Web Technologies of the Year 2018

Posted by Matthias Gelbmann on 2 January 2019 in News, AddToAny, Advertising Networks, Amazon CloudFront, Bootstrap, CDNJS, Cloudflare, Content Delivery, Content Management, Fastly, GoDaddy Group, Google, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, IdenTrust, Java, JavaScript Libraries, JQuery, JsDelivr, LiteSpeed, Mouseflow, Newfold Digital Group, Nginx, Node.js, Nugg.ad, Operating Systems, Reverse Proxies, Ruby, Scala, Sectigo, Server-side Languages, Social Widgets, Squarespace, SSL Certificate Authorities, Tag Managers, Traffic Analysis Tools, Tumblr, Underscore, Unix, Unpkg, Web Hosting, Web Servers, Wix, WordPress, WordPress Jetpack, Xandr, Xing

To identify the winners in the various web technology categories, we compared the number of sites using a technology on January 1st, 2018 with the corresponding number on January 1st, 2019. We use the difference of these numbers, rather than a percentage, because that would favor technologies with a tiny user base at the beginning of the year. As in all our surveys, we restrict the numbers to the top 10 million sites, see technology surveys for more details.

These are the technologies that gained most sites in 2018

Content Management System of the Year 2018

  WordPress  

WordPress is the undisputed ruler of the CMS space. It is now used by 32.7% of all websites, more than all the other 600+ systems in our surveys combined. It is the fastest growing content management system for the 9th year in a row. Runners-up are Squarespace, which already made it in our top three last year, and Wix, which more than doubled its user base in 2018.

Server-side Programming Language of the Year 2018

  Ruby  

Ruby is a first-time winner in the server-side language category. Ruby is by no means new in the web development domain. It benefited in 2018 greatly by the popularity of Shopify, which is written in Ruby. Similarly, Scala benefited from the increasing popularity of Wix, and Java from the rise of Squarespace.

JavaScript Library of the Year 2018

  Bootstrap  

Bootstrap is winning the JavaScript library category for the third year in a row. Underscore moved up to become the 4th-most-used library in 2018, and the one with the second-fastest growth rate. jQuery is the most used JavaScript library by far and its usage is still growing, albeit a bit slower than in previous years.

SSL Certificate Authority of the Year 2018

  IdenTrust  

IdenTrust, which is often used as root certificate for Let's Encrypt, has changed the SSL certificate market for ever. It is now used by 31.1% of all websites, more than doubling its user base in 2018. GoDaddy Group comes in second this year. Sectigo (formerly called Comodo) is third, just like last year.

Social Widget of the Year 2018

  AddToAny  

AddToAny is the fastest growing social widget for the second year in a row. Runner-up is the Xing share button from the European social network, and third comes the Tumblr button.

JavaScript Content Delivery Network of the Year 2018

  CDNJS  

CDNJS is the fastest growing JavaScript content delivery network for the third time. It is now used by 8.5% of the web. jsDelivr repeats the second rank from last year. unpkg is third after more than triplicating its user base.

Traffic Analysis Tool of the Year 2018

  Google Analytics  

Google Analytics is winning the traffic analysis category for the 7th time in the last nine years. WordPress Jetpack is second due to the strong market position of the WordPress CMS. Mouseflow is third in this very competitive market.

Advertising Network of the Year 2018

  Google Ads  

Google totally dominates the online advertising market, also growing faster in 2018 that its competitors. Rank two goes to AppNexus, and, as a little surprise, rank three goes to Nugg.ad.

Tag Manager of the Year 2018

  Google Tag Manager  

The Google Tag Manager not only holds 98.3% of the tag manager market, it was actually the only tag manager that was growing in 2018.

Web Server of the Year 2018

  Nginx  

Nginx is the web server of the year for the 9th year in a row. A very impressive achievement. LiteSpeed as second and Node.js as third repeat their strong results from last year.

Operating System of the Year 2018

  Unix  

While we had Linux distributions winning this category in the last years, we see more and more web servers that don't disclose their precise distribution, but can only be classified as Unix or Unix-like systems. We thus declare Unix as the web operating system of the year, a class which includes Unix-like systems such as Linux.

Web Hosting Provider of the Year 2018

  Endurance Group  

The Endurance Group owns a number of web hosting brands, and together they are the fastest growing web hosting provider of the year. Google is second as a very strong competitor in one more category. Squarespace with its hosted web publishing platform comes third, bringing more websites online than most generic web hosting providers.

Reverse Proxy Provider of the Year 2018

  CloudFlare  

CloudFlare is the reverse proxy provider of the year for the third time in a row and dominates this category with 74.4% market share. Amazon CloudFront and Fastly come in second and third, just like last year.

Congratulations to all the awardees for their extraordinary achievements in the last year.
 

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