Are you looking for the latest CMS market share trends and usage stats?
These statistics can help you better understand the CMS market so you can choose the best CMS for your needs. Or you might even learn something new about your favorite content management system.
In this CMS market share report, we’ve collected the latest trends and usage stats for all the biggest content management systems.
We’ve divided this CMS market share report into several different categories. Simply use the table of contents below to jump straight to the statistics or content management system you’re most interested in.
CMS Usage Statistics
The best content management systems make it easy to manage your content and create web pages, usually without having to write any code.
While it is possible to build a website without a CMS, you would need to learn a few different programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and PHP. You might even need to hire expert developers or web design specialists.
Without a CMS, you would need to write code every time you wanted to update your site. You might also have to deal with common errors if you make a mistake in the code.
With that being said, it’s not surprising that so many websites already use a CMS. In the future, we expect to see the number of hand-coded sites continue to fall, as more and more people realize the benefits of a good CMS.
North America may continue to dominate the CMS market, but experts predict that the Asia Pacific region will get the highest return on investment out of all the regions.
This suggests the Asia Pacific market will play a much larger role in the CMS space, moving forward.
Content Management System Market Value
No matter whether you’re starting a blog, running a global eCommerce business, or making a small business website, the right CMS can help you succeed.
With 58% of all websites now using a CMS, it’s easy to see why this is a billion-dollar industry that shows no signs of slowing down.
WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS, and that seems unlikely to change anytime soon.
The figures show that the number of hand-coded websites has decreased every year since 2011. At the same time, the number of WordPress websites has increased every single year. This suggests that WordPress is a popular choice among first-time CMS users.
This makes sense, as WordPress is one of the most user-friendly content management systems. WordPress is also one of the most flexible and customizable CMS platforms, and you can even download it for free from WordPress.org.
No matter whether you want to start a personal blog, an online store, or a multilingual website, you’ll have no problems finding the perfect WordPress theme and plugins. You can think of plugins as modules or apps that extend the core CMS.
WordPress is also optimized for search engines and gives you easy access to specialist SEO tools such as AIOSEO. All of this explains why WordPress has such a big user base.
Since WordPress is an open-source CMS, you can use it with a huge range of different WordPress hosting providers. Again, this makes WordPress a flexible CMS that appeals to lots of other people and businesses.
However, although WordPress has a far more significant market share than any other CMS, the content management system space is huge.
Even a 1% market share still translates to millions of websites. With that in mind, many of the content management systems in this report are still big players in the CMS market, even if they can’t compete with the sheer number of WordPress websites.
For more information, please see our ultimate guide on how to create a WordPress website.
It may not be a standalone CMS, but the statistics show that a significant number of online stores use WordPress and WooCommerce to create a CMS with eCommerce functionality. For this reason, we’re including WooCommerce in our CMS market share report.
According to the data, eCommerce sites that get the most traffic are more likely to use WooCommerce, although Shopify is a close second favorite among the top online stores.
Shopify is a fully hosted platform so you don’t need to worry about performance, which could explain why Shopify is used by 2.05% of high-traffic eCommerce sites.
Similarly, there is no shortage of managed WordPress hosting providers who can fine-tune your WooCommerce store and make sure it provides the best possible customer experience.
If you choose WordPress and WooCommerce as your eCommerce CMS, then you’ll also have access to lots of WooCommerce plugins that can extend and optimize the platform.
Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, you can also follow our ultimate guide on how to boost WordPress speed and performance.
With their managed hosting and high performance, both Shopify and WooCommerce have a lot to offer online store owners and entrepreneurs. For a more detailed look at these two platforms, please see our Shopify vs WooCommerce comparison.
When we compare Wix’s market share to its closest competitor, we get interesting results.
Out of the top 1 million sites, 28.7% of those websites use WordPress but only 0.56% use Wix. This suggests that Wix appeals to small sites and businesses that get less traffic, rather than high-traffic websites.
By comparison, high-traffic websites are much more likely to use WordPress.
For a more detailed comparison, please see our complete guide to Wix vs. WordPress – which one is better?
Similar to Wix, Squarespace is much more popular among sites that have less traffic, compared to sites that get lots of visitors.
This makes sense, as Squarespace is best known for its ready-made templates and ease of use, which makes it a great platform for first-time website owners and smaller businesses.
Squarespace also has some limits that may be less appealing to larger businesses. For example, Squarespace only has a few integrations with third-party services. This can be a problem for big companies that want to use lots of different software and services with their content management system.
All of this may explain why we see larger organizations opt for flexible platforms such as WordPress, while smaller sites tend to choose hosted platforms like Squarespace or Wix.
For more information on this topic, you can see our guide on Square vs. WordPress – which one is better?
Joomla still has a significant user base, but the growing popularity of user-friendly platforms such as WordPress and Shopify has affected its market share.
Many shared hosting providers offer one-click install packages for Joomla. However, the Joomla control panel isn’t as straightforward as other systems, with lots of different menus and settings that you can use to customize your site. This means that Joomla has a steep learning curve.
By default, Joomla also doesn’t allow users to install extensions and templates from the control panel, which can make it difficult for first-time users to find helpful add-ons.
This is a powerful platform with a loyal fanbase, but with so many user-friendly alternatives we may see Joomla’s market share continue to decline.
To learn more, please see our guide to WordPress vs. Joomla Vs. Drupal.
Weebly is a fully hosted platform that has everything beginners need to build a website, including ready-made templates. a built-in contact form, professionally-designed sliders, and photo galleries.
It’s an easy-to-use platform, which explains why Weebly has a user base of over 991,000 websites.
However, as a fully hosted platform, you’re locked into the functionality that Weebly provides. You can’t hire a developer or designer to add new features to a Weebly website, which might be why so few high-traffic websites use Weebly.
For more details, please see our guide on WordPress vs. Weebly – which is better?
The CMS statistics show that Drupal has a smaller overall market share compared to other content management systems on our list. Despite this, Drupal is used by a much larger percentage of high-traffic sites.
By comparison, Wix has a much larger overall market share (10%) but is used by a much lower percentage of the top 1 million websites (0.56%).
Drupal may not be the most popular CMS platform, but it’s a powerful software with lots of support resources. It also has a reputation as a very secure CMS.
While smaller websites, first-time site owners, and bloggers are choosing user-friendly platforms, the figures show that Drupal still has a loyal following among high-traffic websites.
For more information, please see our guide on WordPress vs. Joomla Vs. Drupal – which one is better?
Shopify had a sudden spike in popularity between 2020-2022, which saw its market share rise by 3.4% in just two years.
Many experts say this is due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With physical shops closed around the world, many businesses needed an easy way to sell their products online during this time.
As an all-in-one fully hosted eCommerce platform, Shopify is a user-friendly choice for anyone who wants to launch an online store, fast. Shopify comes with full inventory management, unlimited products, powerful analytics, marketing tools, and lots of designs, all in one product.
However, Shopify forces you to use its Shopify Payment platform. If you prefer to use your own payment processing solution, then Shopify charges an extra 2% transaction fee which is very high compared to other eCommerce solutions.
With that in mind, we may see Shopify’s growth slow as store owners start to look for more affordable Shopify alternatives. For example, you might move from Shopify to WooCommerce.
CMS Predictions for 2022 and Beyond
Artificial intelligence and machine learning promise to make all kinds of tasks easier and more efficient.
The world of content management systems is no exception, and it will be interesting to see how these platforms use advanced technologies in the future.
Sources: BuiltWith Trends, W3Techs, Zion Market Research, Facts and Factors, Statistica, Shopify, BuiltWith Knowledge Base.
We hope this CMS market share report helped you learn all about the latest trends and usage stats. You may also want to see our research on top marketing statistics as well as the latest web design trends and stats.