WordPress Market Share Declines For Six Months In A Row

The newest statistics from W3Techs make it clear that WordPress is shedding market share whereas different platforms are secure or experiencing sturdy curiosity. But, there’s purpose to imagine that WordPress might flip round.

Quarterly Declines Since January 2025

W3Techs’ quarterly statistics present WordPress utilization holding regular at about 43.0% in 2022, adopted by a slight improve to about 43.2% in 2023. That modest degree of development continued in 2024, after which WordPress’s market share began to say no modestly in 2025, selecting up pace on the finish of the 12 months.

W3Techs’ statistics then present six quarters of consecutive decline in market share starting in 2025 and persevering with by means of the current date.

WordPress Quarterly Declines

• 2025 Jan 43.6%
• 2025 Apr 43.5%
• 2025 Jul 43.4%
• 2025 Oct 43.3%
• 2026 Jan 43.0%

The above quarterly declines, when checked out 12 months over 12 months from January 2025 to January 2026 present a modest decline of .60 proportion factors:

• January 2025: 43.60%
• January 2026: 43.00%

Nonetheless, whenever you take a look at the month-to-month statistics beginning with December 2025 (market share of 43.20%) and proceed to Might 2026 (market share 41.90% ), the W3Techs knowledge reveals a decline of 1.1 proportion factors. That’s virtually 4 instances the January 2025-26 12 months over 12 months decline of 0.60 proportion factors.

Six Month Decline In WordPress Market Share

WordPress was already shedding market share at a modest tempo in 2025. However the tempo of decline took a steeper drop starting on December 2025.

Right here is the six month regular decline in market share starting in December 2025

• Dec 2025: 43.20%
• Jan 2026: 43.00%
• Feb 2026: 42.80%
• Mar 2026: 42.70%
• Apr 2026: 42.50%
• Might 27, 2026: 41.90%

That’s six consecutive months of decline. The tragedy of this adverse flip in WordPress’s market share is that WordPress simply launched a significant model of its software program that units in place all of the items crucial for plugin and theme builders to combine AI options into WordPress, inserting it on the verge of main improvements that might outpace the remainder of the CMS {industry} due to the relative dimension of the WordPress neighborhood.

Why Is WordPress Shedding Market Share?

W3Techs statistics present that WordPress’s market share decline started within the quarter after Mullenweg initiated his public assaults towards WP Engine.

Mullenweg’s actions included:

• Creating an anti-WP Engine web site encouraging their customers to desert WPE and enroll with different net hosts
• Quickly stopping tens of hundreds of WPE hosted WordPress customers from updating their web sites
• Requiring all contributors signing in to their WordPress.org accounts to tick a field confirming that they had been “not affiliated with WP Engine in any approach, financially or in any other case.”
• Cloning premium plugins owned by WP Engine and releasing them without spending a dime.
• Stopping WP Engine workers from accessing their WordPress.org accounts.

Sentiment was not in Mullenweg’s favor, 8% of employees of Mullenweg’s for-profit Automattic resigned. Amongst those that resigned had been Josepha Haden Chomphosy, the manager director of the WordPress venture itself.

WP Engine responded to Mullenweg’s assaults with a Federal lawsuit in October 2024, resulting in a preliminary injunction against both Mullenweg and Automattic in December 2024.

Matt Mullenweg has loads of followers on his facet however there’s clearly a adverse sentiment that persists to to this present day.  A latest tweet on X introduced out many supporters however an equal quantity of detractors.

Mullenweg wrote:

“I’ve held my tongue for 15 months, however I can’t abide or normalize the authorized violence that @wpengine is inflicting anymore.”

@danielhayesmith quoted the “held my tongue” half, reminding Mullenweg that he’s been fairly vocal:

“‘held my tongue’

Brother i hope you don’t actually imagine that as a result of there are actually a number of interviews, weblog posts, and tweets of you very a lot not doing that.”

To which Matt responded that there was rather more that he hadn’t stated:

“Oh, the issues I may have stated! I used to be attempting to remain as factual and conciliatory as potential. I nonetheless am.

I need what’s greatest for @WordPress, and that’s not having two of the highest firms waste so many assets on this.”

Among the many supporters, @MattMickiewicz offered:

“…sorry you’re having to undergo this authorized warfare. Devastating.”

But @davidtsolheim defined how the adverse sentiment generated by Mullenweg’s assaults on WP Engine triggered him to cease recommending WordPress.

He wrote:

“Truthfully your place on the WP problem pushed me away from WordPress and I haven’t really useful it in about 2 years as a result of I as a vendor must belief the folks main the software program I like to recommend.”

Solely WordPress Is Shedding Market Share

This phenomenon of market share drop is basically a WordPress downside, it’s not an industry-wide problem. For 2026 as of right this moment, just about all the opposite prime content material administration platforms are holding regular and rising. Solely Joomla is displaying a modest decline and that’s solely of 0.1 proportion level.

This decline in WordPress market share isn’t an anomaly at W3Techs. Actual-world knowledge from the HTTPArchive confirms that WordPress is shedding customers.

The HTTPArchive Adoption metric tracks what number of distinctive web sites are using a selected web site framework or CMS over a given a time interval.

Screenshot Of HttpArchive Adoption Fee

Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace are all displaying modest will increase in market share.

Shopify: 0.20 Level Enhance

• Jan 2026: 5.00%
• Feb 2026: 5.10%
• Mar 2026: 5.10%
• Apr 2026: 5.10%
• Might 2026: 5.20%

Wix: 0.10 Level Enhance

• Jan 2026: 4.20%
• Feb 2026: 4.20%
• Mar 2026: 4.20%
• Apr 2026: 4.30%
• Might 2026: 4.30%

Squarespace: 0.10 Enhance

• Jan 2026: 2.40%
• Feb 2026: 2.50%
• Mar 2026: 2.50%
• Apr 2026: 2.50%
• Might 2026: 2.50%

Webflow: Holding Regular

• Jan 2026: 0.90%
• Feb 2026: 0.90%
• Mar 2026: 0.90%
• Apr 2026: 0.90%
• Might 2026: 0.90%

Duda: Holding Regular

• Jan 2026: 0.70%
• Feb 2026: 0.70%
• Mar 2026: 0.70%
• Apr 2026: 0.70%
• Might 2026: 0.70%

Astro Is Rising Exponentially

In the meantime, the Astro web site framework is rising exponentially month over month in accordance with stats on BestOfJS. Astro started the 12 months with 4.59 million downloads in January and ended the month of April with 9.24 million downloads. At this fee of development it’s honest to label the Astro framework as quickly rising.

Astro’s Fee Of Downloads

• January 4.59M
• February 5.36M
• March 7.72M
• April 9.24M

WordPress Might But Bounce Again

The statistics published by W3Techs are laborious to disregard. It’s fairly clear that WordPress’ market share is eroding. Nonetheless, WordPress just lately revealed a significant replace that will renew curiosity from customers, particularly as soon as plugin, theme, and web page builder builders start releasing extra AI-based options. The neighborhood round WordPress is powerful, and many individuals depend on it for his or her companies. It’s tough to think about a world with out WordPress.

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