Top CMS Market Share Leaders in 2025

Understanding the current content management system landscape is crucial for making informed digital strategy decisions. Recent data reveals that WordPress continues to dominate the market, powering 43.3% of all websites and holding a 60.7% share among sites that use a CMS. However, this leadership position shows a sustained decline from its peak a few years ago, bringing its market share back to levels not seen since 2018.

For business leaders and technical teams, this trend represents more than just shifting statistics. WordPress is experiencing its first significant market share slide in two decades, while managed SaaS solutions like Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace are steadily gaining ground. These platforms appeal to organizations seeking simpler solutions with lower technical overhead. Simultaneously, the percentage of websites operating without any CMS has dropped to 28.6%, confirming the broader industry movement toward structured platforms and hosted builders.

Selecting the right content management system has evolved from a matter of preference to a strategic business decision with direct implications for site performance, security, operational costs, and scalability.

Current CMS Market Size

Industry data indicates that 71.4% of all websites now utilize a content management system. With over 281 million domains reported, we can estimate the current CMS market serves more than 200 million websites globally.

Leading Content Management Systems by Market Share

The current distribution among top platforms shows WordPress maintaining its substantial lead despite recent declines. The platform’s usage across all websites grew by 105% between 2014 and 2022, establishing it as the default choice for much of the web. However, its growth trajectory has recently reversed, with market share dropping nearly seven percentage points over the past three years. This trend may continue as user-friendly alternatives gain popularity and some users express concerns about plugin compatibility, core updates, and security management.

Shopify currently ranks as the second-most popular CMS with 6.8% market share, used by 4.8% of all surveyed websites. The platform’s success stems from strong performance in Core Web Vitals benchmarks, making it competitive even on technical metrics. From both SEO and business perspectives, Shopify provides executives with a CMS option engineered to support both performance and sustainable growth.

Wix has demonstrated notable growth this year, now powering 4.1% of surveyed websites. The platform’s steady ascent reflects increasing adoption among small businesses, with users frequently praising its convenient and user-friendly features. For decision-makers, this signals that Wix has evolved beyond a basic website builder into a platform with substantial branding and capability investments, positioning it as a viable option for mid-market adoption.

Squarespace has shown consistent expansion over the past decade, growing from 0.3% market share in 2014 to its current 3.4%, with 2.4% of websites now using the platform. This growth likely responds to increasing demand for low-maintenance, design-focused platforms that prioritize aesthetics and ease of use.

Traditional platforms like Joomla and Drupal, once among the top three CMS options until 2021, have experienced steady market share erosion, now accounting for just 2.0% and 1.1% respectively. This decline reflects a broader industry shift toward user-friendly, SaaS-based platforms that better serve small businesses and non-technical users.

Meanwhile, Webflow has emerged as a growing contender, reaching 1.2% of the CMS market. Its expansion demonstrates demand for design-led platforms that enable businesses to streamline development without heavy technical dependencies, with many professionals citing speed as a key differentiator.

The Decline of Custom-Coded Websites

Between 2024 and October 2025, websites operating without any CMS decreased by 2.8 percentage points, continuing the movement away from custom-coded solutions. During this same period, WordPress usage grew by just under 1%. The reduction in “no CMS” websites signals an ongoing transition toward more structured, manageable platforms for site creation and maintenance.

Historical Shifts Among Major Platforms

Since 2024, Joomla has decreased its market share by 20%, while Drupal has declined by 31%. Together, these platforms once commanded almost 15% of the CMS market in 2014 – a figure that now stands at just over 3%. They’ve slipped from the second and third positions to fifth and sixth, overtaken by faster-growing platforms like Wix and Squarespace in 2022.

Joomla particularly showed strong momentum in its early years, briefly surpassing WordPress in search interest around 2008 according to Google Trends data, but hasn’t maintained pace with modern platform requirements. This decline likely results from WordPress’s superior third-party support through plugins and themes, making it more accessible to diverse users. The expansion of website builders like Wix and Squarespace indicates that small businesses increasingly prefer straightforward managed solutions, gradually capturing market share from the bottom up.

Website Builder Growth Patterns

Between October 2024 and October 2025, market share changes reveal distinct growth trajectories: Shopify expanded by 4.6%, Wix grew by 32.6%, and Squarespace increased by 9.7%. For website builders specifically, this robust growth strongly indicates where the market may be heading.

SaaS web builders including Wix and Squarespace require no coding knowledge and provide hosted solutions that enable small businesses to establish web presence rapidly. These platforms eliminate the need to arrange separate hosting, install software, or configure email systems, handling所有这些functionality seamlessly. While WordPress isn’t generally considered complicated, it does require some technical understanding of how websites function. Website builders offer a more accessible route to market without requiring backend technical knowledge.

The Elementor Phenomenon

Elementor stands as the most widely used WordPress page builder, installed on 18.1% of all websites with a known CMS and 12.9% of all surveyed sites – exceeding the combined installation rates of Wix and Squarespace. Although it functions as a WordPress plugin rather than a standalone CMS, it significantly influences how WordPress is implemented. As a third-party plugin, it doesn’t appear in the top 10 CMS rankings despite its substantial impact.

When comparing traffic volume to CMS usage, WordPress occupies the optimal position, clearly favored by sites with higher traffic levels. Joomla serves a niche of fewer installations but more high-traffic sites, suggesting continued use by professional organizations. Squarespace and Wix appear toward the lower traffic spectrum, indicating stronger adoption among small websites and businesses.

Elementor bridges these segments, leveraging WordPress’s market weight while appealing to sites with less traffic. This demonstrates growing appetite for drag-and-drop, plug-and-play solutions that make web presence accessible to virtually anyone – a segment worth monitoring closely.

Ecommerce Platform Dynamics

In the ecommerce CMS space, WooCommerce commands 12.4% market share compared to Shopify’s 6.8%. WooCommerce powers 8.9% of all existing websites, making it the most widely adopted ecommerce plugin by a significant margin. It doesn’t appear in standard CMS rankings because it operates as a WordPress plugin, but it remains a crucial factor in WordPress’s enduring popularity.

The distribution pattern clearly shows WooCommerce’s dominance compared to other ecommerce platforms. Its market share exceeds the combined totals of Shopify (6.8%), PrestaShop (0.8%), and OpenCart (0.6%), which together reach 8.2%. Smaller sites often favor WooCommerce, benefiting from the WordPress platform’s extensive market access and consequently higher installation rates, similar to the Elementor dynamic.

Shopify experienced remarkable growth during the pandemic, with market share expanding 52.9% from 2020 to 2021 and another 26.9% from 2021 to 2022, outpacing all other platforms. After a slight dip in 2023, it recovered in 2024 and has since stabilized at its current 6.8% level.

Strategic Implications for SEO and Business Planning

As the CMS market fragments, these shifts affect numerous aspects of digital presence including site architecture, plugin availability, and technical SEO flexibility. WordPress continues to lead, but its gradual decline marks an industry turning point. SaaS competitors like Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace are steadily gaining traction by offering streamlined platforms that appeal to most business users.

If more small and medium businesses migrate toward website builders, understanding these platforms’ limitations and intricacies for SEO could provide competitive advantage. CMS selection directly determines how efficiently teams can build, secure, and optimize sites at scale.

Shopify now operates on 4.8% of all surveyed websites (not limited to CMS users). With its expanding market presence, developing specialized Shopify SEO expertise represents a strategic move for digital marketing professionals.

Wix and Squarespace continue their growth trajectories. As additional small businesses adopt these platforms, developing fluency in their ecosystems could differentiate service providers in a crowded marketplace.

The reality remains that WordPress continues to offer the largest and most competitive ecosystem, but growth momentum has shifted toward challenger platforms. For business leaders and SEO professionals, this creates opportunity to diversify expertise across multiple systems. Understanding various CMS platforms’ strengths and limitations enables more informed strategic decisions that align with evolving market demands.

(Source: Search Engine Journal)