WordPress Statistics 2023 – Usage and Security Stat Information
Page Contents
WordPress Introduction
WordPress Statistics: Most people around the world are going digital. From making payments to buying goods, we all are spending a considerable amount of time online. While some would say that the coronavirus pandemic has a significant role to play in this, there are others who believe that it was long due. In order to provide services online, one of the most important things is a website and those who have attempted to build a website even for a once must be aware of WordPress. It is an online, open-source software that helps people to create a website. Ever since being released in 2003, the software has achieved a significant number of milestones. This is mainly because it has a free and simple content management system for anyone.
It would not be wrong to say that this has one of the most powerful content management systems for those looking to start a blog or website. Most importantly, it is free to download and anybody can access it. Even those with very little technical knowledge can use WordPress to create an impressive website. We have compiled an extensive list of the most amazing WordPress Statistics 2022 for those who want to use this open-source content management system. Let’s have a look at them.
Key WordPress Statistics
- WordPress is used by 2% of all websites across the world in 2023.
- As of 2023, global WordPress websites are more than 851.4 million which is used by 97% of bloggers.
- It has a market share of over 65.1 percent when it comes to content management systems.
- Of all the websites that rank in the top 1,0000,000, around 63.9 percent of them use WordPress.
- WooCommerce, a category of WordPress is a customizable, open-source eCommerce platform and is used by over 28.19% of all the websites that use WordPress.
- Across the globe in 2023, the monthly searched keyword “WordPress ” was searched more than 2.3 million times
- 20 billion pages of WordPress.com sites are viewed by 409 million people every month.
- Around 70 million new posts are being published by users each month. Also, they are posting 77 million new comments in a month.
- Some of the prominent websites like Spotify, TIME, CNN, TechCrunch, and others are using WordPress.
- WordPress hosts blogs that are written in more than 208 languages. English is the most popular one.
- In this long journey, there were some dips as well. There was a significant drop in usage back in 2016. At that time, Joomla was its biggest competitor.
- Affordability is one of the reasons behind the popularity of WordPress. One can host a WordPress site for as low as USD 60 per year. These numbers would obviously increase significantly for more professional sites.
- WordPress 5.7 is one of the most popular versions with over 36 million downloads.
- It offers a huge range of free plugins that is approximately 60,000.
- WordPress has over 59k plugins and their downloads reach one billion and counting.
- Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress plugins with active installations. It has over 5 million downloads.
- WordPress has more than 59K themes with the average price of each theme being around USD 77.57.
- Security has been one of the biggest concerns with WordPress sites. There are around 90K attacks on WordPress sites every minute.
- It is also important to note that around 40 percent of hacked WordPress websites are running an outdated version.
- WordPress is helping people earn a decent amount of money. Around 32 percent of freelancers in the United States charge an hourly rate of USD 10 to USD 19.
- More than 500 new websites are built using the WordPress platform every day.
- On a monthly basis, in WordPress, more than 77 million new comments were made in 2023.
- Whereas, each year WordPress includes around 8,538,048,000 posts.
- In every six months, registered domains resulted in more than 1.1 million.
- WordPress remained the fastest-growing platform for around 11 years in a row.
- Despite being so popular, WordPress only has 1,464 employees worldwide. Most of them are based in the United States.
WordPress Usage Statistics
#1. WordPress is used by around 43 percent of all websites.
This may look like a huge number for WordPress but this is true. According to w3techs, WordPress is powering 43.2% of all websites. The reason behind this popularity is the unparalleled versatility that makes WordPress suitable for small personal blogs to Fortune 500s like Sony Music and the Forbes blog. In terms of market share, WordPress has a 64 percent presence when it comes to a content management system or CMS. This makes it by far the largest worldwide. It is interesting to note that over 40 percent of sites worldwide do not utilize a CMS.
#2. 70 million new posts each month
That's around 1,620 posts every one minute or 2,333,333 new posts every day. On average, there are around 300 words in a post. This means, that around half a million words are written every single minute using WordPress.
#3. 487 billion spam messages on WordPress every month.
According to stats available with Akismet, the number of spam comments on WordPress has skyrocketed in the last several years. Moreover, the number of spam comments is higher than the number of legitimate comments. According to the report, spam comments generated are 6,208 times higher than legitimate comments. This means that WordPress gets bombarded by 487 billion spammers every month.
#4. WordPress is searched 2,940,000 times every month
The popularity of this platform can be gauged by the fact that the keyword ‘WordPress' is searched 2,940,000 times by people all over the world. The data has been made available by the reliable keyword-analysis tool KWFinder. If all relevant long-tail keywords are included, you can easily imagine how much higher the total search volume would be.
#5. WordPress is available in over 208 languages
This is obvious because of its huge presence. According to WordPress, its blogs are written in over 208 languages with English being the most popular language in 2023 with 44.5% of users using it.
Others on the list are followed by Spanish (6.1%), German (5.7%), Japanese (5.7%), French (4.2%), Italian (3.2%), Russian (2.8%), Portuguese (2.8%), and Polish (1.9%).
#6. 34 percent of the 10,000 most popular websites are on WordPress
WordPress is not popular because it is affordable. This is proved by the fact that some of the most successful websites are using this platform. According to WinningWP, 34 percent of the top 10,000 websites are using WordPress. Among them are TechCrunch, Time, Spotify, and others. Top celebrities like Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and Jay Z use WordPress for their sites.
#7. Joomla has a market share of 3.5 percent
WordPress has a market share of 65.1% and has taken a massive lead when compared to its competitors
One of WordPress’s competitors is Shopify which has a market share of 5.2%. This is despite the fact that Shopify is the third most widely used CMS.
Furthermore, other market shares are followed by Joomla, Drupal, Squarespace, and Wix are 3.5%, 2.4%, 2.5%, and 2.4% respectively.
#8. Several plugins of WordPress have more than 7 million downloads
WordPress plugins are extremely popular. The effectiveness can be proved by the fact that 11 of them have been downloaded more than 7 million times. WooCommerce, WordPress Importer, WP Super Cache, NextGEN Gallery, and Google Analytics by Yoast are some of them.
#9. WooCommerce is used by 20.3 percent of all the websites using WordPress
There are various subcategories of WordPress. WooCommerce is the most popular among them. It is used by over 20 percent of all websites. Elementor and WPBakery are in second and third positions with 17.3 percent and 14.3 percent share. Others on the list are Beaver Builder, 10Web Photo Gallery, and Buddy Press.
Source: W3Techs.com
#10. WordPress 4.9 is one of the most downloaded software
According to WordPress, 4.9 has been downloaded over 159 million times, making it one of the most downloaded pieces of software. It is quite possible that by the time you would be reading these stats, the count might have surpassed 160 million.
#11. WordPress recently released version 6.3.1
WordPress on 29th August 2023, released version 6.3.1 which has some distraction-free mode, improved block controls, and enhanced template preview.
Other released WordPress of 2023 are followed by Version 6.3 (8th August), Version 6.2 (29th March), Version 6.2.1 (16th May), Version 6.2.2 (20th May), and Version 6.3 (8th August).
#12. WordPress has almost as many unique monthly visitors as micro-blogging site Twitter
According to Twitter statistics, it gets 152 million unique monthly visitors in the United States. On the other hand, WordPress gets 149 million unique monthly visits. Moreover, both Twitter and Amazon had lower monthly unique visitors until recently.
#13. WordPress has 501 times fewer employees than Amazon
While WordPress gave tough competition to companies like Amazon, it is important to note that the company achieved this with just around 1,464 employees. This is around 501 times less than Amazon. Most of the employees of WordPress are in the United States and others are scattered in different parts of the world.
#14. There have been around 1106 WordCamps
More than 1100 WordCamps have been organized so far in 375 cities and 65 countries. These are casual, locally organized conferences that cover everything related to WordPress.
#15. The most popular WordPress theme has earned over 12 million
Avada is the most popular and most purchased WordPress theme on ThemeForest. It costs around USD 60 and more than 200,000 copies have been sold so far. This means it has generated over USD 12,000,000 in sales till now and counting.
As of 2023, the average price of a premium theme in WordPress is almost $57.54 to $59.
#16. WordPress is capable of taking care of 80-90 percent of the crawling issues of Google
According to a former head of Google's webspam team, most of the sites built with WordPress are capable of ranking higher in search results. This is because the CMS of WordPress can take care of 80 to 90 percent of Google's crawling issues. This clearly shows that WordPress sites are SEO-friendly.
#17. Not all WordPress Installations are updated to the latest version
WordPress always encourages its users to upgrade to the latest version. Despite this, less than one-third of all users update to the latest version. More than 30% of users still use version 6.3.
#18. WordPress 6.0 is one of the most popular versions
There are so many versions of WordPress that are extremely popular. For example, WordPress 6.0 with usage share of 62.30%.
The next most popular version’s usage share is followed by Version 5.0 with 30.50%, whereas other Versions usage shares are followed by Version 4 (6.70%), Version 3 (0.40%), and Version 2 (less than 0.1%).
#19. Over 59K free plugins of WordPress are available
There are more than 59K free WordPress plugins available. The Plugin Directory is increasing further. It is a topic of debate whether WordPress should take some measures to reduce the number of useless or obsolete plugins.
#20. Yoast SEO is one of the most downloaded plugins on WordPress
Yoast SEO is the most popular WordPress plugin with more than 310 million downloads and 5 million active installations.
WordPress Security Statistics
#21. 90% of hacked CMS-based websites are on WordPress
The security of websites is one of the most important factors. But WordPress seems to be lacking on this front. It ranks as the top security-compromised CMS. This is despite the fact that it keeps improving upon its version with the help of top security experts. It is also important to note that around 40 percent of hacked WordPress websites are running an outdated version.
#22. 52% of detected vulnerabilities on WordPress are from plugins
WordPress has so many plugins to offer and they are somehow creating a problem for it as well. According to WordPress statistics, plugins are behind 52 percent of detected vulnerabilities. While 37 percent are from core WordPress, 11 percent are from themes. The best option is to keep your site updated. It is also advisable to keep the WordPress core self-update option on.
#23. Hosting platforms also contribute to WordPress attacks
Hosting platforms also play a major role in the security of a website. This is proved by the fact that 41 percent of WordPress attacks happen because of Vulnerabilities on the hosting platform.
#24. 90K attacks on WordPress sites every minute
Wordfence is a security plugin of WordPress and it reports around 90k attacks every minute. These figures show how vulnerable the platform is to bots and hackers.
Some General WordPress Statistics
#25. WordPress released a total of 550 versions till 2023.
Ever since launched in 2003, WordPress released a maximum number of versions in 2020. In that year, it released a total of 550 versions and as of now in 2023 there are 43 major WordPress releases
#26. WordPress versions named after jazz musicians
On average, WordPress releases core updates every 152 days. Also, all the versions released by WordPress are named after jazz musicians as the developers are big fans of jazz music.
#27. Around 1 million people switched their themes in 2023
According to stats available with WordPress, more than 1 million people changed their themes by the end of 2023. Earlier to this, more than 7 million people changed their themes in March 2023 with 835 million websites using it.
#28. Matthew Charles Mullenweg's friend suggested the name WordPress
Every person who has even the slightest information about websites or online presence knows about WordPress. But very few people know that the name was suggested by WordPress founder Matthew Charles Mullenweg's friend Christine. She is a successful blogger herself.
#29. WordPress boasts the largest internet community
According to stats, WordPress has over 250,000 active members and over 840 meetup groups all over the world.
#30. WordPress.org is different from WordPress.com
WordPress.org is free with 77 million new comments on posts per month. The open-source CMS for WordPress.com is a blogging platform that is based on the WordPress.org software.
#31. WordPress has applications for all platforms
Be it iOS, Android, Windows Phone, or WebSO, WordPress has applications for all common platforms.
#32. Over 4k free GPL-licensed themes for WordPress
WordPress directory has over 4k General Public License or GPL themes. Several themes are available for purchase from third-party vendors.
#33. Almost 88.4% of all WordPress sites are served over HTTPS
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension or one can say encrypted version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Currently, over 88.4% of all WordPress sites are served over HTTPS in 2023.
#34. WordPress endorses three providers
WordPress can be hosted on any server available in the world. However, there are three officially recommended WordPress hosting providers: Dreamhost, Bluehost, and SiteGround.
#35. WordPress.org showcases some of the most amazing WordPress sites
Just visit WordPress.org to see what is possible with WordPress. Here you can see the sites that make the best use of the platform.
#36. Average WordPress developers earn $77,862
The platform is easy to work on and minimizes the necessity to hire developers. However, they can help you derive several other things.
According to statistics from payscale.com, average WordPress developers in the United States earn well above $77 every year, and across the world, remote WordPress developer earns approximately $60,648 annually.
#37. Metadata and SEO titles are easy to manage on WordPress
They both contribute to improved search engines and are easy to work on WordPress.
Conclusion
Starting way back in 2003, WordPress has been in business for almost two decades now. A lot has changed since its inception. But it has managed to make changes according to the requirements of users and this helped it remain the most popular content management system in the world. Also, WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms.
It has helped millions of blog and site owners to fulfill their dreams and achieve their goals. The features provided by WordPress are relevant to so many users. From small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, all of them are happy with the options available with WordPress. This makes it the most popular platform in the world.
Sources
Shivanjali, a Digital Marketing Expert, regularly contributes to various industry-specific magazines. She is interested in tech statistics, SMO, and raising awareness about technical how-to guides. She can often be found exploring different places on weekends.
