Usage of WordPress in enterprise projects – a comprehensive 2023 report

The State of Enterprise WordPress 2023 report  provides insightful analysis on why prominent organizations, including Macy’s, New Statesman Media Group, and The Times, choose WordPress as their CMS. It delves into their usage patterns and satisfaction levels with the platform. The report outlines the platform’s remarkable evolution through the years, establishing it as the world’s leading CMS and a preferred option for well known brands and publishers.

The data emphasizes WordPress’s popularity due to its functionality, extensibility, and usability, contributing to an exceptionally high level of satisfaction, with over 90% of enterprises committing to continue using the platform. The significant number of brands likely to recommend WordPress points towards an increased enterprise adoption in the coming years.

In essence, the findings confirm WordPress’s widespread adoption and highlight its adaptability, versatility, and significance across various sectors within the organizations.

A little bit of background

For the purposes of this survey, ‘enterprise organizations’ are defined as high-profile brands, publishers with a national or global audience, or large corporate conglomerates. This definition ensures the survey captures the experiences of significant players in the industry.

53% of the participants were located in Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and from different industry sectors. The most responses were from the following industries: Publishing 32%, Technology 24% and Marketing/Advertising 12% which suggest high popularity among the largest online industries. 

The survey also gathered data on monthly unique site visitors, revealing diverse visitor traffic across enterprises. Notably, 20% of respondents reported having 500,000 to 1 million unique visitors each month. Interestingly, the same percentage was observed for sites with 1 to 5 million monthly visitors. However, the majority, 40%, reported less than 500,000 visitors. These figures underscore the significant visitor traffic these enterprise sites attract, highlighting their success in engaging a wide audience.

The majority of the responders (38%) answered that WordPress is the only CMS used by their organization and only 17% in addition to WordPress use some custom solution. These numbers indicate a strong level of trust in WordPress as a leading CMS platform.

How enterprises leverage WordPress

The second section covers how enterprise organizations have integrated their business models within WordPress, how they are maintaining it and how they develop and scale this CMS over the years of their usage.

Over 58% use WordPress to create new content, to publish news and update current content. In these metrics we can see one significant number that outlines the evolution of the platform over the years. Only 14% of the enterprises use WordPress to publish blogs although that was the main function of WordPress in the early days.  WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world and doesn’t just excel in blogging; it also dominates other markets such as ecommerce. His popularity and market share is still growing according to W3Techs. 

One particular number especially caught my attention, 59% of the responders stated that they have been using WordPress for 5 years and more, also 87% are using it for at least 2 years, which indicates a high percentage of loyalty for the platform.

The block Editor/Gutenberg is more popular than the classic editor with 54%, also 27% are stating that they are using both of them. 80% of the responders say that the Gutenberg block editor made the editing experience even better and easier. In the enterprise organization the usage of the CMS is high, 38% of the responders said that in their organization 50 or more people use WordPress CMS to edit content.

WordPress offers many benefits to the enterprise organizations, one of them is the ability to connect and integrate with various third party systems. When asked about WordPress integrations with other systems 27% have answered having integration with some marketing technology, 19% integrated  with CRMs and 16% integrated with payment gateways.

Why does WordPress stand out?

In the third section are covered the main reasons why enterprise organizations choose WordPress as their CMS platform. Some of the key factors for choosing are its functionalities, cost and scalability. According to the answers, the primary decision-makers for WordPress are the IT and engineering departments (38%), indicating a high level of technical assurance in the platform.

Functionality is the primary factor influencing the choice of WordPress for 70% of respondents. Other important considerations like scalability, performance, extensibility, and usability are also significant, each garnering interest from 40-50% of the participants. This data emphasizes the diverse range of priorities enterprises consider when selecting WordPress as their preferred platform.

Understanding costs

Questions about the cost and maintenance were covered in the fourth section. The results revealed substantial variations in initial build charges for WordPress, depending on factors like size, infrastructure, and custom capabilities. The project costs range from under $50,000 to over $1 million. Furthermore, 56% of respondents indicated that the mentioned cost does not cover ongoing maintenance.

Almost 75% of the enterprise organizations handle the monthly maintenance of their WordPress solutions through in-house development resources, while the remaining 26% depend on external agencies. Among the data, half of the teams consist of 1-5 developers. According to this report, 39% of the respondents choose WordPressVIP and WP Engine as their hosting services. The monthly price is quite evenly distributed among three price categories:under $2,000 (41%), between $2,000 and $5,000 (30%), and over $5,000 (30%). This distribution corresponds to various levels of website traffic. 

Most enterprise brands indicated that they monetize their websites through advertising (21%), affiliate marketing (16%), and subscriptions/paywalls (22%). When asked if their WordPress site delivers a return on investment, whether in terms of revenue generation or time and resource savings, 74% confirm that the WordPress site delivers good or excellent return of investment. This high percentage only confirms that investing in WordPress brings significant financial returns.

Looking ahead

In the final section of the survey, enterprise respondents were encouraged to provide suggestions for future platform improvements. A significant number of participants expressed a preference for AI integrations and a demand for real-time collaborative editing, marking it as a key focus for the upcoming phase of the WordPress platform roadmap.

The respondents demonstrated a high level of satisfaction with the platform, as evidenced by an impressive 91% and a total of 72% of participants indicating a high likelihood of recommending WordPress to other enterprise organizations, providing ratings of eight, nine, or ten on the scale.

Our clients perspective: what they really think

This report entirely backs up what we hear from our clients. We often get thrilled feedback from beginner users about how intuitive and user-friendly the WordPress platform is. Our clients choose and stay loyal to WordPress for its open-source nature, scalability, security, and flexibility. This enthusiasm of usage isn’t spread only among our clients, it is a well known fact that the WordPress platform is widely used, it powers 40% of the entire internet, and is suitable for all kinds of organizations. In 2024 from the WP side we can expect numerous improvements which follow market trends and community feedback.

Check out and explore our partnerships with enterprise organizations, showcasing a multitude of exceptional projects and feel free to reach out if you have exciting ideas and need a partner to turn them into reality.