According to various estimates, surveys, and experiments, it’s believed that there are nearly two billion websites online today. The number, by any measure, is beyond huge. This creates a lot of room for the web’s top website platforms to shine.
- To be more precise, the latest reported number is exactly 1,800,047,111 websites – as pointed out by Netcraft in their Web Server Survey of January 2018.
Think about it, 1.8 billion websites means that there’s more or less one website for every four people in the world. And that number is even more impressive considering that roughly only one half of the world’s population has internet access.
But does this mean that one in every four people is a programmer who knows how to code a website into existence?
Of course not! The secret is something else. The fact that we have nearly two billion websites online today is thanks to what we call Content Management Systems, or CMS for short.
- In a nutshell, a CMS is a piece of online software that enables anyone to build a working website without having to get their hands dirty under the hood, tinkering with all the code. In fact, no coding or programming knowledge is required in order to build / run a website based on a CMS.
That is why various popular CMS tools now dominate all lists of top website platforms! It’s estimated that around half of all websites run on some form of a CMS.
What are the TOP CMS platforms?
WordPress is the CMS to rule them all! There’s just no other way to say this. According to the latest data, WordPress controls nearly 60% of the CMS market! What’s even more impressive, is that nearly 30% of all websites run on WordPress. That’s among all websites! Knowing these numbers, it should come as no surprise that this very website runs on WordPress as well.
Joomla and Drupal follow behind WordPress with approximately 6.7% and 4.7% percent of the CMS market share respectively. Right after the pair, we have Magento – formerly the most popular e-commerce platform out there – currently with 2.3% CMS market share.
You’ve probably noticed the word “formerly” there – Magento was THE thing back in the day, and surely the most well-known e-commerce solution of them all.
Then, WordPress came along and together with it the excellent WooCommerce plugin – WordPress’ take on e-commerce. According to the latest data, WooCommerce has grown above Magento in popularity.
When it comes to the top website platforms for e-commerce, WooCommerce has a 10% market share, while Magento has 9%. WordPress and its various side-tools are taking the web by storm.
There are also some new entrants to the CMS space this year, and we’re happy to tell you about them as well.
Here are the fastest growing popular CMS out there.
Data: BuiltWith.com, W3tech.com, SimilarTech, Google Trends.
Most popular CMS one by one
1. WordPress
- Market share: 59.7%
- The number of active sites tracked: 22,674,100
- Number of sites in top one million: 313,050
- Most popular sites: BBC America, Time, The Rolling Stones, Beyonce, TechCrunch, Justin Bieber
2. Joomla
- Market share: 6.7%
- The number of active sites tracked: 1,837,862
- Number of sites in top one million: 21,952
- Most popular sites: Holiday Inn Express, U.K National Crime Agency, OpenVPN, High Charts
3. Drupal
- Market share: 4.7%
- The number of active sites tracked: 577,549
- Number of sites in top one million: 27,863
- Most popular sites: Linux, Harvard University, GE Transportation
4. Magento
- Market share: 2.3%
- The number of active sites tracked: 214,455
- Number of sites in top one million: 14,188
- Most popular sites: Land Rover, Bulgari, G2A, Kinguin, YMEUniverse
5. Blogger
- Market share: 1.9%
- The number of active sites tracked: 343,944
- Number of sites in top one million: 7,797
- Most popular sites: WEB UPD8, Hyperbole and a Half, Blogger Buzz
6. Shopify
- Market share: 1.7%
- The number of active sites tracked: 739,176
- Number of sites in top one million: 17,285
- Most popular sites: WaterAid, The Economist, Sunday Somewhere, Penguin Books
7. TYPO3
- Market share: 1.5%
- The number of active sites tracked: 303,333
- Number of sites in top one million: 6,580
- Most popular sites: Sedo, Parallels, Notebookcheck
8. Bitrix
- Market share: 1.5%
- The number of active sites tracked: 183,346
- Number of sites in top one million: 6,127
- Most popular sites: Citrus, Eldorado, Leroy Merlin
9. Squarespace
- Market share: 1.4%
- The number of active sites tracked: 1,727,900
- Number of sites in top one million: 9,390
- Most popular sites: TrustPilot blog, Slidebean, Lyft, Wired
10. PrestaShop
- Market share: 1.3%
- The number of active sites tracked: 247,350
- Number of sites in top one million: 5,770
- Most popular: Asarayan, Decathlon, GeneveCompany
What are the TOP blogging platforms?
When it comes to blogging, there really can only be one winner – WordPress.
WordPress dominates the web on all levels. Apart from the simple fact that WordPress runs 30% of all websites in existence, it rules the blogging space even more.
According to BuiltWith.com, WordPress is used in nearly 9 in 10 blogs. Here’s how it plays out in a bit more detail:
- WordPress – 89.3%
- Blogger – 5.9%
- MovableType – 0.1%
- Ghost – 0.1%
- Tumblr – sub 0.1%
- Blog Engine – sub 0.1%
- Medium – sub 0.1%
- Posthaven – sub 0.1%