WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, powering over 43% of all websites and 64% of websites with a known CMS. But how did WordPress achieve this dominance, and will it last in 2023 and beyond?
We will explore some of the reasons why WordPress is still the king of CMS, and what challenges and opportunities it faces in the future.
A Brief History of WordPress
WordPress was launched in 2003 as a fork of b2/cafelog, a blogging platform that was discontinued by its developer. WordPress was created by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, who wanted to create a simple and elegant tool for publishing online.
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It quickly gained popularity among bloggers and web developers, thanks to its open-source nature, ease of use, extensibility, and vibrant community. WordPress also benefited from the rise of web hosting services that offered one-click installation and support.
Over the years, WordPress evolved from a blogging tool to a full-fledged CMS that can power any type of website, from personal blogs to e-commerce stores to news portals to social networks. WordPress also expanded its ecosystem with thousands of themes and plugins that add functionality and design options to WordPress sites.
WordPress also launched WordPress.com, a hosted service that offers a simplified version of WordPress for users who don’t want to deal with hosting, maintenance, or technical issues. WordPress.com is owned by Automattic, a company founded by Mullenweg that also contributes to the WordPress open-source project.
The Numbers behind WordPress Market Share
According to W3Techs, WordPress powers 43.1% of all websites as of February 2023, up from 35.2% in December 2019. This means that WordPress has added about 8% of market share in four years, or about 2% per year.
If we look at websites that use a CMS, WordPress has an even higher market share of 64.2%, up from 50.7% in December 2019. This means that WordPress has added about 13.5% of market share in four years, or about 3.4% per year.
WordPress is also the most popular CMS among high-traffic websites. According to BuiltWith, WordPress powers 38% of the top 10k websites and 36% of the top 100k websites as of March 2023.
WordPress is also the most popular platform for e-commerce websites, thanks to its WooCommerce plugin that adds e-commerce functionality to WordPress sites. According to BuiltWith, WooCommerce powers 28% of all e-commerce websites and 23% of the top 10k e-commerce websites as of March 2023.
About to celebrate its 20 years of existence, WordPress today powers almost half of the web.
The reasons for its success
Why is WordPress so popular and successful? There are many factors that contribute to WordPress’ market share dominance, but here are some of the main ones:
- WordPress is free and open-source: WordPress is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which means that anyone can use, modify, distribute, and contribute to WordPress without paying any fees or royalties. This makes WordPress accessible and affordable for anyone who wants to create a website.
- WordPress is easy to use: WordPress has a user-friendly interface that allows users to create and manage their websites without any coding skills. Users can choose from thousands of themes and plugins that customize their websites’ appearance and functionality with just a few clicks.
- WordPress is flexible and versatile: WordPress can power any type of website, from blogs to portfolios to online stores to social networks. Users can extend WordPress’ core functionality with plugins that add features such as contact forms, SEO tools, security measures, analytics, membership systems, forums, newsletters, and more.
- WordPress is secure and reliable: WordPress is constantly updated and maintained by its core developers and community contributors who fix bugs, improve performance, and add new features. WordPress also has a robust security team that monitors and patches any vulnerabilities or threats that may affect WordPress sites.
- WordPress has a large and supportive community: WordPress has millions of users and developers who share their knowledge, experience, feedback, and resources on various platforms such as blogs, forums, podcasts, meetups, conferences, workshops, courses, etc. Users can find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems, inspiration for their projects, and opportunities for collaboration within the WordPress community.
WordPress Market Share 2023: The Challenges
As the web evolves and new technologies emerge, WordPress faces some significant challenges in the coming years.
One of the biggest challenges for WordPress is the rise of headless CMSs, which decouple the front-end presentation layer from the back-end data layer. This allows developers to use any technology they want to create custom and dynamic web experiences, while still managing the content in a centralized platform. Headless CMSs offer more flexibility, performance, and security than traditional CMSs, and are gaining popularity among developers and businesses alike. Some examples of headless CMSs are Contentful, Strapi, Sanity, and Netlify.
e-commerce
Another challenge for WordPress is the increasing demand for e-commerce functionality on websites. E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing segments of the web, and many businesses need a robust and reliable platform to sell their products and services online.
WordPress offers some e-commerce solutions, such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads, but they may not be able to compete with dedicated e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. These platforms offer more features, integrations, and scalability than WordPress-based solutions, and may attract more customers who want to start or grow their online stores.
Performance issues
A third challenge for WordPress is the need for better performance and optimization on the web. As users expect faster and smoother web experiences, website speed and performance become crucial factors for SEO, user engagement, and conversions.
WordPress also relies on plugins and themes to add functionality and design to websites, but these can also introduce compatibility issues, security vulnerabilities, and performance problems. Users need to optimize their websites regularly to ensure they meet the web standards and best practices.
These are some of the main challenges that WordPress may face in 2023 and beyond. However, this does not mean that WordPress is doomed or irrelevant. It still has many advantages over other CMSs, such as its ease of use, large community, extensive documentation, and rich ecosystem of plugins and themes. WordPress also continues to innovate and improve its core features and functionality, such as the Gutenberg editor, the REST API, and the full-site editing project. WordPress has proven to be a resilient and adaptable CMS that can overcome many obstacles and challenges in its history.
Therefore, WordPress market share in 2023 will depend on how well it can address these challenges and meet the changing needs and expectations of web users and developers. WordPress will need to balance its simplicity and accessibility with its flexibility and performance. It will also need to leverage its strengths and differentiate itself from its competitors. WordPress market share in the coming years may not be as high as it is today, but it will continue to be a dominant and influential force on the web.
