Is WordPress dying? The numbers say no, with a footnote. W3Techs’ month-by-month tracking shows WordPress on 40.2 percent of all websites in September 2026, down from 43.4 percent a year earlier: a real decline of about three points in twelve months, the first sustained fall in its history. But the share it lost did not go to a rival CMS. Shopify gained half a point, Wix a fifth of a point, Squarespace and Webflow were flat or down, and the biggest mover was “no CMS at all”, up from 28.6 to 31.5 percent, which is the rise of static site generators, custom frameworks and AI-built pages. WordPress still runs more than seven times as many sites as the next platform. Here is what the data actually shows, why the decline is happening, and what it means if you are choosing a platform this year.
What does the market share data say in 2026?
| Platform | Sep 2025 | Sep 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 43.4% | 40.2% | down 3.2 points |
| No detected CMS | 28.6% | 31.5% | up 2.9 points |
| Shopify | 4.8% | 5.4% | up 0.6 |
| Wix | 4.0% | 4.2% | up 0.2 |
| Squarespace | 2.4% | 2.4% | flat |
| Joomla | 1.4% | 1.1% | down 0.3 |
| Webflow | 0.9% | 0.8% | down 0.1 |
| Drupal | 0.8% | 0.6% | down 0.2 |
Percentages of all websites W3Techs surveys. Two readings follow. First, WordPress is declining as a share while the absolute number of sites on the web keeps growing, so the count of WordPress sites is roughly stable or still rising. Second, the story is not “everyone moved to Webflow”; it is that new sites are increasingly built without a traditional CMS, and that the platforms winning share are commerce-first (Shopify) or all-in-one hosted (Wix). Why WordPress became so popular explains how it got to 43 percent; this post is about the slope since.
Why is WordPress losing share?
- Hosted builders got good enough. For a five-page business site, Squarespace, Wix and Shopify do the job with no maintenance. Ten years ago they did not; the gap that sent those sites to WordPress has closed.
- Maintenance fatigue. Updates, plugin conflicts and security are the WordPress tax, and why maintenance matters is a post that exists because owners resent paying it.
- The “no CMS” wave. Static generators (Astro, Hugo, Next.js sites), headless setups, and AI tools that output plain HTML all register as no CMS. Developers who once reached for WordPress by default now often do not.
- Governance turbulence. The 2024 dispute between Automattic and WP Engine, and the slower release cadence that followed, made agencies nervous about the project’s direction; some hedged by learning alternatives.
- Perception. WordPress reads as old to a generation of designers raised on Figma and Framer, regardless of what it can do.
Is WordPress dying, or just shrinking where it never fit?
- Scale. Forty percent of the web is hundreds of millions of sites, an ecosystem of 68,000 plugins, and a labour market in every country. Platforms at that size fade over decades, not years.
- It still does things nothing else does at the price. A shop with custom logic, a membership site, a publication with a thousand posts, a site that must be self-hosted for compliance: WordPress remains the practical answer, and the platform comparison still lands there for those cases.
- The software is improving. Block themes, the Site Editor, performance work in each release, and WordPress 7 shipped and rolling out across sites. The editing experience today is not the 2016 one that many critics remember.
- Open source has no shareholder to shut it down. Framer, Webflow and Squarespace can raise prices, change terms or be acquired; WordPress code is GPL and portable.
- The decline is slow. Three points a year from 40 percent is a decade of dominance even if nothing changes, and the trend is likelier to flatten than accelerate as the easy hosted-builder migrations complete.
What about Webflow, Framer and the AI builders?
Webflow is at 0.8 percent and slipping; Framer does not register separately on W3Techs at all. Both are excellent design tools with a real place in agency work, and neither is taking meaningful share from WordPress at the level of the whole web. The Framer review on this site is positive about the tool and clear about the ceiling: brochure sites and marketing pages, priced per site, with a CMS that suits hundreds of items rather than thousands. AI site builders are the wildcard; so far they show up in the “no CMS” line, and the sites they produce are mostly the ones that would have been on a free builder anyway.
Should you build on WordPress in 2026?
| Site | Recommendation | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| 5 to 20 page service business, no shop | Squarespace or similar | Nothing to maintain; the WordPress advantages are unused |
| Shop with standard needs | Shopify | Commerce-first platform winning share for a reason |
| Shop with custom logic, B2B pricing, unusual products | WordPress and WooCommerce | Flexibility the hosted platforms lack |
| Content site, large blog, publication | WordPress | Categories, editorial tools, SEO control, scale |
| Membership, course or community | WordPress | Mature plugin ecosystem |
| Marketing site for a design-led brand | Webflow or Framer | Design fidelity; accept the platform lock-in |
| Anything that must be self-hosted or exportable | WordPress | Ownership |
That is the same advice I gave before the decline started, because the decline is happening exactly where WordPress was the wrong tool: small sites that needed a builder. For the sites where it is the right tool, it is still the best option, which is why WordPress development remains half of my work and why I still use it for client sites is a longer answer to the same question.
What would make the answer change?
Three signals worth watching over the next two years: whether the share drop accelerates past five points a year (it has not); whether a hosted platform passes ten percent of the web (Shopify is the only candidate, and it is a shop platform); and whether the WordPress project ships releases on schedule and keeps the plugin ecosystem healthy after the governance turbulence. If all three turned bad at once, the question would be worth asking again. On the current data it is a platform slowly ceding the sites it never suited, and keeping the ones it does.
Frequently asked questions
No. WordPress runs 40.2 percent of all websites as of September 2026, down from 43.4 percent a year earlier. The decline is real but slow, and most of the lost share went to sites with no CMS at all rather than to a rival platform.
40.2 percent of all websites and about 59 percent of sites that use a known CMS, according to W3Techs in September 2026. Shopify is second at 5.4 percent.
Hosted builders like Squarespace, Wix and Shopify now handle simple sites well with no maintenance, static and headless setups register as no CMS, and maintenance burden and governance disputes have pushed some agencies to hedge.
Not at the level of the whole web. Webflow is at 0.8 percent and slightly down year on year. It is popular for design-led marketing sites but is not absorbing WordPress’s share.
Yes. It runs more than seven times as many sites as the next platform, so the demand for people who can build, fix and maintain it will outlast any current trend, especially for shops, publications and membership sites.
Only if it is a simple brochure site nobody maintains, in which case a hosted builder removes real risk. Shops with custom needs, large blogs and membership sites are better served by staying.
