WordPress has lost market share for six consecutive months, falling from 43.20% in December 2025 to 41.90% as of May 2026, according to W3Techs data. The 1.3 point drop over six months is more than double the 0.60 point YoY decline from January 2025 to January 2026, suggesting the pace is accelerating as competitors gain ground.
In comparison against competitors:
- Shopify rose 0.20 points to 5.20%
- Wix climbed 0.10 to 4.30%
- Squarespace gained 0.10 to 2.50%
- Webflow and Duda held steady
Meanwhile, the developer framework Astro, which isn't tracked in W3Techs' CMS share, more than doubled its downloads over the same period, from 4.59M in January to 9.24M in April, a sign that some developers are leaving WordPress in search of newer, more developer-focused tools rather than other website builders.
Search Engine Journal notes that the rapid decline kicked off in the quarter after Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg's public attacks on WP Engine, which included blocking WPE users from updates, cloning WPE plugins, and requiring contributors to disavow ties to the company.
Anecdotally, I can also testify that Mullenweg's actions have caused me to lose some confidence in the WordPress ecosystem, making me less likely to start a brand new project on WordPress over Shopify or alternatives. To be fair, there are technical reasons why I've leaned toward platforms other than WordPress, such as Shopify's API now enabling features that I previously had to rely on editing a WordPress database to accomplish, as well as my preference toward not having to deal with hosting or server admin. However, the shaky ground at Automattic this past year certainly hasn't helped nudge me toward WordPress either.
Honestly, it sounds like it's time for a new CEO at Automattic! And I'm not being opinionated or snarky. That's just the numbers speaking.
