Interesting WordPress Statistics and Facts (2023)

WordPress, an older digital platform than the existing social media sites like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. was first launched on 27th May 2003. Since then, it has come a long way and showed the power that it holds. This Content Management System is preferred worldwide and provides power and necessary framework to 37.6% of all the existing websites on the internet.
Thanks to Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little for this beautiful creation, everything about the content management system has changed. It holds an essential place in the CMS market, with a market share of 60.8%. Besides, many marketers use WordPress to create their websites and don’t prefer any other CMS except a few.
Since WordPress has two software variants, many people get confused and opt for the wrong one. To clarify this dilemma, we have stepped in. When you will visit any search engine and search for WordPress, you will get two options. One is WordPress. Org and the other one is WordPress. com.
Now, the difference is that WordPress. Org is a content management system where you can manage your write-ups and make them lucrative while, on the other hand, WordPress. Com is a blogging platform with basic features.
However, the core software of the CMS is used in the blogging platform to make it work. If you are one of those aspiring website builders and want to build your own, you will not find a better place than this worldwide popular WordPress. It is customizable and incredibly flexible and enables you to look after everything yourself and create alluring websites to gain traffic.
Here, we will be referring to the CMS and not the blogging site WordPress. com. Now that you have learned the basic understanding of WordPress. Org, and WordPress. Com, let’s now move on to see some fascinating stats of the WordPress CMS.
Top WordPress Statistics
Listed below are the fantastic stats for WordPress. Org, which supports this site to be used as a content management system. Before you start using it to manage your content, refer to the sections, and see the mesmerizing statistics.
WordPress Usage Statistics
WordPress’s market share and its usage statistics fall under this category. Since it is open-source, WordPress is widely preferred all around the world and is the fastest-growing CMS to date. Out of the top 10 million websites existing on the internet, 500 or even more sites cropping up every day are powered through WordPress.
It won’t be a shocking thing to say that top websites like BBC America, The New York Times, Spotify, Facebook Newsroom, etc. use this site to enhance their content and maintain the top position. It is because of its flexibility that WordPress has garnered so many customers.
Another stat worth knowing is that the WordPress plugins or the WordPress theme witness a million installments weekly on average. The famous eCommerce store plugin, WooCommerce, uses WordPress sites to expand its business. Now, it has become so popular that it witnesses 774,273 installations weekly.
So, you see how you can make your business effective and grow it by using these management systems and developing your website on them.
Why use it?
Since WordPress is the fastest growing site in the CMS market and holds most of the share, many top companies rely on it and use it for their content management. You can also use it as the backend for your business website, blogs, portfolios, etc.
Data reveal that around 47% of the websites, which either are for eCommerce or blogging, don’t use CMS, which hampers their success. Another survey conducted by KWFinder shows that the word ‘WordPress’ was searched around 2,74,000 times, which shows how popular WordPress sites are.
If you build up your website on the WordPress site, people are more likely to reach you. This strategy is that 409 million people use this site to view over 20 million pages. There are 70 million new posts on average in WordPress because every single second, 17 blog posts are published here, and 77 million new comments are posted.
With these figures, you can figure out how important it is to show your presence on this site and allure visitors. This information is revealed by real-time WordPress activity, which shows you the entire activity log taking place on any WordPress site.
Hence, whatever you are working on, whether it be your eCommerce website, blog posts, or a news website, you should be present on WordPress. This way, you can make yourself visible to others and show them what you have to offer.
WordPress Statistics on its Versions
Since 2003, WordPress has been changing and upgrading for the best user experience. This WordPress statistic shows how the journey of becoming a successful system started and reached its latest version. WordPress is currently operating in version 5.2, and around 20% of WordPress users have updated the version to get the best experience.
The number of downloads is more astonishing, and it has been estimated that people have downloaded the WordPress site over 16 million times. Still, many of them are operating WordPress on its old version 4.9.
Recently, while upgrading from version 4.9 to WordPress 5, a block-based editor was introduced named Gutenberg. This editor restricted many of the users from updating their current WordPress.
Gutenberg’s main motive was to bring a massive change in WordPress’s visual editor, which led to 19 million installations of this editor. Besides, 24 million blog posts were written by Jetpack using Gutenberg, and other than that, 157,000 and more posts were regularly written using this editor.
Another plugin called WooCommerce block was also developed and used in WordPress sites with Gutenberg. Since WordPress 5.2 has come into existence, this issue has been resolved, and everything works fine as before.
Why use it?
With the failure to update due to the Gutenberg editor in WordPress 5, the new WordPress 5.2 was upgraded to enhance the user experience. 22% of the WordPress sites have been updated to this latest version. The WordPress sites with the latest update have already been downloaded around 37 million times.
Using WordPress 5.2, you get access to new frameworks, and your website will be more effective and powerful. However, 297,627 web pages out of the high-ranking 1 million websites are still using WordPress 4.1 because they are happy with the old framework and want to continue the same.
Even though the significant upgrades appear every 152 days, 39.2% of the WordPress sites use WordPress 4, while 58.3% of sites use WordPress 5 because of its Gutenberg editor. However, it’s up to you which you would like to opt for to make your website according to your taste to get more visitors.
Besides, WordPress is available in many languages like Chinese, Arabic, English, etc. 71% of WordPress sites have set English as the primary language because English is spoken and understood by most people worldwide. If you want to use some other language, then you can set it effortlessly.
WordPress Plugins Statistics
These WordPress plugin statistics aim at the plugins only. These plugins aid the users by extending the WordPress CMS features and enabling them to customize their websites for growing their business.
Currently, WordPress has more than 55,000 plugins in its directory. New features and options are added daily to each plugin in the directory.
So far, these plugins combined have been downloaded over 1 Billion times by WordPress users. In 2016, 18,262 plugins were published, out of which 3% of the entire plugin published was never updated.
The top plugin installed was Classic Editor, which witnessed over 4 billion installations with the remaining ones. Elementor Page Builder followed with over 2 million installations.
Apart from these plugin WordPress statistics, you also need to know about the popular WordPress plugins listed below. Let’s check them out for better content management.
- Yoast SEO
- Akismet
- Jetpack
- Wordfence Security
- Contact Form 7
Along with these five free plugins, Visual Composer and Slider Revolution are equally good but are paid plugins. These two plugins come with pre-packed themes, and so they are not free and have to pay for.
Why use it?
Plugins help you personalize your pages according to your needs to increase your page views and market share. The more attractive your page looks, the more people will visit your sites generating leads and high revenue.
Using the appropriate WordPress plugin is essential and helps in enhancing your content and also the page.
These WordPress stats help those who are having a hard time and want to upgrade their sites using tools and professional guidance.
WordPress developers have showered you with different types of plugins to optimize your content and gain traffic and unique visitors. Let’s see why you should use them.
Yoast SEO Pack
If you are using WordPress.com for writing blogs, this WordPress plugin will prove to be beneficial for you. Using this WordPress plugin while writing the blog posts, the SEO score of the content will increase, and there will be more chances for your site to get a higher ranking from the world-famous search engine Google. Currently, Yoast SEO has been downloaded 176 million times.
Akismet
To block the spam comments, many website builders use Akismet by Automattic, which currently has witnessed 133 million downloads. It has a higher rate of catching spams, which is 5 million spams per hour.
Jetpack
This is another wp statistics plugin that Automattic again produces. Jetpack provides security to your content and provides your website with an attention-grabbing design. Moreover, you don’t need to worry much about marketing as Jetpack covers your marketing needs. So far, Jetpack has witnessed 120 million downloads.
Woodfence Security
Woodfence Security so far has witnessed 121 million downloads. It helps to protect your site by covering it with a virtual fence called ‘Firewall.’
Contact Form 7
By using this WordPress tool, you can design contact forms to be used on your website. These forms can then be used to generate leads and increase conversion rates.
Contact Form 7 in association with Akismet by Automattic prevents spam and makes your page spam-free. So far, 112 million downloads have been recorded for this plugin.
Using these WordPress statistics, you can keep your content safe, invite more visitors, and increase your market share. Your site’s page views will increase, and more people around the world will like to get associated with you and your service.
WordPress Theme Statistics
These WordPress statistics majorly focus on the collection of different templates, the layout of a WordPress site, and style sheets. Like the different variants of the plugins that you just saw in the earlier section, the themes are also of two kinds, free and paid. Life becomes much more comfortable when you use the WordPress templates and opt to apply to your website.
Here, on WordPress, you get the same look that you see live on the screen. Every year, the WordPress theme directory is updated, and new free themes appear to be used for your primary website designing needs.
The earlier free themes were called ‘WordPress Classic.’ On the other hand, the paid ones, primarily Evanto Market, houses many designers who sold themes worth $1 million. An item in this market gets sold every 4 to 5 seconds.
Out of all the themes that this market contains, 70% are niche themes because they are in high demand. Besides, you get multi-purpose themes under the name Avada and Enfold and super fast themes named X.
Why use it?
Have you ever thought that a person who visits your site will be the first thing that he will notice? It is the presentation that he will initially lay down his eyes on. If the presentation is not appealing, the users won’t stay long and walk away.
To attract them to your webpage, you need to design it beautifully, for which you need to take the help of WordPress themes and designing tools.
WordPress gets millions of visitors who search for attention-grabbing themes, most probably based on their niches. These WordPress stats show how themes become a vital element of your eCommerce website or blogs.
WordPress is the way to go if you are bored with your existing template or are a website developer who needs to browse different templates. You will find all sorts of themes and templates here to design your website.
According to the stats and data, the most popular themes are Avada (4%), Divi(6%), and Genesis Framework (7%). Hence, create an impactful website with a stunning design, make the most out of the open-source templates, and attract massive traffic.
WordPress Security Statistics
This WordPress statistics is concerned more with the security of WordPress from all the possible harm. Though WordPress is secure, data breaches are still existing. Being the most extensive management system, WordPress is highly prone to hacking troubles.
In 2018, a security plugin, Sucuri, reported that most of the cleanup requests were made by WordPress, which amounted to 90% of the entire requests made that year. WordPress’s common malware infections are stolen passwords, pharma hacks, malicious redirects, and drive-by downloads.
According to sources, out of all attacks that affected WordPress, 41% of them are due to the hosting platform’s vulnerability. Also, outdated WordPress sites cause 44% of hackings and affect WordPress drastically.
In 2011, WordPress’s most significant information breach, where 18 million people and their property were affected.
Why use it?
Data breaching is the biggest challenge many digital platforms face, be it social media or search engines. If data breaches happen, Your entire data lands up in the wrong hands, which then takes advantage of it and steals your work.
Imagine, the website on which you invested so many years and brought it to a higher position stolen by a hacker who claims it to be his/her or ruins it. All your effort, time, and money will flow down the drain.
To stop this information from breaching and to keep your work secure, these WordPress stats help. An open-source is prone to hacking, and users cannot do much to stop it. So, the first thing that you should do is to keep your WordPress site updated.
In 2016, the Panama papers on WordPress leaked where 2.6TB of data was stolen, 4.8 million emails, and 11.5 million critical documents. The cause was straightforward; a website was not updated and did not operate on Slider revolution’s upgraded version.
Hence, to keep your content safe and breach-proof, update your WordPress core, plugins, themes, etc., and ensure that they are always up to date.
WordPress Community Statistics
The WordPress community comprises people who belong to different countries and represent themselves on this digital platform. Though they are divided geographically, their love for software and writing has united them, and they work together as one unit.
This community hosts WordCamps where the community members get involved and organize events to interact with people and help them learn about WordPress and its usage.
The first WordCamp was organized by one of the founders of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, in 2006. This camp was held in San Francisco, and so far, 990-word camps have been organized in 65 countries, 73 cities, and six continents.
These events are not-for-profit and aim only to spread WordPress awareness and help others know this digital platform better.
Hence, the cost of the ticket is kept low so that a large audience can participate in it to learn more about WordPress. Besides, if you cannot physically attend this event, you always have wordpress.tv to fall back on.
These camps, however, were inspired by meetups. These meetups were held inside a small room with a limited number of attendees. These meetups were more like mini WordPress gatherings. There is still an official account of WordPress where these small meetups take place. There are 740 and even more meetup groups present on this official account.
Besides, there are 3 WordPress events other than the word camps, which often take place. These events include WPCampus, Pressnomics, and WooConf.
Earning With WordPress Statistics
WordPress offers various ways to earn money and get your work recognized. Many users use WordPress as a full-time earning source. There are many ways by which a person can make money with WordPress, and these methods are listed below.
- You can earn money by being a WordPress developer or designer, providing WordPress maintenance service, or a hosting company or SEO agency.
- You can also become a theme designer on the Evanto market and earn around $1000 per month. You will be surprised to know that 5% of the Evanto market designers have already earned $10000 and even more per month.
- By being a WordPress developer, you can earn around $20 to $100 on an hourly basis and make your living.
You see, there are so many opportunities for you to earn with WordPress and make your living. Many individuals do it, and if you want to start it as a secondary earning source, you can always rely on WordPress who aims to make people’s lives effortless.
WordPress In the Years to Come
Undeniably, WordPress is the future of the content management system, and this is proved by the statistics mentioned above. Its immense popularity is more because it is budget-friendly, and it provides you with the entire framework that you need to grow your website and business.
It works effectively as a backend so that your frontend appears attractively and appeals to your customers.
WordPress offers the platform and the WordPress core, plugins, themes, high security, and SEO friendliness, which makes your work much more manageable.
By looking at these stats and its growing popularity, it can be predicted that the digital platform’s future ruler will be WordPress, and its lovers should proudly boast about it and influence others to join it.
Some Final Words
WordPress is now 17 years old and has been revolutionizing itself to reach its current position. It is the back support that every website has and functions behind the curtains, and the results you see are remarkable. It empowers the users and motivates them to do something of their own and flourish in this digital industry.
WordPress is so successful that all the top leading companies use it for their benefit, be it Fortune 500 companies or any big enterprise. Many people may point out the flaws that WordPress has with these stats, and its usefulness speaks for itself and will continue to do so.
WordPress is available in so many languages to suit the users’ convenience and the day is not too far when it will cover all the languages spoken worldwide. With so many exciting features getting included in it with each passing day, it is impossible to look for a platform better than WordPress.
Though it initially started as a blogging platform, it has expanded like never before since it has set its foot into eCommerce. The majority of the website builders rely on it for their business’ success and get relevant information.
The evolving features are making WordPress even more user-friendly and convenient to be used by all.