Since the beginning of 2022, the market share of WordPress has stopped growing. It even seems to be on a slight downward trend.

Indeed, after passing the 43% market share mark in December 2021, WordPress has never exceeded 43.3% (reached in February 2022 and consolidated in March).

WordPress growth stagnation
Source W3Techs

But what is going on? Is this the beginning of the end for WordPress (which will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary!)?

To tell you the truth, this has never actually happened!

In a March 2022 interview in The Verge magazine, Matt Mullenweg said that:

  • WordPress was growing faster than all its competitors combined.
  • WordPress’ market share would probably reach 80-85% within 10 years.

Has WordPress decided to take a break?

Let’s try to get a clearer picture.

How can we explain this growth interruption?

In an article on WP Tavern, Sarah Gooding shares the 3 reasons put forward by the WordPress community. It would come from:

Let’s address these points individually.

Reason #1: Performance

One of the strengths of WordPress is its flexibility. However, it is also one of its weaknesses.

Indeed, a user can install any theme, add plugins all over the place and literally put a ball and chain on his site. Moreover, the host is not neutral.

Let’s put it in the form of an equation:

Hosting(bad) + WordPress + Theme(badly coded) + plugins(greedy) + optimization(none) = Website not performing well

Whereas, if you do it right, you can come up with this equation:

Hosting(fast) + WordPress + Theme(well coded) + plugins(well configured) + optimization(serious) = Website performing well

By its very nature, WordPress can’t master everything like its competitors.

When you create a website with Wix or Squarespace, it’s nothing like that. Their ecosystem is fully integrated and everything is optimized (server, design, applications, SEO…)

In the past, efforts have been made to improve performance (such as responsive images in WP 4.4). A dedicated team has been set up more recently to push things in the right direction (even if one of the main topics: the automatic conversion of images to WebP format was very sensitive).

However, we have to admit that WordPress will always have a disadvantage on this point.

If users don’t take performance to heart (with a plugin like WP Rocket for example), it will be difficult to compete.

By the way, this is also true for security, SEO or web marketing. A WordPress user will always have more responsibilities.

Reason #2: Complexity

Since the arrival of the block editor in version 5.0 (in December 2018), WordPress has begun its transformation.

The Gutenberg project brought a new experience in content editing and initiated a nice dynamic in the process.

Despite the outcry at the time, it seems that the majority of users have adapted well to this evolution.

Since then, the blocks have been invited everywhere in the administration with each new version. On the widget screen and in the customization tool in particular.

WordPress blocks on widget screen

And frankly, it is very pleasant to manipulate them to design websites.

On the other hand, I think a milestone has been reached with WordPress 5.9 and the integration of Full Site Editing.

As a reminder, Full Site Editing allows you to customize the design of your website directly from the WordPress administration.

This evolution has introduced new types of themes (block-based, universal and hybrid) in addition to the classic themes, which we have been using for years.

I believe that the arrival of TwentyTwenty-Two (block-based theme) as a default theme has caused a lot of damage.

Indeed, what does a new user think when he has to put his hands in his header to configure his menu with the navigation block?

I’m sure most of them give up (without trying to change the theme).

However, with a theme like Astra, things become much easier. You have the header builder and you can create your menus directly in the customization tool.

Strangely enough, the arrival of the FSE coincides with the beginning of the slowdown in the growth of the WordPress market share.

Would this have happened if Twenty Twenty-Two had been a classic or universal theme? (With the FSE only available to interested users.)

There is no way to know.

In this case, the experience would have been similar to multisite. If you want to benefit from it, you just have to do it by installing a compatible theme.

This way, novice users would not have been impacted by the integration of the FSE into the WordPress core.

Reason #3: The slow deployment of the FSE

The FSE was officially introduced in WordPress 5.9 but with some limitations (not all page templates in the template hierarchy are customizable).

Even with WordPress 6.0, not everything can be customized yet. For example, you can’t create a template for a specific category or taxonomy.

The ultimate goal of FSE is to democratize access to design. However, the average user doesn’t need to go that far.

I’ve seen this in my experience as a WordPress trainer for WPChef (French WordPress training) and on the Chaudron (the WPMarmite French training platform).

Whether the FSE is deployed slowly or easily doesn’t matter to me. It is the fact that it is available by default that frustrates users (and sends them to the competition).

Here’s an excerpt from the WordPress philosophy:

Design for the Majority

Many end users of WordPress are non-technically minded. They don’t know what AJAX is, nor do they care about which version of PHP they are using. The average WordPress user simply wants to be able to write without problems or interruption. These are the users that we design the software for as they are ultimately the ones who are going to spend the most time using it for what it was built for.

By replacing AJAX with FSE, it becomes clear.

It is exactly as if Elementor imposed the use of its Theme Builder to all its users (NB: they are pushing for this, but it is not imposed by default).

Let’s face it, theme editing only concerns a minority of people. Developers, designers and WordPress enthusiasts.

Users want to publish content with WordPress, not spend hours designing a header.

What future for WordPress?

So, should we be worried about this stagnation of WordPress growth?

Some, like Alex Denning believe that it doesn’t mean anything at all and that the interpretation of the numbers can lead to different conclusions

Others like Joost de Valk, the founder of Yoast SEO are more worried. He believes that a drastic change is needed to get back on the road to growth.

We’ll see how the numbers evolve in the future, but personally, I maintain that the FSE is not for everyone.

Without questioning it, a simple adaptation of Twenty Twenty-Two (the default theme) can get us back to the WordPress philosophy of designing for the majority.

In any case, WordPress will remain the leading CMS for years to come. There is no doubt about that. However, be careful not to miss out on an important advantage by overstepping its boundaries.

About the author

Alex

Creator of WPMarmite and co-founder of WPChef, he is dedicated to providing you with quality resources to help you create, customize and promote websites with WordPress.