The self-hosted WordPress platform powers an impressive 35% of the world’s websites.
Yup, you read that right. 35% of every website in existence throughout the world uses WordPress as its content management system.
Pretty impressive right?
WordPress has definitely come a long way since its inception in 2003. Designed to be a blogging solution to meet the needs of those wanting to share their ideas with the world at large, WordPress has long blossomed into so much more. Now, you can publish blog content, run an online business, open up an eCommerce shop, and everything in between.
Thanks to the free and open-source nature of this platform, WordPress has grown in popularity over the years and has racked up some pretty remarkable statistics for itself. And today, we’re going to share with you the very best WordPress statistics and facts that you can use in your own blog content to establish more authority or just use to impress your friends. So, let’s get started.
1. WordPress dominates the CMS market share
It’s not enough that 35% of all websites use WordPress. In addition, WordPress dominates the content management system market share at 61.7%. This makes it the most popular (and widely used) CMS of all for the 7th year in a row.
2. Big name brands understand the power of WordPress
You may be under the impression that WordPress is only for bloggers and small businesses. But it’s not. In fact, some of the biggest name websites in the world utilize the power, flexibility, and affordability of WordPress. For instance, WordPress powers Facebook Newsroom, Vogue, and The Walt Disney Company, all of which are major corporations with a global presence.
3. To build WordPress was no easy feat
According to Open Hub’s Project Cost Calculator, it took 193 person-years to build WordPress to be what it is today. This includes 718,256 lines of code and over $10 million in expenses.
4. The WordPress platform is always improving
From its launch on May 27, 2003, to just a few days ago on November 12, 2019, there have been 401 updates or brand new version releases of the WordPress core. To say the team behind WordPress cares about new features, security patches, and more is an understatement.
5. People never stop building WordPress websites
As of October of this year, WordPress maintains the number one spot as the fastest growing content management system in the world. Adding to that, 773 WordPress-powered websites are built daily. The next fastest growing CMS is WooCommerce (which is powered by WordPress!) with 381 daily site builds and Shopify in at a measly 193 daily sites.
6. And speaking of WooCommerce…
27% of eCommerce websites use the WooCommerce platform, which is the free eCommerce plugin that works seamlessly with the WordPress content management system. Behind it are Shopify (18%), Magento (9%), and OpenCart and BigCommerce tying at 3% a piece.
7. WooCommerce holds its own in terms of downloads
If the percentage statistic about WooCommerce above isn’t working for you, maybe the pure, raw data will help. WooCommerce has been downloaded 79,539,671 times and counting.
8. People search for ‘WordPress.org’ a lot
According to Alexa, WordPress.org ranks 716th in global internet engagement. It also boasts a fairly lengthy average time on site per user of 3 minutes. This is pretty good seeing as WordPress.org is mostly a resource website. Other impressive numbers include a bounce rate of 50.9% and the fact that 927,013 sites link to WordPress.org.
9. Web host recommendations are few and far in between
Even though there are thousands of web hosting providers available in the market, WordPress.org only officially recommends 3 web hosts: Bluehost, Dreamhost, and SiteGround.
10. WordPress is linked to much more than a blogging platform
The team behind the open-source WordPress project is also linked to products and services like WordPress.com (the hosted WordPress solution), Akismet, BuddyPress, Gravatar, VaultPress, Simplenote, and of course WooCommerce.
11. WordPress is being actively used by millions
It’s easy to inflate statistics by stating that a piece of software was at one point downloaded a million times, only to find out that the active users of said software is actually much lower. That said, when it comes to live websites using WordPress, you can bet there are over 29 million serving up content to site visitors right this minute.
12. Even new versions of WordPress rake in download numbers in the millions
As of right now, WordPress 5.3 has been downloaded more than 35 million times and counting. If you check out the official WordPress.org counter, you’ll see for yourself. In the time it took me to type these words, the number has jumped to 5,192,671 downloads.
13. When it comes to customization, WordPress is hard to beat
One of the biggest draws the self-hosted WordPress platform has is its ability to be fully customized by people of all skill levels using plugins. And if we’re counting just the official, strictly vetted WordPress plugins found in the Repository, you can find over 55,000 plugins.
14. The WordPress community is just as impressive as the CMS
There have been over 1055 WordCamps spanning 75 cities, 65 countries, and 6 continents since the first WordCamp was organized by Matt Mullenweg in 2006. This robust community of WordPress users working together to network, build, and improve all aspects of WordPress is just another reason why it’s so dang popular.
15. WordCamp numbers never fail to impress
From 2011-2015, there have been 5,856 unique speakers, 7,451 unique sessions, 3,120 unique sponsors of the events, and a whopping 90,000+ tickets sold at worldwide WordCamps. And that was from 4 years ago. Imagine what those numbers would look like now!
16. You’ll find dedication to WordPress at meetup groups
There are over 780,000 WordPress meetup members and 1,600+ groups all over the globe dedicated to meeting up on a regular basis and discuss how you can make the most of your WordPress software.
17. WordPress-related keywords are where it’s at
According to Google Trends, WordPress-related keywords are more popular than terms related to Drupal, blogger, and Sharepoint. In other words, there is a lot of interest in WordPress-related content.
18. Global brands have nothing to lose with WordPress
Thanks to the hardworking translation team over at WordPress.org, WordPress has been fully translated into 55 worldwide languages, with tons more to follow.
19. WordPress Translation Day is a real thing
No, seriously. Every year a bunch of WordPress enthusiasts get together and work on translating the WordPress ecosystem (e.g., the core, themes, and plugins). For twenty-four hours. On a global scale. The most recent WordPress Translation Day boasted 81 worldwide events, 46,653 string translations, and 221 new translators taking part in the fun. Plus, the work performed impacted 71 language locales.
20. Locales (AKA WordPress website locations)
As of now, WordPress’ top locales include the United States (45.6%), Japan (5.7%), Germany (5.5%), Spain (5.1%), and France (3.8%).
21. Part of popular culture
WordPress was featured in episode 5 of Chris Ryan’s Strike Back. And, it was also briefly mentioned on Orange is the New Black, and Lily Allen’s song “URL Badman.” (source)
22. WordPress is a major target and requires proactive security measures
According to one of Sucuri’s latest hack reports, 90% of its security cleanups had to do with WordPress. Of course, much of this is attributable to a lack of security protection, configuration issues, and poor site maintenance. Nonetheless, WordPress is a target because of its popularity.
23. Vulnerabilities are a thing to contend with
As of right now, there are over 18,000 vulnerabilities in WordPress. 13,000+ of them deal with the WordPress core itself, 2,100+ of them are related to plugins, and 320+ are theme related.
24. Themes, themes, themes
When you need to change the look and feel of your WordPress website, you always look to themes first. The most popular themes in the market to date include the premium Avada theme (over 550,000 sales), the premium X theme (over 200,000 sales), and even the free default theme – Twenty Nineteen – which boasts over 1 million active installations.
25. WordPress themes have thousands of lines of code
The popular theme marketplace ThemeFuse claims that each one of its custom WordPress themes has an average of 36,200 lines of code. The comparison used to show you how powerful custom WordPress themes can be is TwentyEleven, having a mere 5,620 lines of code (though that’s still a lot!). Of course, now all themes are the same. But this gives you a good idea.
26. Lots of themes sales doesn’t always = popularity
Though Avada and X have done well, Builtwith will tell you that the top three most popular WordPress themes in use right now are: Divi (14,686 sites), Genesis Framework (11,028 sites), and then Avada (8,344 sites). Of course, these numbers indicate theme usage distribution among the top 1 million sites, but that just goes to show you that sometimes it’s another theme that people actually love.
27. WordPress developers have the potential to do well
When you take a look at PayScale.com, you’ll see that the average salary for a WordPress developer hovers around $50k a year, which isn’t too shabby depending on where you’re located and the cost of living.
28. No matter how hard it tries, spam is blocked
Spam is going to happen no matter how secure your content management system is. That said, if I had to choose a plugin to help me block annoying spam, I’d choose Akismet. Not only is it free, it blocked its 1 billionth spam way back in 2013. Yes, one billionth as in ‘B.’ Nowadays, that number is closer to 100 billion.
29. WordPress stands by it’s open-source reputation
WordPress is not owned by any one company. In fact, co-founder Matt Mullenweg started a non-profit organization called the WordPress Foundation to protect your ability to use the software as you want without restriction. There is also no CEO. Instead WordPress is run by a gamut of volunteer developers from all over the world.
30. WordPress helps you rank
According to Matt Cutts, a man with close ties to Google and its search rankings, WordPress handles 80-90% of the technical aspects related to SEO optimization. In other words, if you want to rank well in search results, WordPress does most of the hard lifting for you. As for the other 10% of effort, a simple plugin like Yoast SEO helps a lot.
31. WordPress has your back
WordPress promotes freedom of use, modification, distribution, and speech. In fact, WordPress denied 67% of all DMCA takedown notices filed between January 1, 2014 and June 30, 2019 in an effort to preserve people’s freedom to use the platform as they see fit. To put that into perspective, there have been 70,968 takedown notices issued.
Infographic: 30+ WordPress statistics & facts
We’ve wrapped all of these WordPress statistics up into an infographic that you can publish on your blog.
Note: If you’d like to republish this infographic, save the infographic to your computer, upload to your blog and include a credit link back to this post. 
Final thoughts
Pretty neat right?
As the world’s number one content management system, WordPress has left a huge mark in the digital world and isn’t going anywhere any time soon. It continues to grow, improve, and cater to more website owners each year.
And with such a strong community believing in the message behind this open-source, highly customizable, and 100% flexible and affordable software, site owners of all kinds and skill levels will be happy to know more impressive statistics just like the ones above are just around the corner.
