WordPress, with a CMS market share of 60%, is by far the most popular option around the world, while Joomla, its closest competitor, seems to account for a very small slice of the pie. It is natural, then, to question the need for going through these Joomla statistics.
They are important to understanding why Joomla (stylized as Joomla!) continues to maintain its fair share of dedicated users and developers. As we elaborate below, Joomla offers distinct advantages over WordPress (or other CMSs). Knowing about them helps you, the end user, to weigh the options available, which is why we took our time to collect more information about this potent CMS.
After all, understanding it better will help you read the reviews we have here at the Hosting Tribunal with a more eye and greater understanding.
Along with answering common questions related to the benefits of using Joomla, these statistics also provide relevant information on Joomla’s worldwide usage, its history, and its strong developer community.
Let’s jump right in!
Joomla usage statistics
1. Joomla is the 2nd most widely used CMS in the world.
(Source: W3Techs)
As mentioned in the introduction, Joomla has been the 2nd most popular CMS in the world for several years now, with WordPress the clear leader. Drupal is a fairly close 3rd, followed by Squarespace and Shopify. As we see further down, there are specific reasons why many developers and users continue to swear by Joomla.
2. Joomla has been downloaded over 97M times.
(Source: Joomla)
Joomla is a 100% free content management system that has been downloaded more than 97 million times. This is not the same as the number of active Joomla users worldwide, but it does show that the CMS continues to enjoy a substantial following.
3. Joomla powers 3.1% of the World Wide Web.
(Source: W3Techs)
So, how much of the internet is Joomla? About 3.1% of all the websites in the world run on it, which sounds small only till you realize how massive the global network is. Of course, this is just about 10% of the reach achieved by WordPress.
4. Joomla has a global CMS market share of 5.7%.
(Source: W3Techs)
About 54% of all websites in the world use a well-known CMS. Nearly 6% of these CMS-using sites rely on Joomla. This market share has remained relatively stable for the last few years, which is an indication that Joomla has held its own against the rising tide of WordPress usage.
5. More than 2.5M websites worldwide use Joomla.
(Source: Built With)
How do these percentages translate into actual numbers? How many websites use Joomla in absolute terms? According to the figures in late 2018, a little over 2.5 million websites use the CMS globally. Of these, the largest portion – around 25,000 – are in the US.
6. Among the top 100,000 most visited websites, more than 1,000 use Joomla.
(Source: Built With)
Joomla’s share among the most popular sites is comparatively lower. It is used only by 1% of the top 100,000 sites. But the point to note is that, contrary to what many might believe, there remain many popular sites that have chosen to trust Joomla over WordPress or other options.
7. Among the top 1M websites, more than 20K use Joomla.
(Source: Built With)
Joomla website stats are slightly better in the million most popular list, with a 2% share. There’s more information on some of the most popular sites based on Joomla later in this post.
8. Over 9% of business websites use Joomla.
(Source: Joomla)
Interestingly, Joomla has a substantially higher share among business-focused websites. The core strengths of the CMS, like security and flexibility, make it particularly suited for business use. Using the CMS is also slightly more complicated than WordPress, which often necessitates hiring a developer – something that’s typically easier for a business than for an individual blogger.
9. 300+ Joomla websites are added every day.
(Source: YouTube)
A surprisingly high number of Joomla sites keep turning up daily on the internet. This is a major indication that the CMS is still going strong by bringing new Joomla enthusiasts into its fold regularly.
10. Version 3 of Joomla is used by 66% of all websites that use the CMS.
(Source: W3Techs)
There have been three versions of Joomla till now, with the 4th expected to be out in 2019. 33% of Joomla users are still using versions 1 and 2.
Key Joomla advantages
11. Joomla has won the CMS Critic People’s Choice Award for Best Free CMS four years in a row.
(Source: Joomla)
Over the past 13 years, Joomla has won close to 20 major awards and recognitions, none more prestigious than the CMS Critic People’s Choice Awards, which it has dominated continuously from 2014. WordPress won it last in 2013. This proves that there is no definitive answer to the question: “What is the best CMS?”
12. Joomla has been selected as a Google Summer of Code Mentor organization 10 times.
(Source: YouTube)
This is another major achievement in the open source community. Joomla has continued to dedicate its resources to mentor new developers, which has helped strengthen its community as well.
13. Top advantages of using Joomla include better user management, flexibility in displaying non-standard content, and built in multilingual support.
(Source: Kinsta)
We spoke of Joomla’s specific strengths earlier. Its users recognize the important benefits provided by the CMS, which have been acknowledged through independent and comprehensive studies too. If any of these factors are among the deciding criteria for you, Joomla quickly becomes the obvious choice.
14. Joomla offers over 70 translation packs for the core.
(Source: Joomla)
Creating multilingual websites with Joomla is a simple and straightforward process, making it a must have for organizations with teams from different cultures and languages. If your blog stats also routinely show visitors from across the world, offering content in multiple languages a key to gaining popularity. In addition, the language override in Joomla is very simple; you can change the text to suit your requirements without any coding knowledge.
15. There are thousands of free and paid templates for Joomla.
(Source: Joomla)
It isn’t possible to give a specific count of available templates as new ones keep getting added both on the official Joomla website and by independent developers, but this vast range offers any user tremendous flexibility in picking a look for their website. An advantage in Joomla is that it give you the option to use more than one template on one website.
16. According to official Joomla stats, it has close to 8,000 extensions.
(Source: Joomla)
Just as WordPress has plugins to extend the core functionality in many ways, Joomla has extensions. Most of these are available for download from a perpetually expanding list at the Joomla Extensions Directory, while others can be found with independent developers. While the Joomla extensions and themes are fewer than their WordPress counterparts, they exhibit greater security and stability thanks to the strict auditing process the Joomla community is known for.
17. Joomla offers SEO-friendly functions natively.
(Source: CMS Critic)
The most important SEO functions are in-built in Joomla. You don’t need to install separate plugins (or extensions) to get your SEO going. Of course, Joomla’s developers strongly advise using add-ons to strengthen your site’s SEO.
18. Joomla comes with built in performance-boosting functionality.
(Source: Website Setup)
Joomla’s reputation with regard to performance is very strong among the developer community, and for a good reason. For example, you can enable caching and Gzip compression right from the dashboard. Plus, there are extensions available to make the site even faster.
19. Joomla is more secure than WordPress out of the box.
(Source: Themeisle)
Joomla ships with an option to force connections over SSL and another for 2FA. The WordPress – Joomla comparison works in the latter’s favor in this case, too. With WordPress it is nearly impossible to ensure that every plugin employs safety standards. On the other hand, Joomla offers its own set of security extensions, and its developers maintain a list of extensions with known vulnerabilities.
20. The most popular websites using Joomla include those of Harvard University, IKEA, Linux, Guggenheim Museum, and The Fashion Spot.
(Source: Cloud Ways)
We had mentioned right at the beginning that there are some very popular and high-traffic websites that have chosen to go with Joomla because of its strengths. These include top businesses, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations.
21. Some of the most amazing Joomla sites are showcased at the Joomla.org site.
(Source: Joomla)
Many examples of the possibilities offered by Joomla can be seen at the showcase section of the official Joomla site. These websites make use of the core functionality of the CMS as well as the wide variety of extensions and templates to present in detail all you can do with Joomla.
22. Joomla is the best CMS for creating social networks.
(Source: Website Setup)
Joomla’s strengths stand out particularly much if you want a social networking component on your website. It has a lot of built-in functionality for membership sites, forums, and other ways to enable user-generated content. There are also extensions to further increase its capabilities in this area. The most popular social networking extensions are JomSocial, Community Builder, and EasySocial.
23. Contrary to popular belief, Joomla offers powerful blogging capabilities.
(Source: Joomla Beginner)
Blogging stats show that WordPress is the clear preference across the board for most would-be bloggers. It is also widely believed that Joomla is not suited for blogging. Some of this poor reputation is justified, but the Joomla core has improved its blogging functionality substantially over the years. Plus, excellent extensions like K2, EasyBlog, ZOO, RSBlog, and CJBlog allows bloggers as much control and ease of use as they would find on WordPress.
24. The most popular e-commerce-related Joomla extension is VirtueMart.
(Source: Joomla Beginner)
Even though WordPress has a substantial lead over Joomla in the world of e-commerce, the latter offers some excellent solutions in this area too, including many extensions and templates for the purpose. Apart from VirtueMart, other popular e-commerce-related extensions are EShop, J2Store, HikaShop, and MijoShop.
General Joomla statistics
25. How long has Joomla been around? In its current form, since 2005.
(Source: Wikipedia)
We say “in its current form” because Joomla was the result of a fork of Mambo, an older open source CMS that winded up in 2008. The software is backed by Open Source Matters, a US-based not-for-profit organization. The name Joomla is the anglicized spelling of the Swahili word jumla, meaning “all together.”
26. Joomla is a totally community-driven, open source CMS.
(Source: YouTube)
The strength of any open source software lies in its community, and Joomla continues to be supported by a very strong cohort of developers spread across the world.
27. The Joomla code has had 29,000+ commits made by 780+ contributors.
(Source: YouTube)
According to official Joomla statistics shared at the 2017 Joomla World Conference, the core developers, who are close to 800, have made over 29,000 commits, representing over 370,000 lines of code.
28. Joomla has an active community of nearly 700K members.
(Source: YouTube)
Beyond this core developers, close to 700,000 developers and users interact regularly on the Joomla forum to discuss developments of the software. In fact, Joomla has one of the strongest user communities across all open source software.
29. There are 180 Joomla user groups spread across the world.
(Source: Joomla)
Apart from the online interactions, the Joomla community is also kept alive and strong by over 180 user groups in different cities across the globe. If you are a new Joomla user, there is a good chance there’s a user group close to you that can help you out in getting a hang of the CMS.
30. The Joomla global community had over 35 major events in 2018.
(Source: Joomla)
And, finally, Joomla developers and users also meet up at events held all over the world. In 2018 alone, there were more than 35 major events like the JoomlaDays and JoomlaCamps in Italy, Germany, Austria, Brazil, and the US.
Key Joomla statistics 2019 takeaways
- Despite the obvious and substantial domination of the CMS market by WordPress, Joomla continues to maintain a steady global user base.
- This is driven by some important advantages that Joomla has to offer, which can be pertinent for your specific needs. These include greater security, more flexibility, better user management, and very strong multilingual functionality.
- Joomla statistics also show that it is far from being a product in its death throes; quite the contrary, Joomla remains a thriving, community-driven open source movement that continues to respond to user demands.
