What content management systems are charities using? 2023 edition
My passion for all things tech started with programming a ZX81 as a kid and hasn't wavered during the 25+ years of working in the sector. Being at the helm of an agency (with my amazing business partner, Jack de Wolf) has meant that we have been able build something we are truly proud of. A brilliant team of committed, passionate individuals with a common aim - to use our skills and our 9-5 to use in making a positive difference through the work we do with our amazing charity clients.
Chris Todhunter, Founder and Technical Director
What is the charity content management system landscape in 2023?
After the popularity of our 2022 survey of charity website content management systems, we thought we would repeat the process for 2023.
As we did last year, we used CharityBase to grab a database of all the registered charities in the UK. This year, there were 165,297 charities in the database, a reduction of 749 charities year-on-year. Of these, we were able to detect the CMS of 48,526 of them.
Enterprise or Open Source?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there has been quite a change in income for charities, with the top ten reported charities looking very different to last year. Half the largest charities are using Drupal and WordPress, down from 7 out of ten from last year.
Not surprisingly perhaps as the most popular CMS in use today, WordPress is powering 59.6% of the sites we crawled, a slight increase from last year.
So, how does the data stack up?
Here’s an overall top 10 of the systems in use by UK charities today
| CMS Name | Total sites | Percentage share | Change from 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 29,791 | 59.6 | 0.4 |
| Wix | 4,973 | 9.9 | -0.3 |
| Squarespace | 2,366 | 4.7 | -0.2 |
| Joomla | 1,494 | 3.0 | 0.1 |
| Drupal | 1,396 | 2.8 | 0.0 |
| Weebly | 1,364 | 2.7 | 0.0 |
| Umbraco | 632 | 1.3 | 0.1 |
| Duda | 558 | 1.1 | -0.1 |
| Google Sites | 485 | 1.0 | 0.0 |
| GoDaddy Website Builder | 407 | 0.8 | -0.1 |
Using the Charity Commission’s definitions, we decided to group charities by the same criteria they use:
| Income | Definition |
|---|---|
| Less than £10,000 | Micro |
| £10,000 to £100,000 | Small |
| £100,000 to £1 million | Medium |
| £1 million to £10 million | Large |
| £10 million to £100 million | Major |
| More than £100 million | Super-major |
And because who doesn’t love a data visualisation, we’ve created this chart which you can filter by income band.
Micro to medium-sized charity websites
This shows a similar spread of CMSs in use, not really surprising as these take up around 94% of the data. WordPress a clear favourite with a 50% share, and lots of free and cheap-to-own website builders on there from the likes of Wix, Squarespace and Weebly.
| CMS Name | Total sites | Percentage share |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 19,877 | 50.0 |
| Wix | 3,685 | 9.3 |
| Squarespace | 1,765 | 4.4 |
| Weebly | 1,012 | 2.5 |
| Joomla | 977 | 2.5 |
| Drupal | 648 | 1.6 |
| Duda | 384 | 1.0 |
| Google Sites | 312 | 0.8 |
| GoDaddy Website Builder | 282 | 0.7 |
| Umbraco | 278 | 0.7 |
| 1&1 IONOS Website Builder | 268 | 0.7 |
| Adobe Dreamweaver | 259 | 0.7 |
| WebPlus | 231 | 0.6 |
| Laravel | 161 | 0.4 |
| Webflow | 146 | 0.4 |
| Craft CMS | 138 | 0.3 |
| concrete5 | 134 | 0.3 |
| One.com | 134 | 0.3 |
| BaseKit | 116 | 0.3 |
| Webs | 104 | 0.3 |
| CMS Made Simple | 92 | 0.2 |
| Xara | 83 | 0.2 |
| FrontPage | 82 | 0.2 |
| Yola | 81 | 0.2 |
| Adobe Muse | 80 | 0.2 |
| ExpressionEngine | 79 | 0.2 |
| Django Framework | 79 | 0.2 |
| Netlify CMS | 76 | 0.2 |
| CodeIgniter | 70 | 0.2 |
| Not Done | 67 | 0.2 |
| Mobirise | 62 | 0.2 |
| Ruby on Rails | 61 | 0.2 |
| Blogger | 60 | 0.2 |
| RapidWeaver | 56 | 0.1 |
| SilverStripe CMS | 53 | 0.1 |
| Perch | 50 | 0.1 |
| WebsiteBuilder | 48 | 0.1 |
| Microsoft Word | 46 | 0.1 |
| Next.js | 43 | 0.1 |
| Squiz | 43 | 0.1 |
| Shopify | 42 | 0.1 |
| iWeb | 38 | 0.1 |
| Jimdo | 34 | 0.1 |
| Website X5 | 33 | 0.1 |
| DNN | 31 | 0.1 |
| GitHub Pages | 28 | 0.1 |
| ProcessWire | 27 | 0.1 |
| Web Presence Builder | 27 | 0.1 |
| NetObjects | 26 | 0.1 |
| it'seeze | 25 | 0.1 |
| Hugo | 24 | 0.1 |
| Sitefinity | 23 | 0.1 |
| Episerver | 23 | 0.1 |
| Gatsby | 22 | 0.1 |
| Strikingly | 21 | 0.1 |
| October CMS | 20 | 0.1 |
| SiteCore | 20 | 0.1 |
| Kentico | 20 | 0.1 |
| Everweb | 19 | 0.0 |
| WYSIWYG Web Builder | 19 | 0.0 |
| Finalsite | 15 | 0.0 |
| Wild Apricot | 14 | 0.0 |
| Wagtail | 14 | 0.0 |
| SiteKreator | 13 | 0.0 |
| Orchard | 12 | 0.0 |
| Trellix | 12 | 0.0 |
| OpenCart | 12 | 0.0 |
| Pyro CMS | 12 | 0.0 |
| Statamic | 10 | 0.0 |
| Modx CMS | 10 | 0.0 |
| Jekyll | 10 | 0.0 |
| Nation Builder | 9 | 0.0 |
| MONO | 9 | 0.0 |
| TYPO3 | 9 | 0.0 |
| Adobe Experience Manager | 7 | 0.0 |
| Adobe GoLive | 7 | 0.0 |
| Kirby | 7 | 0.0 |
| Site123 | 7 | 0.0 |
| CoffeeCup | 7 | 0.0 |
| mojoPortal | 7 | 0.0 |
| RVsitebuilder | 7 | 0.0 |
| Sandvox | 7 | 0.0 |
| Easysite | 6 | 0.0 |
| Grav CMS | 6 | 0.0 |
| Web Page Maker | 5 | 0.0 |
| Namo WebEditor | 5 | 0.0 |
| SitePad | 5 | 0.0 |
| Sylius | 5 | 0.0 |
| osCommerce | 5 | 0.0 |
| Magento | 5 | 0.0 |
| phpBB | 5 | 0.0 |
| Website Baker | 5 | 0.0 |
| ImpressPages CMS | 5 | 0.0 |
| Contentful | 5 | 0.0 |
| Tumblr | 5 | 0.0 |
| Contensis CMS | 5 | 0.0 |
| CMSimple | 5 | 0.0 |
| nopCommerce | 4 | 0.0 |
| OpenOffice | 4 | 0.0 |
| Backdrop CMS | 4 | 0.0 |
| HubSpot | 4 | 0.0 |
| Sanity | 4 | 0.0 |
| Google My Business | 4 | 0.0 |
| Textpattern CMS | 4 | 0.0 |
| Webnode | 4 | 0.0 |
| Homestead | 4 | 0.0 |
| EKM Powershop | 3 | 0.0 |
| SharePoint | 3 | 0.0 |
| SDL Tridion | 3 | 0.0 |
| Bolt | 3 | 0.0 |
| Contao | 3 | 0.0 |
| Shopblocks | 3 | 0.0 |
| MediaWiki | 3 | 0.0 |
| GetSimple CMS | 3 | 0.0 |
| Lauyan TOWeb | 3 | 0.0 |
| Moto CMS | 3 | 0.0 |
| DokuWiki | 3 | 0.0 |
| iMIS | 2 | 0.0 |
| Ekklesia 360 | 2 | 0.0 |
| ePages | 2 | 0.0 |
| Notepad++ | 2 | 0.0 |
| Ning | 2 | 0.0 |
| Typesetter | 2 | 0.0 |
| Simvoly | 2 | 0.0 |
| Spip | 2 | 0.0 |
| Moodle | 2 | 0.0 |
| XpressEngine | 2 | 0.0 |
| Visual Studio | 2 | 0.0 |
| Mura | 2 | 0.0 |
| Jadu CMS | 2 | 0.0 |
| EditPlus | 2 | 0.0 |
| Webador | 2 | 0.0 |
| Ucraft | 2 | 0.0 |
| Pagekit | 2 | 0.0 |
| Zoho Sites | 2 | 0.0 |
| Destoon | 2 | 0.0 |
| DedeCMS | 2 | 0.0 |
| Aiir | 2 | 0.0 |
| ThinkPHP | 1 | 0.0 |
| Tilda | 1 | 0.0 |
| SAP Commerce Cloud | 1 | 0.0 |
| Indexhibit | 1 | 0.0 |
| PageCloud | 1 | 0.0 |
| Salesforce Commerce Cloud | 1 | 0.0 |
| Ektron | 1 | 0.0 |
| Intershop | 1 | 0.0 |
| Movable Type | 1 | 0.0 |
| X_Cart | 1 | 0.0 |
| PmWiki | 1 | 0.0 |
| RadioKing | 1 | 0.0 |
| Procurios | 1 | 0.0 |
| Croogo | 1 | 0.0 |
| Pimcore | 1 | 0.0 |
| Adobe Portfolio | 1 | 0.0 |
| Zeta Producer | 1 | 0.0 |
| Quick.CMS | 1 | 0.0 |
| Fork CMS | 1 | 0.0 |
| Golden Planet | 1 | 0.0 |
| Bitrix | 1 | 0.0 |
| vBulletin | 1 | 0.0 |
| RocketSpark | 1 | 0.0 |
| CM4all | 1 | 0.0 |
| Omeka | 1 | 0.0 |
| Yahoo Small Business | 1 | 0.0 |
| Bloomreach | 1 | 0.0 |
| Locomotive CMS | 1 | 0.0 |
| Portfoliobox | 1 | 0.0 |
| CubeCart | 1 | 0.0 |
| Showoff | 1 | 0.0 |
| WebAcappella | 1 | 0.0 |
| Ghost | 1 | 0.0 |
| Visualsoft | 1 | 0.0 |
| HCL Commerce | 1 | 0.0 |
Content mangement systems used by large charities
With the income filters set to £1m to £10m we start to see a change in the stats, with commercial CMSs starting to appear, but open source is still powering the vast majority of sites.
| CMS Name | Total sites | Percentage share |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 1,768 | 47.0 |
| Drupal | 191 | 5.1 |
| Umbraco | 102 | 2.7 |
| Squarespace | 98 | 2.6 |
| Craft CMS | 83 | 2.2 |
| Wix | 82 | 2.2 |
| Joomla | 54 | 1.4 |
| Laravel | 29 | 0.8 |
| ExpressionEngine | 28 | 0.7 |
| concrete5 | 19 | 0.5 |
| Wagtail | 15 | 0.4 |
| Weebly | 15 | 0.4 |
| Kentico | 14 | 0.4 |
| Ruby on Rails | 13 | 0.3 |
| Duda | 13 | 0.3 |
| Django Framework | 13 | 0.3 |
| Webflow | 13 | 0.3 |
| DNN | 12 | 0.3 |
| SiteCore | 11 | 0.3 |
| Adobe Dreamweaver | 9 | 0.2 |
| Not Done | 9 | 0.2 |
| Finalsite | 8 | 0.2 |
| CodeIgniter | 7 | 0.2 |
| Next.js | 7 | 0.2 |
| SilverStripe CMS | 7 | 0.2 |
| GoDaddy Website Builder | 6 | 0.2 |
| ProcessWire | 6 | 0.2 |
| Shopify | 6 | 0.2 |
| TYPO3 | 5 | 0.1 |
| Netlify CMS | 5 | 0.1 |
| Sitefinity | 5 | 0.1 |
| CMS Made Simple | 5 | 0.1 |
| iMIS | 5 | 0.1 |
| HubSpot | 4 | 0.1 |
| Gatsby | 4 | 0.1 |
| Episerver | 4 | 0.1 |
| Squiz | 3 | 0.1 |
| Google Sites | 3 | 0.1 |
| Modx CMS | 3 | 0.1 |
| it'seeze | 3 | 0.1 |
| Perch | 3 | 0.1 |
| Pyro CMS | 3 | 0.1 |
| October CMS | 2 | 0.1 |
| Magento | 2 | 0.1 |
| Statamic | 2 | 0.1 |
| Contentful | 2 | 0.1 |
| Nation Builder | 2 | 0.1 |
| 1&1 IONOS Website Builder | 2 | 0.1 |
| Moodle | 1 | 0.0 |
| Contensis CMS | 1 | 0.0 |
| Omni CMS | 1 | 0.0 |
| iWeb | 1 | 0.0 |
| Adobe Experience Manager | 1 | 0.0 |
| Simvoly | 1 | 0.0 |
| Sanity | 1 | 0.0 |
| Contao | 1 | 0.0 |
| Bolt | 1 | 0.0 |
| FrontPage | 1 | 0.0 |
| WebPlus | 1 | 0.0 |
| ATG Web Commerce | 1 | 0.0 |
| Hugo | 1 | 0.0 |
| Zoho Sites | 1 | 0.0 |
| Easysite | 1 | 0.0 |
| Neos | 1 | 0.0 |
| Immediacy | 1 | 0.0 |
| Kirby | 1 | 0.0 |
| Blogger | 1 | 0.0 |
| Procurios | 1 | 0.0 |
| Strikingly | 1 | 0.0 |
| Webvision | 1 | 0.0 |
| Sylius | 1 | 0.0 |
| Microsoft Word | 1 | 0.0 |
| Orchard | 1 | 0.0 |
Content mangement systems used by major charities
Now we’re getting to the big players in the charity sector with income between £10m and £100m. Open source platforms have the majority share and the site-builder platforms are pushed down the list.
| CMS Name | Total sites | Percentage share |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 238 | 30.7 |
| Drupal | 64 | 8.3 |
| Umbraco | 45 | 5.8 |
| Craft CMS | 15 | 1.9 |
| Finalsite | 12 | 1.6 |
| Wagtail | 7 | 0.9 |
| Sitefinity | 6 | 0.8 |
| ExpressionEngine | 5 | 0.6 |
| Next.js | 5 | 0.6 |
| Ruby on Rails | 5 | 0.6 |
| Not Done | 5 | 0.6 |
| Kentico | 4 | 0.5 |
| Squarespace | 4 | 0.5 |
| Laravel | 4 | 0.5 |
| TYPO3 | 4 | 0.5 |
| SilverStripe CMS | 3 | 0.4 |
| Django Framework | 3 | 0.4 |
| Joomla | 3 | 0.4 |
| Gatsby | 3 | 0.4 |
| Episerver | 2 | 0.3 |
| Contensis CMS | 2 | 0.3 |
| concrete5 | 2 | 0.3 |
| SiteCore | 2 | 0.3 |
| Webflow | 1 | 0.1 |
| CMS Made Simple | 1 | 0.1 |
| Terminalfour | 1 | 0.1 |
| dotCMS | 1 | 0.1 |
| Weebly | 1 | 0.1 |
| Contentful | 1 | 0.1 |
| Netlify CMS | 1 | 0.1 |
| DNN | 1 | 0.1 |
| Adobe Dreamweaver | 1 | 0.1 |
| Hugo | 1 | 0.1 |
| Orchard | 1 | 0.1 |
| Modx CMS | 1 | 0.1 |
| Duda | 1 | 0.1 |
Content mangement systems used by super-major charities
Last but by no means least are the super-major charities – those with income over £100m. The dataset is obviously much smaller and we weren’t surprised to see Drupal topping the table, but WordPress still powers a large share of these sites.
| CMS Name | Total sites | Percentage share |
|---|---|---|
| Drupal | 13 | 22.8 |
| WordPress | 7 | 12.3 |
| Episerver | 2 | 3.5 |
| DNN | 1 | 1.8 |
| concrete5 | 1 | 1.8 |
| SiteCore | 1 | 1.8 |
| Wagtail | 1 | 1.8 |
| SilverStripe CMS | 1 | 1.8 |
| Squiz | 1 | 1.8 |
| SharePoint | 1 | 1.8 |
So, what have we learned?
WordPress is still the market leader for charities in the UK for all but the highest income band. There has been a decline in the share of site builders (Wix, Squarespace et al).
As advocates of open source, it’s reassuring to see that these platforms still power the vast majority of charity sites. There are undoubtedly pros and cons of every system, and we would encourage anyone undertaking a new charity website project to think carefully before committing to an expensive enterprise system when free to own systems really can compete in terms of functionality and performance.