

Source: WP Engine

21. There are 3,500+ free GPL-licensed themes for WordPress.

These General Public License themes can be found at the WordPress theme directory. Of these, 1,166 themes are available with language packs. There are also many themes available for purchase from third-party vendors. One of the largest commercial theme repositories is Themeforest, which has 8,600+ themes for sale.

Source: WordPress

22. WordPress takes care of 80–90% of the mechanics of SEO.

These are the kind of WordPress statistics users can get behind. The claim was made in 2009 by Matt Cutts, the then-head of Google’s web spam team. Since then, the folks at WordPress have tried to make WordPress even more SEO-friendly. Plus, you have a bunch of plugins that can assist you in getting your site’s SEO right.

Source: WordPress

23. Over 36% of all WordPress sites are served over HTTPS.

HTTPS is the encrypted version of HTTP, with the S signifying that all the communication between your browser and the website is secure. And the developer team aims to bring the number of WordPress sites fulfilling this criterion to 100%. The current figure of 36% is a 2.5x increase from 2016.

Source: WP Engine

24. WordPress is the fastest-growing web publishing software.

Data on keyword searches for popular CMSs from 2004 to the present day indicates that WordPress-related keywords rank higher among search engine queries than those of its competitors. So if you want to draw traffic, write about WordPress.

Source: Google

25. WordPress needs less than 5 minutes for installation.

Another important factor in WordPress’s immense popularity is that it automates many of the time-consuming tasks involved in web publishing. The “Famous 5 Minute Install” lets you launch a WordPress site with just a few clicks. Who needs an expensive developer now?

Source: WordPress

26. Jetpack is the most popular WordPress plugin for marketers.

There’s a lot that WordPress has to offer to marketers. The most popular of its plugins geared mainly toward marketers is Jetpack, a free tool that facilitates important tasks like traffic insight, social media integration, backups, and security.

Source: HubSpot

27. WordPress has less than 800 employees worldwide.

At the time of writing this, the exact number was 799. While the majority of them are based in the US, there’s substantial representation from all continents (except Antarctica, of course). These employees collaborate from their home bases, ensuring that the needs of all geographies are met.

Source: Automattic

28. WordPress has been around since 2003.

“How long has WordPress been around?” is a widely searched query online. The first version came out on May 27, 2003, making WordPress one of the oldest CMSs. It has evolved a fair bit since its early days as a simple blogging tool.

Source: Winning WP

29. WordPress has had 4,302 code commits by 100+ contributors.

WordPress is one of the largest open-source projects in the world, with contributors spread across the globe. Its developer team has had over 100 developers contribute to the WordPress core, which contains over 430,000 lines of code.

Source: Who Is Hosting This

30. WordPress held 128 WordCamps in 48 countries in 2017.

These WordPress stats continue to demonstrate that it’s a truly global company. According to the State of the Word 2017, these WordCamps involved 2,310 speakers and 1,091 sponsors.

Source: WP Engine

31. WordPress also had 4,379 meetups in 73 countries in 2017.

This was an increase of 43% from the previous year. 99,301 people attended these meetups, a whooping uptick of 65% from 2016. Part of the reason for this increase is credited to the Events widget introduced in WordPress 4.8.

Source: Word Camp

32. Some of the most amazing WordPress sites are showcased at WordPress.org.

If you want to see for yourself everything that’s possible with WordPress, you can do so easily at the software’s own website. It showcases the sites that make the best use of the platform, with the list including names such as the City University of New York, the Houston Zoo, and the Obama Foundation.

Source: WordPress

33. The average WordPress developer in the US earns $50,365.

While WordPress has minimized the necessity to hire developers to put up and maintain your site, there are still many ways in which a specialist can help you derive much more from the platform. Based on statistics from Payscale.com, WordPress developers in the US earn a little over $50,000 per year.

Source: WordPress

34. WordPress stats show it has denied 61% of DMCA takedown notices through June 2018.

Add transparency to a list that includes versatility, functionality, and security. DMCA notices are issued by individuals and companies if they believe any posts on WordPress.com are infringing on their intellectual property rights.

Source: Pay Scale

35. WordPress has also denied 65% of government information requests as of June 2018.

While WordPress cooperates with governments on valid cases, it strongly resists sharing information where it believes the blog owner’s right to freedom of expression is at stake.

Source: WordPress

WordPress is, by far, the most popular content management system in the world and one of the most popular blogging platforms.

These WordPress statistics prove that its popularity is driven not only by its relatively low costs and simplicity but also by factors like its wide choice of plugins and themes, as well as the availability of language packs, security, and SEO-friendliness.

WordPress has come a long way, starting out as a basic blogging tool and becoming a global platform endorsed by the biggest brands and the most popular celebrities. Its features are particularly useful for small businesses as it allows them to put up attractive, high-functioning websites without the need for a big budget or an expert developer.

References:

1. W3Techs
2. W3Techs
3. Internet Live Stats
4. Built With
5. Winning WP
6. W3Techs
7. WordPress
8. Automattic
9. WordPress
10. WordPress
11. Datanyze
12. W3Techs
13. Akismet
14. Word Camp
15. Theme Isle
16. Winning WP
17. Winning WP
18. Wikipedia
19. WordPress
20. WP Engine
21. WordPress
22. WordPress
23. WP Engine
24. Google
25. WordPress
26. HubSpot
27. Automattic
28. Winning WP
29. Who Is Hosting This
30. WP Engine
31. Word Camp
32. WordPress
33. Pay Scale
34. WordPress
35. WordPress