Top 10 Popular CMS by Market Share (to Start a Website)

Are you wondering what the most popular CMS is? If you want to build a website or blog, there’s safety in numbers. The more people who’re using a particular content management system (CMS), the more likely it is that that CMS is a good option for you too. So, how do you find out what the most popular CMS is?

In this article, we’ll share with you the most popular CMS by market share. We’ll use tools like W3Techs and BuiltWith to determine what CMS comes out on top.

Let’s get started.

What is a Content Management System (CMS)?

A content management system (CMS) is a software (most commonly web-based) that allows users to create, manage, and modify content on a website, without needing to know anything about code.

To put it simply, a content management system makes it easy for anyone to build their own website or blog. Instead of having to build a website from scratch, a CMS handles all of the infrastructures for you. All you have to do is add content to the front-end of your website like copy, images, forms, and so on.

According to Internet Live Stats, there are currently 1,676,199,250 (and counting!) websites online right now.

The reason that number is so high is partly because of content management systems. A content management system allows even beginners to easily make a website in no time.

What is Market Share?

Market share is the portion of a market controlled by a particular product or company. In simpler terms, market share shows how many people are using one product over the competition. By looking at market share, we can easily determine what the most popular CMS is.

For the purposes of this article, market share is determined by the percentages of websites using various content management systems.

Now, let’s get into the list of the most popular CMS by market share!

1. WordPress

Market Share: 60.4%
Total Live Sites: 24,808,989
Number of Sites in Top 1 Million: 318,828
Top 3 Countries with the Most Sites: United States, United Kingdom, Russia
Most Popular Sites: TechCrunch, The New Yorker, Beyonce, The Official Star Wars Blog, Microsoft News Center

WordPress is by far the most popular CMS with 60.4% of the market share. This means WordPress is used by 33.5% of all the websites online. That’s huge! And WordPress is used by popular brands across the world.

WordPress is an open-source software and it’s free and available to download from the WordPress.org website. All you need to purchase is a domain name and WordPress hosting in order to run your website and make it available to users online.

WordPress is beginner-friendly; you can easily make a website, blog, or online store with this CMS. Plus, customizing your WordPress site is easy and affordable since WordPress offers thousands of free themes and plugins to choose from.

For more information, check out our other article on 9 reasons why WordPress is the best site builder.

It’s also important to note that there are 2 different types of WordPress: WordPress.org and WordPress.org. For a detailed comparison, read our other article on WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org to find out if one is better than the other.

2. Joomla

Market Share: 5.2%
Total Live Sites: 1,844,993
Number of Sites in Top 1 Million: 18,172
Top 3 Countries with the Most Sites: United States, Russia, Germany
Most Popular Sites: Linux, IKEA, Holiday Inn, Lipton Ice Tea

Joomla is the second most popular CMS by market share coming in at 5.2%. As you can see, there’s a large difference between WordPress at 1st place and Joomla at 2nd place.

Joomla is also a free and open-sourced software, like WordPress. Downloading Joomla is easy and many hosting providers offer 1-click installations. With Joomla, you can quickly start a blog, business website, community website, and more using their themes and extensions.

3. Drupal

Market Share: 3.4%
Total Live Sites: 581,174
Number of Sites in Top 1 Million: 31,403
Top 3 Countries with the Most Sites: United States, Russia, Germany
Most Popular Sites: Tesla, Timex, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Princess Cruises

Drupal comes in 3rd place on the list of most popular CMS with 3.4% of the market share.

This CMS is another free and open-source software that you can use to build a website. Drupal offers themes and modules to help users design a site but they’re more difficult to find and install compared to WordPress. In addition, adding content to Drupal is simple but changing the look of your site is more a more complicated process than other content management systems.

4. Shopify

Market Share: 2.7%
Total Live Sites: 785,397
Number of Sites in Top 1 Million: 22,196
Top 3 Countries with the Most Sites: United States, United Kingdom, Australia
Most Popular Sites: Fashion Nova, Penguin Books, Red Bull, Kylie Cosmetics

Shopify comes in on this list at #4, with 2.7% of the market share, which equals 1.5% of all of the websites on the internet.

Shopify is a CMS that’s built specifically with eCommerce in mind. With Shopify, creating an online store, receiving payments from your customers, managing your products, and building a marketplace is super easy. At the same time, Shopify handles the other aspects of your online store such as web hosting, SSL certificate, web security, and more.

Plus, you can integrate Shopify with WordPress, so you can use the most popular CMS with the most popular eCommerce CMS together, for added ease of use, reduced overhead, and increased customization.

It’s also important to note that Shopify is one of the top 3 fastest growing content management systems. The top 3, in order, are:

1. WordPress
2. WooCommerce
3. Shopify

5. Squarespace

Market Share: 2.7%
Total Live Sites: 1,870,777
Number of Sites in Top 1 Million: 9,995
Top 3 Countries with the Most Sites: United States, United Kingdom, Canada
Most Popular Sites: Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba, John Malkovich

Coming in at #5 is Squarespace with 2.7% of the market share. Squarespace is one of the most easy-to-use platforms to build a website with. This is in part because Squarespace is a website builder with a drag and drop interface, rather than a fully-fledged publishing platform like WordPress.

They offer modern templates, style editor, free Typekit and Google fonts, customizable content layouts, and more.

For more info, check out our article on Squarespace vs. WordPress.

6. Wix

Market Share: 1.9%
Total Live Sites: 3,373,287
Number of Sites in Top 1 Million: 4,800
Top 3 Countries with the Most Sites: United States, Brazil, United Kingdom
Most Popular Sites: Karlie Kloss, AdMost, Tobias Becs

In 6th place on the list of the most popular CS by market share is Wix, with 1.9%.

Wix has grown in popularity the last few years because it’s very user-friendly and it’s also a fully-hosted platform. You can easily create a variety of websites including a business site, blog, portfolio, online store, and more.

You also have the option of creating a free website with a domain name that includes Wix branding, for example: username.wixsite.com/sitename.

Want to see how Wix stands up against WordPress? Check out our article on Wix vs. WordPress.

7. Magento

Market Share: 1.8%
Total Live Sites: 230,606
Number of Sites in Top 1 Million: 15,022
Top 3 Countries with the Most Sites: United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands
Most Popular Sites: Nike, Liverpool FC, Land Rover, Ford

Next up, Magento, with 1.8% of the market share. Magento is an open-source eCommerce platform that allows users to easily build an online store, accept online payments, manage their products, and more.

You can download the community edition of Magento for free or you can purchase a plan that includes cloud hosting, support, and other additional features. Magento is difficult to install and setup though and many hosting providers don’t offer 1-click installation like they do with WordPress and other CMS solutions.

8. PrestaShop

Market Share: 1.4%
Total Live Sites: 240,990
Number of Sites in Top 1 Million: 4,129
Top 3 Countries with the Most Sites: United States, France, Spain
Most Popular Sites: K-Way, La Redoute, Veja

In the 7th position is PrestaShop. PrestaShop is a freemium open-source eCommerce solution based out of Paris, France. You can download and use PrestaShop for free but will need to purchase web hosting to make your site live on the web. Or you can purchase PrestaShop Ready which is the hosted, ready-to-use version.

With PrestaShop you can easily build an online store, customize your store with themes, manage your products, track your statistics, and more.

9. Blogger

Market Share: 1.3%
Total Live Sites: 346,553
Number of Sites in Top 1 Million: 8,051
Top 3 Countries with the Most Sites: United States, New Zealand, India
Most Popular Sites: Hyperbole and a Half, The Hacker News, Amusing Planet

Coming in at #9 is one of the most popular CMS for blogging, Blogger. Blogger is a blog-publishing service and it’s totally free.

Blogger is a great and free blogging platform for beginners or casual bloggers, but not a great option if you want to start a business website. Plus, with Blogger, you don’t actually own your own blog; Google can delete it at any time. But with a self-hosted WordPress site, you have complete ownership and control.

10. TYPO3

Market Share: 1.2%
Total Live Sites: 285,281
Number of Sites in Top 1 Million: 5,143
Top 3 Countries with the Most Sites: Germany, United States, Switzerland
Most Popular Sites: Win-rar, Airbus, AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe

The last on the list of the most popular CMS is TYPO3. TYPO3 is a free and open-source web content management system.

This solution is not recommended for beginners though. TYPO3 is for advanced programmers because it’s difficult to install and it takes much more time to learn how to use it than WordPress or Joomla, for instance.

What is the Best CMS Platform to Start a Website?

As you can see from this list of the most popular CMS by market share, WordPress comes out on top by leaps and bounds. With a whopping 60.4% market share, it’s clear that WordPress is the most popular website builder and the best CMS on the market.

Not only is WordPress the most popular CMS for building websites in general, it’s by far the most popular choice for creating a blog. According to statistics from BuiltWith, 97% of blogs online are using WordPress.

Plus, WordPress is popular for a reason. It’s easy-to-use, even for complete beginners, you have complete control of your website, and there are endless options for customization and adding extra power to your website.

It’s easy to see why WordPress is most popular CMS to use for making a website or blog. You can also head over to our WordPress review to get a detailed insight.

We hope you enjoyed this article on the most popular CMS by market share and that this information helps you choose the best content management system for your needs. If you liked this article, check out our other post on 100+ Interesting WordPress Stats & Facts You Must Know and also amazing Blogging Statistics.