WordPress ran 43.0% of all websites on 1 January 2026 and 39.6% on 20 October 2026, according to W3Techs. That is the largest fall in WordPress's share in W3Techs' yearly record since 2015, and it happened one month at a time: the share fell in every monthly reading this year while the share of sites on no detectable CMS rose from 28.6% to 32.1%.
This page collects what is measured about CMS migration: the market data from W3Techs and the HTTP Archive, the switching and satisfaction surveys from Storyblok and Webflow, published cost ranges, and the search-traffic evidence. Vendor surveys are labelled as such, and so is our own bias: we build marketing sites in Webflow.
How the CMS market moved, 2015 to 2026
W3Techs checks the top 10 million websites and reports each system's share of all of them. Its yearly history is the longest consistent record of which platforms sites are moving to and away from.
| CMS | Jan 2015 | Jan 2020 | Jan 2024 | Jan 2026 | 20 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No detectable CMS | 61.7% | 43.1% | 31.4% | 28.6% | 32.1% |
| WordPress | 23.3% | 35.4% | 43.1% | 43.0% | 39.6% |
| Shopify | 0.3% | 1.9% | 4.1% | 5.0% | 5.3% |
| Wix | 0.1% | 1.3% | 2.6% | 4.2% | 4.2% |
| Squarespace | 0.2% | 1.5% | 2.1% | 2.4% | 2.4% |
| Joomla | 3.3% | 2.6% | 1.7% | 1.3% | 1.1% |
| Drupal | 2.0% | 1.7% | 1.1% | 0.8% | 0.6% |
| Webflow | Not listed | 0.1% | 0.7% | 0.9% | 0.8% |
Source: W3Techs historical yearly trends in the usage of content management systems, read 20 October 2026
Three patterns stand out. Hosted builders took the growth of the last five years: Shopify, Wix and Squarespace together went from 4.7% of the web in 2020 to 11.9% now. The older open-source systems shrank steadily, with Joomla losing about two thirds of its share since its 2017 peak and Drupal about three quarters since 2018. And WordPress, after a decade of climbing, flattened at about 43% from 2022 to January 2026 before this year's fall.
Webflow is small by this measure, at 0.8% of all websites and 1.2% of sites with a known CMS. It reached 0.9% in late 2025 and eased back to 0.8% from August 2026.
2026: the year WordPress lost share
The monthly readings show the 2026 change was gradual, not a single reclassification.
| Measure | 1 Jan | 1 Apr | 1 Jul | 1 Oct | 20 Oct |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress, share of all websites | 43.0% | 42.5% | 41.5% | 40.2% | 39.6% |
| No detectable CMS | 28.6% | 28.9% | 29.9% | 31.5% | 32.1% |
| Shopify | 5.0% | 5.1% | 5.2% | 5.4% | 5.3% |
| Webflow | 0.9% | 0.9% | 0.9% | 0.8% | 0.8% |
Source: W3Techs monthly CMS usage trends, read 20 October 2026
Among sites with a known CMS, WordPress's market share went from 60.2% on 1 January to 58.3%, while Shopify rose from 7.0% to 7.9% and Wix from 5.8% to 6.2%. W3Techs does not say why the no-CMS group grew. Its current list does include newer entries: Lovable at 0.2% of all websites, Astro at 0.2%, Framer at 0.2% and v0 at 0.1%. A plausible reading is that some new and rebuilt sites are now generated with AI app builders or static frameworks rather than a traditional CMS, but that is our inference, not a W3Techs finding.
The HTTP Archive's Web Almanac 2025, published in January 2026 from a different crawl, gives an earlier snapshot: CMS-driven sites made up over 54% of observed websites in 2025, WordPress powered roughly 64% of CMS-driven sites on mobile, and its growth had slowed to under one percentage point a year. The two datasets measure differently, so read each as a trend rather than comparing their percentages directly.
Where switching is concentrated: bigger sites
Share by traffic rank shows which platforms larger sites choose. On W3Techs data for 20 October 2026, Webflow runs 1.2% of all sites with a known CMS, 1.5% of the top million, 1.9% of the top 100,000, 2.3% of the top 10,000 and 2.2% of the top 1,000. WordPress runs 58.3% of all CMS sites but only 48.3% of the top million, 50.6% of the top 100,000 and 52.0% of the top 1,000.
Webflow's share roughly doubles between all sites and the top 10,000, which fits its position as a platform for company marketing sites rather than small personal ones. The Web Almanac adds that Drupal holds about 6% to 7% of CMS usage among the top 10,000 sites, far above its overall share, which is why many Drupal migrations are large enterprise projects.
How often organisations switch
No independent body publishes an annual CMS switching rate. The best figures come from two CMS vendors' surveys of their market.
| Finding | Figure | Survey |
|---|---|---|
| Migrated to a new CMS in the past three years | 68% | Storyblok, 1,719 CMS users, US, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, March 2024 |
| Non-headless users likely to switch to headless within two years | 74% | Same |
| Use more than one CMS in the organisation | 81% | Same |
| Teams managing two or more CMSs | 61% | Storyblok, 1,300 CMS users, May 2025 |
| Trying out different CMSs to modernise content operations | 50% | Same |
| Technical leaders completely satisfied with their website | 34% | Webflow and Vanson Bourne, 1,000 leaders, US, Canada, UK, 2026 report |
| Same, among custom-built sites | 29% | Same |
Source: Storyblok State of CMS 2024 and 2025 press releases; Webflow 2026 State of the Website
Both publishers sell a CMS, and both surveys favour the conclusion that people should switch. Treat 68% as an upper bound for a market that includes many multi-brand organisations. Even discounted heavily, the figures say the same thing: a CMS is a decision most organisations revisit within a few years, and many run two systems during the move.
Our Website Redesign Statistics 2026 page covers how often companies redesign and what they pay. A redesign is when most platform changes happen, so the two sets of numbers should be read together.
Why organisations leave a CMS
Storyblok's 2024 respondents named security issues and lack of features, tied, as the most common reasons for migrating. Webflow's 2026 survey of 700 marketing leaders and 300 technical leaders describes the same pressure from the inside.
| Finding | Share |
|---|---|
| Technical leaders who say technical debt affects how they manage the website | 97% |
| Organisations receiving more web project requests overall | 95% |
| Organisations whose tech stack grew year on year (90% the year before) | 95% |
| Organisations whose update requests are growing in size and complexity | 92% |
| Technical leaders who blame platform issues for their frustrations | 62% |
| Leaders completely confident their infrastructure supports rapid change without new security risk | 47% |
| Organisations that always deliver web projects on time and on budget | 28% |
Source: Webflow and Vanson Bourne, vendor-sourced
Performance is the third reason, and the one with independent data. In the Web Almanac 2025, 45% of WordPress sites passed Core Web Vitals on mobile, among the lowest of the platforms measured, while Wix rose from 55% to 74% in a year. Median mobile Lighthouse performance was 41 for WordPress, 58 for Webflow and 64 for Wix. Our Webflow vs WordPress for a B2B Marketing Site in 2026 comparison covers the speed and security data platform by platform.
The fourth reason does not show up in surveys: support ending. HubSpot's knowledge base states that its website migration service was sunset on 7 October 2026, and before that most HubSpot migrations were completed within two to four weeks. When a vendor withdraws a service or a version, the migration date stops being a choice.
What a CMS migration costs
Migration prices are rarely published by platform. The most detailed public table comes from a price-estimator site that says it draws on more than 600 project quotes and rate benchmarks; it also sells estimates and earns affiliate commission, so read it as one publisher's ranges.
| Destination | Freelancer | Agency | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress rebuild | $2,000 to $8,000 | $5,000 to $15,000 | 3 to 6 weeks |
| Shopify | $3,000 to $12,000 | $8,000 to $25,000 | 4 to 8 weeks |
| Webflow | $4,000 to $15,000 | $10,000 to $30,000 | 4 to 10 weeks |
| Headless or Next.js | $8,000 to $25,000 | $20,000 to $60,000 or more | 8 to 16 weeks |
Source: Project Cost Estimator, WordPress migration cost, May 2026
The same source names content volume and URL preservation as the main cost drivers, ahead of the destination platform. Its redirect-map pricing makes the point: up to 50 URLs included, 50 to 500 at $300 to $800, 500 to 5,000 at $1,000 to $3,500, and over 5,000 at $2,500 to $8,000.
Our own numbers sit at the faster end. As a white-label partner to Web Tonic we have built more than 20 Webflow sites in twelve months at two to three weeks each, the largest with a CMS of over 1,200 items, and our marketing-site process runs four weeks. We quote migrations per project rather than publishing prices. Our Webflow CMS Limits in 2026 page covers the item and field ceilings that decide whether a large content library fits.
The search traffic risk, measured
Google's site-move documentation, updated in August 2026, says a small to medium-sized website can take a few weeks for most pages to move, larger sites take longer, rankings may fluctuate while Google recrawls, and redirects should stay in place for as long as possible, generally at least a year.
The only large study of recovery times covers domain migrations, which are a harder case than a platform change on the same domain. Use it as an outer bound.
| Measure | 2023 study | 2025 study |
|---|---|---|
| Migrations analysed | 171 | 892 |
| Average days to regain prior organic traffic | 229 | 523 |
| Not recovered | 42% never returned | 17% after 1,000 days |
| Fastest recoveries | Not reported | 19, 22, 23 and 33 days |
Source: Dan Taylor, Search Engine Journal, January 2025, using third-party traffic estimates
A CMS move that keeps the domain and the URLs is a much smaller event for Google than this. Google's guidance and the cost data point to the same place: the risk sits in changed URLs without one-to-one redirects, which is why the redirect map is the line item not to cut.
What this means for a migration decision
The data supports three rules. First, expect to move: most organisations revisit their CMS within a few years, and the market is drifting from self-hosted systems towards hosted platforms. Second, budget for content and URLs, not the platform: a 20-page site and a 4,000-post blog are different jobs on any destination. Third, plan the search side before the build: keep the domain, map every URL with traffic or links, and keep the redirects for at least a year. If we were scoping your move, we would start with a crawl of the old site and a redirect map, then build. Our marketing websites service page explains how we scope a migration.
