WordPress powers 27 percent of all websites on the internet. The open-source content management system (CMS) is used by an impressive collection of sites, from universities and nonprofits to large publications like the New York Times and massive enterprise companies like Sony and GM. WordPress’s versatility and ability to scale makes it the obvious choice for any website, regardless of the industry.
Its open-source foundation has not only helped facilitate its adoption but has also enabled the explosion of an entire industry around the CMS. From security and hosting companies, to the robust plugin and theme marketplace, there’s an increasing number of ways to make money using WordPress.
The WordPress Industry Survey aims to take a deeper look at the growing and thriving industry around WordPress to better understand the challenges WordPress professionals face and the strategies that help drive their businesses forward.
Key Insights
- Technology partners: Ninety-five percent of respondents use at least one technology partner, while 49 percent use more than five. The benefits of technology partners is boundless. Strategically partnering with other technology, whether it’s a host, agency, or mar-tech solution, empowers companies with external expertise and access to new tools and support to help them more efficiently build their companies.
- Drivers of Success: WordPress is known for its ease-of-use and low learning curve. Respondents identified WordPress ease of use (67 percent), ease of publishing (71 percent), and the theme and plugin marketplace (59 percent) as the biggest reasons for selecting the CMS.
- Challenges still exist: Despite the ubiquitous use of WordPress, there are still challenges for mass adoption. Forty-seven percent of respondents identified concerns around security as one of their biggest challenges working in WordPress. Moreover, lack of easy workflow (29 percent) and lack of robust ecommerce (20 percent) were also identified as some of the biggest challenges WordPress professionals still face.
- Community involvement: Sixty-two percent of respondents have participated in a WordCamp. WordPress professionals give back to the community in a variety of ways, including donating money to the project (56 percent), speaking at a WordCamp (24 percent), and sponsoring a WordCamp (26 percent).
Survey Participation
We had 303 respondents. Forty-three percent were developers and 29 percent were the owner/founder of their companies. Nine percent of respondents worked at companies with 300+ employees and 70 percent of respondents worked at companies with fewer than 10 employees.
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