Content Management Software (CMS)

Top 50 Content Management Software (CMS) Statistics, Data & Trends in 2026

December 12, 2025

Key Takeaways

The CMS market is rapidly evolving toward AI-driven, headless, and composable architectures that support scalable, omnichannel content delivery.
Organisations prioritise security, governance, personalisation, and performance, making CMS selection a critical factor in digital success.
Data shows that businesses leveraging modern CMS platforms achieve faster workflows, improved search visibility, and stronger customer experiences.

The content management landscape is undergoing one of the most transformative periods in its history. As organisations shift deeper into digital ecosystems powered by automation, artificial intelligence, omnichannel publishing, and increasingly complex content operations, the role of Content Management Software (CMS) has evolved from a simple website-building tool to the central nervous system of modern digital experience delivery. By 2026, CMS platforms have become essential for businesses seeking to scale content, optimise customer journeys, enhance search performance, and maintain operational agility in a world where content is both the medium and the product.

Also, read our top guide on the Top 10 Best Content Management Software (CMS).

The surge in digital consumption, accelerated cloud adoption, and the emergence of AI-driven content engines have forced companies to rethink how they store, structure, deliver, and measure content. This evolution has reshaped not only how CMS systems are designed but also how marketing, product, content, and IT teams collaborate. From headless CMS architectures enabling flexible omnichannel experiences to enterprise-grade digital experience platforms (DXPs) integrating analytics, automation, and personalisation, the CMS sector in 2026 reflects a complex and fast-moving environment where innovation is the primary competitive advantage.

This report brings together 50 of the most important statistics, benchmarks, and trends defining the CMS industry in 2026. These insights reveal how organisations are investing in content technologies, which platforms are leading the market, how AI and automation are reshaping workflows, and what future-focused strategies are emerging across industries. Whether you are a marketer evaluating your tech stack, a developer architecting scalable systems, or a business leader preparing for digital transformation initiatives, understanding the current CMS ecosystem is essential to navigating an increasingly content-centric economy.

The global CMS market continues to expand at an unprecedented rate as enterprises prioritise faster content delivery cycles, personalised customer experiences, and the integration of structured and unstructured content across numerous digital touchpoints. Meanwhile, the rise of headless and composable architectures has catalysed a shift away from monolithic, template-driven systems toward flexible, API-first frameworks that support multi-platform distribution. This transition has not only changed the tools companies choose but also the way teams think about content strategy, governance, and long-term scalability.

At the same time, artificial intelligence has become a defining force in CMS evolution. AI-enhanced content creation, predictive analytics, automated metadata tagging, natural language processing, and smart personalisation engines are now common features rather than niche add-ons. In 2026, AI-powered CMS platforms are enabling businesses to reduce production bottlenecks, improve content quality, and deliver more relevant experiences at scale. As search engines increasingly reward structured content, rich metadata, and real-time page experience metrics, CMS selection has become a critical factor in achieving competitive organic visibility.

Security, compliance, and data governance have also risen to the forefront as organisations face greater pressure to meet global privacy standards and safeguard digital ecosystems. Businesses are adopting more sophisticated access control models, cloud-native security frameworks, and integrated threat detection to protect their content infrastructures. These priorities are influencing CMS purchasing decisions as much as usability, features, and speed.

Against this backdrop of technological acceleration and shifting user expectations, the following compilation of CMS statistics and insights provides a comprehensive overview of where the industry stands in 2026 and where it is heading. It covers market size and growth projections, user adoption metrics, platform performance insights, AI-driven CMS capabilities, headless and composable architecture trends, workflow optimisation data, security considerations, and the future of digital content operations.

By examining these 50 data points, readers will gain a fuller understanding of the forces shaping the CMS marketplace and the strategic implications for businesses across sectors. Whether your organisation is seeking to modernise its content infrastructure, transition to a headless CMS, leverage AI-powered capabilities, or optimise content performance for search and user engagement, these insights will help you make more informed decisions in a rapidly evolving environment.

As digital experiences become more distributed, interactive, personalised, and intelligent, the importance of choosing the right CMS cannot be overstated. The trends and statistics outlined in this report highlight not only the current state of CMS technology but also the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for organisations aiming to build resilient, scalable, and future-ready content ecosystems.

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WordPress Scale and Trends

More than 835 million sites worldwide were constructed using WordPress in 2024, underscoring its massive scale, with WPMet citing sources like W3Techs and BuiltWith for this figure.
WordPress powered between 43.4% and 43.6% of all websites on the internet during 2024–2025, reflecting its enduring dominance as noted by WordPress.com and Meetanshi based on W3Techs statistics.
Specifically, WordPress.org captured roughly 68% of the global CMS market share in 2024, further cementing its position according to WPMet’s analysis.

Other Leading CMS Platforms

Shopify achieved about 6.2% usage share within the CMS market in 2024, positioning it as a key player especially for e-commerce, per Themeisle data summarized by Codexpert.
Approximately 4.0% of websites using a known CMS were powered by Wix as of 2024, according to W3Techs data aggregated via Codexpert.
Wix supported about 8.2 million live websites globally in 2024, demonstrating significant real-world deployment, with Colorlib data cited via Codexpert.
Wix exhibited an estimated 149% annual growth rate in 2024, marking it as one of the fastest-expanding CMS platforms based on TechReport figures relayed by Codexpert.
Joomla maintained a global CMS market share of about 2.4% in 2025, supporting roughly 919,707 websites, as detailed by WPMet citing W3Techs and BuiltWith.

Open-Source CMS Usage Shifts

Joomla and Drupal collectively held roughly 17% of the CMS market share about a decade prior but had declined to under 5% combined by the mid-2020s, illustrating a notable shift in open-source adoption per MobiLoud’s summary of historical W3Techs and BuiltWith trends.
From baselines in the early 2010s to 2025, Joomla’s share of all websites dropped from around 3.3% to 1.5%, while Drupal fell from about 1.9% to 0.8%, according to W3Techs data as reported by WordPress.com.

Performance Characteristics (2024)

Among leading CMS platforms in 2024, Squarespace’s JavaScript payload size increased from about 997 KB in 2022 to roughly 1.3 MB, indicating growing resource demands as per the HTTP Archive Web Almanac.
Wix delivered the largest JavaScript payload among the top five CMSs at roughly 1.4 MB in 2024, up from about 1.3 MB in 2022, according to the Web Almanac 2024 analysis.
Joomla provided the smallest JavaScript payload in the same top group at about 409 KB in 2024, a reduction from about 452 KB in 2022, highlighting its relative efficiency per Web Almanac 2024.

DXP Market (Adjacent to CMS)

The global digital experience platform (DXP) market, which overlaps with advanced CMS functionalities, reached a valuation of 14.20 billion USD in 2024.
This DXP market is forecasted to expand to 35.16 billion USD by 2032, achieving a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.0% from 2024 onward, as projected by Data Bridge Market Research.
Within the DXP market in 2024, the platform segment dominated with about 68.5% of total revenue share, according to Data Bridge’s breakdown.
As of June 2024, 51% of the websites in the Web Almanac’s desktop dataset were powered by a CMS, showing a steady increase compared to 2022 according to HTTP Archive analysis.
In the same study, CMS usage on mobile websites also reached 51% in 2024, up from 48% in 2022, indicating rising adoption across device types.
The number of desktop URLs tracked by HTTP Archive grew from 5.4 million in July 2022 to 12.7 million in June 2024, more than doubling the analyzed sample for CMS adoption.
The mobile dataset used by HTTP Archive saw an increase of 8.6 million mobile URLs in 2023, reflecting rapid growth in mobile site coverage for CMS analysis.
Squarespace delivered about 9.4 MB of page weight at the 90th percentile of visits in 2024, roughly 2 MB less than its 2022 level, according to the Web Almanac CMS chapter.
In 2024, Drupal’s 10th‑percentile page weight was 524 KB, Joomla’s was 561 KB, and WordPress’s was 598 KB, indicating relatively lightweight experiences at the fastest end of their distributions.
The global content management software market size was estimated at 31,707.0 million USD in 2024, according to Grand View Research.
This same content management software market is projected to reach 57,288.0 million USD by 2030, implying strong ongoing expansion.
The CMS market is projected by Mordor Intelligence to reach 45.71 billion USD by 2030, up from 30.91 billion USD in 2025, corresponding to an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.14%.
Cloud deployments accounted for 63.5% of CMS market share in 2024, with this deployment mode growing at a 20.2% CAGR due to scalability and managed services advantages.
The overall CMS software market (in a risk/claims management context) was worth more than 4 billion USD in 2024 and is forecast to grow to about 8 billion USD by 2030 at a 12% CAGR, according to Verdantix.
Asia‑Pacific is identified as the fastest‑growing region for CMS deployments, expanding at a 15.1% CAGR driven by booming ecommerce and mobile‑first usage patterns.
The global headless CMS software market volume reached about 1.2 billion “units” (license or deployment count) in 2024, with SaaS solutions representing 45% of that volume, on‑premise 30%, and hybrid models 25%.
Global Insight Services reports that the headless CMS software market is anticipated to expand from 1.6 billion USD in 2024 to 5.5 billion USD by 2034, corresponding to a CAGR of roughly 13.1% over the period.
Future Market Insights estimates the headless CMS software market achieved 816.9 million USD in actual sales in 2024, following a 19.2% CAGR between 2020 and 2024.
Verified Market Research places the headless CMS software market at 851.48 million USD in 2024 and projects it to reach 3,680.64 million USD by 2032, with a 22.15% CAGR expected from 2026 to 2032.
W3Techs usage statistics for July 2025 indicate that 28.5% of all websites use none of the monitored content management systems, leaving 71.5% using a tracked CMS.
The same W3Techs snapshot shows WordPress used by 43.2% of all websites, underscoring its dominant single‑platform share across the entire web.
According to the HTTP Archive CMS chapter, total percentage of websites using a CMS in its broader ranking sample dropped by 15 percentage points from 39% in 2022 due to dataset changes, despite absolute growth in CMS use.
Among top‑ranking websites, CMS adoption declines noticeably across all rank groups between 2022 and 2024, as summarized numerically in the Web Almanac analysis (with decreases measured in several percentage points depending on rank band).
The HTTP Archive 2024 dataset for CMS analysis spans millions of URLs, specifically more than 12 million desktop and a comparable scale of mobile URLs, enabling statistically robust percentage estimates for adoption and performance.
The Data Bridge digital experience platform (DXP) report notes that the services segment (implementation, support, and consulting) constitutes a significant minority share of the 14.20 billion USD DXP market in 2024, with the remainder dominated by platforms; services collectively account for roughly 31.5% when contrasted against the 68.5% attributed to platform revenue.
Within the DXP market breakdown by organization size, large enterprises represent a clear majority of spending—well over 60% of total DXP revenues in 2024—based on the segmentation figures provided in the Data Bridge report.
By industry vertical, the retail and ecommerce segment is one of the largest DXP adopters, responsible for a double‑digit percentage share of total DXP revenue—greater than 20% in 2024—according to the same analysis.
The HTTP Archive performance chapter shows that overall event handler usage (as a proxy for JavaScript interaction) is relatively low at around 15–16% of pages, but rises to about 35% on desktop and 27% on mobile for the top 1,000 sites, many of which are CMS‑driven experiences.
A June 2024 CMS market share analysis using HTTP Archive data identifies WordPress as powering well over 40% of CMS‑using sites, with the remainder divided among platforms like Shopify, Wix, Joomla, Squarespace, Drupal, and others each generally below 10% individually.
The same June 2024 report shows that a long “long tail” of dozens of less common CMSs accounts together for less than 10% of total CMS usage, each individually representing well under 1% share.
A quantitative security study of free content websites using CMSs finds that a relatively small number of unpatched vulnerabilities on CMS‑based sites can correlate with measurable increases in malicious activity rates, with sites in certain CMS categories displaying vulnerability incidence rates several percentage points higher than others in the sample.

Conclusion

The CMS ecosystem in 2026 reflects a sector that has rapidly matured while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of what content technology can achieve. The statistics and trends examined throughout this report illustrate a landscape defined by accelerating digital transformation, rising customer expectations, and an urgent need for flexible, intelligent, and scalable content operations. As businesses navigate increasingly complex digital environments, Content Management Software has shifted from being a behind-the-scenes infrastructure tool to a central driver of growth, innovation, and competitive advantage.

This year’s data highlights several overarching themes that will continue shaping the industry for years to come. The adoption of headless and composable CMS architectures is no longer limited to early adopters; it has become a mainstream strategy for organisations that require speed, modularity, and omnichannel delivery. The decoupling of front-end and back-end systems has empowered brands to build more dynamic, personalised, and future-proof digital experiences. Companies operating across multiple touchpoints and global markets increasingly view composable solutions as essential for staying agile amid fast-moving technological change.

Equally transformative is the role of artificial intelligence in redefining content production, management, and optimisation. The trends presented in this report demonstrate that AI-powered CMS capabilities—from automated metadata tagging and content generation to predictive personalisation and advanced analytics—are raising the bar for what businesses expect from their platforms. The future of CMS is not simply about content storage and delivery; it is about enabling intelligent systems that amplify human creativity, streamline workflows, and support data-driven decision-making. As AI models become more sophisticated, their integration into CMS ecosystems will become an indispensable component of digital strategy.

Security, compliance, and governance have also emerged as top priorities, fueled by increasing regulatory scrutiny and the expanding attack surface of modern content infrastructures. CMS platforms in 2026 must deliver far more than intuitive interfaces and publishing tools; they must provide enterprise-grade protections, granular access controls, and robust audit capabilities. The statistics show that organisations evaluating CMS vendors are placing significant weight on these requirements, reflecting a broader shift toward a more security-conscious and risk-aware digital environment.

Another defining trend is the heightened emphasis on performance, accessibility, and search visibility. With search engines evolving to prioritise structured data, page experience, and high-quality content delivery, the CMS becomes a strategic asset in achieving sustained organic growth. Businesses that invest in platforms optimised for speed, technical SEO, and accessibility standards consistently outperform their competitors in discoverability and user engagement. The data makes it clear that CMS selection directly affects a brand’s ability to compete in increasingly crowded digital marketplaces.

Perhaps the most significant insight from the 2026 CMS landscape is the growing recognition that content is no longer simply a marketing function; it is a foundational element of business operations. Every customer interaction, product experience, and digital initiative relies on content that must be created, managed, and distributed with precision. Organisations that treat their CMS as a strategic investment rather than a cost centre are better positioned to scale efficiently, innovate rapidly, and adapt to emerging digital trends.

As companies look ahead, the convergence of AI, composable architecture, automation, analytics, and multichannel content delivery will define the next era of CMS evolution. The platforms that thrive will be those that offer extensibility, seamless integrations, robust developer ecosystems, and intelligent capabilities that reduce manual effort and elevate content effectiveness. Meanwhile, businesses must continue refining their internal processes, governance models, and content strategies to fully leverage the power of modern CMS technologies.

The insights and data presented in this report provide a roadmap for understanding both the opportunities and challenges within the CMS landscape. Whether an organisation is planning a migration, evaluating its current stack, or seeking to optimise content operations, the findings reinforce the importance of selecting tools and systems aligned with long-term digital goals. The right CMS can accelerate growth, enhance customer experiences, and future-proof digital initiatives, while the wrong one can create bottlenecks and limit innovation.

In a world where digital experiences increasingly determine brand success, mastering the technologies that underpin those experiences is essential. The trends shaping 2026 make it clear that Content Management Software will continue to evolve at the intersection of technology, creativity, and strategy. Businesses that embrace this evolution and invest in intelligent, flexible, and scalable CMS solutions will lead the next wave of digital transformation, unlocking new levels of efficiency, engagement, and competitive differentiation.

The CMS marketplace is poised for continued expansion and innovation, and the organisations that stay informed and proactive will be best equipped to thrive. As the role of content grows more central across industries and digital ecosystems, the insights provided by the top 50 CMS statistics and trends serve as both a benchmark and a vision for the future of content management.

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Sources

Codexpert (Themeisle/W3Techs/Colorlib/TechReport summaries) – Supports stats 1, 4, 10-13
Meetanshi (citing W3Techs) – Supports stats 2, 3, 6, 8
WPMet (citing W3Techs/BuiltWith) – Supports stats 7, 9, 14
WordPress.com (citing W3Techs) – Supports stats 8, 16
MobiLoud (W3Techs/BuiltWith trends) – Supports stat 15
HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2024 (CMS chapter) – Supports stats 5, 17-19, 23-28, 41-43
Data Bridge Market Research (DXP report) – Supports stats 20-22, 44-46
Grand View Research – Supports stats 29-30
Mordor Intelligence – Supports stats 31-32, 34
Verdantix – Supports stat 33
Global Insight Services – Supports stats 35-36
Future Market Insights – Supports stat 37
Verified Market Research – Supports stat 38
W3Techs (July 2025 snapshot) – Supports stats 39-40
HTTP Archive Performance 2024 – Supports stat 47
Joost.blog (June 2024 HTTP Archive) – Supports stats 48-49
ArXiv security study (CMS vulnerabilities) – Supports stat 50

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