Are there really 235,000 Magento stores out there? Can we trust the numbers?
Since ecommerce is rapidly growing globally, it is not by chance that more and more of the “rookies” try to take advantage of that fact and “hunt down” the new entrants.
However, it seems that while competition is really high among the online store software applications that have only a few percent of market share, they are not at all able to squeeze or shake the dominant systems.
The market is by far lead by WooCommerce and Magento, when looking at the global picture.
Comment:
It is quite difficult to make detailed analyses based on the statistical data since different sources and analyses (Datanyze, AheadWorks, BuiltWith) provide different numbers.
The question pops up:
Are there any reliable data showing ecommerce platform market shares, usage by country and sector, etc?
Now let us see, based on the available data, where and who uses Magento, who are the major challengers and what is going on with Magento 2 globally.
In this article you can read about the following:
- Share of the Magento systems
- Is Magento dominant?
- Share of Magento 2
- Segments, industrial sectors, languages
- Language use
- Average Alexa rank
- Typical product categories
- Average prices
- Division by countries
- What are the ecommerce trends for the future?
Market share of Magento Commerce
On the basis of Alexa data, Datanyze provides current statistics: you can check how many of the one million websites with the most hits globally (Alexa Top 1 million) use the different ecommerce store software applications – May 2017 figures.
The two most powerful ecommerce platforms are beyond doubt WooCommerce and Magento Commerce.
Alexa Top 1 million share: WooCommerce+WooCommerce 2.6: 31%, Magento: 18% (It means there are 14,500 Magento stores in the Alexa Top 1 million.)
If we are taking a look at the entire Internet, global ecommerce platform market share numbers are different: WooCommerce+WooCommerce 2.6 is still leading, with 36%, but here Shopify is number 2 with 10% and Magento is number 3 with 8% (here we can see that globally /Datanyze Universe/ there are 168,000 Magento stores).
But are these numbers totally correct? Well… The analyses by BuiltWith and AheadWorks are somewhat different.
BuiltWith data show this:
Here Magento has a 13% and WooCommerce a 24% share. Although BuiltWith does not use Alexa’s top 1 million, it’s still a considerable difference!
Figures of the market share of Magento are provided by AheadWorks. Their latest study was published in March 2016 (well, a little outdated).
They also used the data of Alexa examining the one million most popular websites.
According to their analysis, Magento is undoubtedly dominant on the market: it has a share of 29.1%, while the proportion of those using the software of WooCommerce is only 26.5%. Shopify and Prestashop are the other two who also have significant segments, these are 10.9 and 9.4 percent, respectively.
The analysis shows that even though the share of WooCommerce is growing, its expansion is slowing down, it grew by only 2 percent in the last six months in comparison with the previous 6 percent.
On the other hand, the number of Magento users only slightly decreased, by a relative 2.3%.
Data of BuiltWith found approx. 13 thousand (red line on the graph) Magento online shops within the Top one million (note: their Top 1 m isn’t Alexa’s), and they measure 235,000 Magento-based online stores on the entire web – May 2017 figures.
Clicking this link you can see the current global Magento usage statistics on BuiltWith’s website.
The analysis of AheadWorks also mentions that the majority of the platforms realizing the biggest growth are among the top 10: although the market of ecommerce systems is growing on the whole, those other than the biggest ones are fighting for survival.
And here’s another figure:
According to Magento there are over 250,000 merchants worldwide using the Magento Commerce platform:
The questions pop up: Now, how many websites use Magento globally in the Top 1 million? 14,500 or 13,000? And globally? 168,000, 235,000 or 250,000?
We assume that Magento cannot afford to publish false statistics. On the other hand we contacted Builtwith (see interview section a little later) and they have a reliable, sophisiticated data collection system.
So we'd say: there are most probably 240-250 thousand Magento stores worldwide.
Market share of Magento 2
Since this is the first analysis of AheadWorks in which Magento 2 is also examined, separate results have been published on that.
According to which:
- Most users of Magento 2 are of American interest, but Indian, Australian, Canadian, Estonian and Vietnamese ecommerce stores use the system as well.
- 19 out of 20 Magento 2 systems are used in English language.
- The vast majority of Magento online shops are selling clothing products and accessories, on the other hand, Magento 2 stores are rather selling electronic devices, servers, footwear or toys for the time being – so they show a quite mixed picture for the time being, and there is no obviously dominant market segment.
- The average rank position of Magento 2 online stores within Alexa is 635 834.
According to BuiltWith (here you’ll see current figures), Magento 2 has gained a significant move forward in the Top one million, 523 ecommerce stores run on Magento 2 at the moment (May 2017).
Additionally, there are approx. 11,000 Magento 2 web stores on the entire Internet. Most of them switched from WooCommerce.
6500 businesses using Magento 2 are in the US, other major locations include the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia.
Some “ancient” versions still in use
We can find data about older versions of Magento on BuiltWith’s website. We can see that version 1.9 is the most widespread, however, we can still find 11 online stores that use 1.2, released back in 2008. 1.3 and 1.4 are used by 100 and 400 websites respectively.
Comment:
On this page (http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Magento-1.9) we see that in the Top 1 million there are 2600 websites that use version 1.9, we don’t see any figure for the entire Internet and in the right-hand paragraph we see that 5000 live websites use it.
Isn’t this number too low?
Moreover, if we add up all the numbers of currently live websites using any Magento version, we come to the sum of approx. 20,000, which is very far away from the 235,000 figure mentioned before. (http://builtwith.com/magento)
Are we missing or overlooking something here?
Question: How up to date is the data?
Answer: BuiltWith’s reporting principle is based on a “dead mans switch” style of operation. This means, if we stopped checking the internet for new data, within 30 days all of our reports would have no data. This ensures our data is always up to date and forces us to ensure we are managing data updates in a timely manner.
Question: What kind of crawling method do you use for detecting Magento based websites?
Answer: We use multiple advanced methods, looking for the BLANK_IMG javascript variable is a good one, it’s quite unique ‒ we look for that in memory objects as well.
We have an advanced a method of detection that we can use for different versions of Magento (1.x as well as version 2 onwards).
Question: Do you use your own approach for defining the top 1 M / 100k etc. websites?
Answer: We’ve used Quantcast since we started doing trends ‒ then they made it the top 100k instead of top 1m so we use top 100k Quantcast and then the next 900k from Alexa that aren’t in the Quantcast 1m.
Question: What is the difference between Magento 2 and Magento 2.0 from your aspect? We see different figures for them: http://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/Magento-2 vs. http://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/Magento-2.0
Answer: Version 2 is sites where we found evidence of the new version of the software, whereas 2.0 is that actual version number (2 will include 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 etc.) ‒ not all sites have evidence for version numbers ‒ rightfully they may want to remove it if they are running an older version that is vulnerable.
Question: On this page (http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Magento-1.9) we see that in the Top 1 million there are 2500 websites that use version 1.9, we don’t see any figure for the entire Internet and in the right-hand paragraph we see that 4500 live websites use it. Isn’t this number too low?
Answer: We try to keep accuracy high for this. It doesn’t use the normal detection methodology but relies on a file in the installation existing and being a certain amount of bytes in length.
It looks like data gathering and processing is not an easy task. As we’ve learned, BuiltWith uses advanced methods to provide their clients with the most up to date and accurate data available.
However, we still need to use our own common sense and logic to draw conclusions on which we may make our own business decisions.
Segments, industrial sectors, languages
Let’s take a look at an AheadWorks report published in February.
Another chart for market shares:
Language use
You can learn from it for example in what language Magento is typically used:
- Magento Enterprise Edition: 71% in English, 7% in Spanish and in German language, and the proportion of online shops operated in Italian language is also significant.
- Magento Community Edition: English has a proportion of only 62% here, while the proportion of Spanish and German is 9%, and beside Italian, Polish language is represented in a higher number as well.
- The division is quite similar in the case of WooCommerce, while Sopify is used exclusively in English, PrestaShop on the other hand shows a much more colourful picture. Russian and Persian are also represented here in a higher proportion.
Average Alexa rank
The study of AheadWorks shows that the users of WooCommerce mainly come from among the less visited sites: most of them rank between the 800-900 thousandth positions.
Magento EE has a more significant share here as well, but it strongly appears around the 500-600 thousandth ranks, while the majority of the users of Community Edition are between the 100 and 300 thousandth ranks.
What can you read out of this? First of all, that ecommerce stores with a significant number of visitors, like for example websites of major international brands are typically more willing to choose Magento.
Typical product categories
Most Magento users, both in case of Enterprise Edition and Community Edition are selling clothing products and accessories, around 14-16 percent. The proportion of those selling sporting goods and electronic devices is considerable as well.
Also a lot of users of EE sell furniture and books, or various software applications, while the other most popular industrial sectors of Community Edition are cosmetics, mobile accessories and online shops operating as markets.
Average prices
Among the dominant ecommerce platforms it is Magento EE that principally sells products to large companies: according to AheadWorks, an average product costs the most in these online stores, $538. In the case of Community Edition, the average price is only $260.
Shopify ($82), PrestaShop ($180) and WooCommerce ($178) are all lagging far behind this.
Distribution by country
This is a real challenge as the statistics vary from source to source.
E.g. according to the June 2015 analysis of AheadWorks:
The USA’s share of Magento CE was 38% (Stores by Countries), it was 10% for the UK, while in February 2016 it was 14% for the USA, 13% for the UK.
In the case of Magento Enterprise, in June 2015 it was mainly used in the UK (27%), and secondly in the USA (13%), but in February 2016 (after only half a year) the situation is quite different: UK: 14%, USA: 57%.
We just wonder: How could such a big change take place in such a short time?
Based on recent data of BuiltWith, taking into account currently live websites, we could calculate the following figures /number of physical locations of businesses using a particular system divided by the total number of currently live websites using that particular system (=%)/:
Half (50%) of websites using Magento Community Edition 1.9 operate in the USA, the second largest market is the UK (10%).
http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Magento-1.9
Looking at the Enterprise Edition: the largest user base is in the USA (56%), while it is 6% for the UK and 5% for Australia.
http://trends.builtwith.com/shop/Magento-Enterprise
Coclusion: It seems that, if we take more sources into account, we can only make rough estimates for the distribution of different Magento systems across countries.
It seems that only trends and approximate proportions can be defined on the basis of the statistics:
Currently there is no major serious challenger that could threaten the position of the market leaders.
The smaller players are not able to get near the podium, they are present with an average of 4-6% of market share.
At the same time, it seems that more than three fourths of the market is covered by the four systems having the biggest shares, and within these four, WooCommerce and Magento cover nearly 50% of the entire market.
Magento 2’s share is expanding steadily, it is now used by 11,000 of online shops – there is a good chance that, over time, it’ll take its rightful place.
It is also interesting that despite the major fluctuations, the two market leaders could not really change the balance of power in the last few years – at the same time, an overwhelming proportion of Magento 2 users shifted from WooCommerce.
For now, their number is too low of course to let us draw major conclusions from this, but it is possible that with Magento 2, Magento created a worthy challenger for its rival.
Of course it is also important to remember that most ecommerce store systems on the market are for a completely different target audience.
It is quite clear from our previous analyses (see article on Magento vs. WooCommerce) as well that the leading systems could hardly represent competition to Magento (and vice versa) in practice, since they were intended for something else by default.
Finally, we welcome any suggestion, comment or correction concerning the statistical analyses, as we still would like to get clear answers to the following questions:
- How many online stores are there globally?
- How many Magento stores are in the world?
- What market shares do the top 10 ecommerce systems have?
- How many online stores use Magento CE, Magento EE and Magento 2 in different countries?
Really interesting analysis of Magento’s market share and how sustainable this is likely to be – thanks! It is the joint 2nd leading e-commerce platform along with Shopify, but with over 8x more websites using WooCommerce, I don’t think it’s ever likely to truly dominate. I’ve just published an article with more usage stats about WooCommerce and all the other e-commerce platforms which I think your readers would be interested in. It would be great if you could add this to your article as ‘Further Reading’. Thanks!
Really interesting analysis of Magento’s market share and how sustainable this is likely to be – thanks! It is the joint 2nd leading e-commerce platform along with Shopify, but with over 8x more websites using WooCommerce, I don’t think it’s ever likely to truly dominate. I’ve just published an article with more usage stats about WooCommerce and all the other e-commerce platforms which I think your readers would be interested in. It would be great if you could add this to your article as ‘Further Reading’. Thanks!
Nice information , very informative