WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal Dominate Open Source CMSs

PHP-based systems WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal continue to dominate the web content management space. But, while the Big 3 remain unchanged from last year, the newly issued fourth annual Open Source CMS Market Share report concludes that WordPress has re-taken the overall lead from Joomla! While the Big 3 remain unchanged from last year, the report concludes that WordPress retains a clear lead in the face of decreasing competition from Joomla!.

"WordPress turned in another strong year, clearly outpacing both Joomla! and Drupal," notes lead analyst Ric Shreves. "Looking beyond the Big 3 we find a considerable amount of movement in the market, with several smaller systems turning in solid performances this year. Concrete5, in particular, had a very strong year."

Though PHP-based systems remain the populist choice, the survey places two .NET and three Java systems in the Top 20. DotNetNuke remained the market leader in the .NET space. In the Java WCM space, Liferay and Alfresco are fighting a closely matched battle. The findings in this year’s report were based on a survey of more than 2,500 CMS users, together with research into a wide variety of measures of market share and brand strength.

The Open Source CMS Market Share Report was launched in 2008 by digital agency water&stone. The Report is non-commercial and released under an open license. Since its inception, the Open Source CMS Market Share Report has become the industry standard for purpose of defining market share and adoption rates in the open source content management system market.