Web Technologies of the Year 2020

Posted by Matthias Gelbmann on 4 January 2021 in News, Advertising Networks, Amazon, Amazon CloudFront, Beget, Bitrix, Bootstrap, CDNJS, Cloudflare, Cloudflare, Cloudflare Server, Content Delivery, Content Management, Conversant Tag Manager, DigiCert Group, DNS Servers, Email Servers, Facebook Pixel, Fastly, GlobalSign, Gmail, Google, Google, Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, Hotjar, IdenTrust, JavaScript, JavaScript Libraries, JQuery, JsDelivr, LinkedIn, LiteSpeed, Matomo Tag Manager, Microsoft, Nginx, OpenBSD, Operating Systems, Pinterest, Polyfill.io, PubMatic, Reverse Proxies, Ruby, Scala, Server-side Languages, Shopify, Shopify, Social Widgets, SSL Certificate Authorities, Tealium, Traffic Analysis Tools, Ubuntu, Unix, Unpkg, Web Hosting, Web Servers, WhatsApp, WordPress, Yandex, Yandex.Direct, Yandex.Metrica

To identify the winners in the various web technology categories, we compared the number of sites using a technology on January 1st, 2020 with the corresponding number on January 1st, 2021. 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 2020

Content Management System of the Year 2020

  WordPress  

WordPress is used by more sites that all the other content management systems combined. For the 11th year in a row it is also the fastest growing CMS. The WordPress-based e-commerce platform WooCommerce contributes significantly to this success. And this success is absolutely astonishing, now powering 39.5% of the web, creating a vast ecosystem of module developers, theme developers, specialized hosting providers, and so on. Shopify became the second-most popular CMS in May 2020, and is also the second-fastest growing system, going from 1.9% of the web up to 3.2% within a year. The third rank of Bitrix is a little surprise, but well-deserved by a growth rate of 24% in 2020.

Server-side Programming Language of the Year 2020

  Ruby  

Ruby is the web programming language of the year for the third year is a row. The fact that Shopify is written in Ruby helped a lot to overtake Java in June 2020 as the third-most used language on the web. Second comes JavaScript this year, increasing its user base by an impressive 40% in 2020. Third-ranked Scala gets most of its growth from the popular Wix website builder, which is written in Scala.

JavaScript Library of the Year 2020

  jQuery  

While it seems like many JavaScript libraries become trendy and soon go out of fashion again, jQuery is here to stay. It is the most popular library by a large margin, and the JavaScript library of the year for the 6th time in the last 11 years. Second-ranked Polyfill.io is a bit of a surprise, benefitting from its use by the Wix website builder. Third-ranked Bootstrap was the winner in the last four years, and keeps growing steadily.

Web Server of the Year 2020

  Cloudflare Server  

The Cloudflare CDN (see below in the reverse proxy providers section) used to use the Nginx web server before they decided to modify that software to optimize it for their own needs. The Cloudflare Server is now our web server of the year, based on the strong growth of the Cloudflare service. Last year's winner LiteSpeed also saw very strong growth in 2020 and comes in second after overtaking Microsoft-IIS in August 2020. Nginx, our nine-time winner in that category, ranks third this year.

Operating System of the Year 2020

  Unix  

Unix, which includes Unix-like systems such as Linux, is our operating system of the year for the third year in a row. Ubuntu, which has won this category already six times in the past, is second, ahead of OpenBSD.

Web Hosting Provider of the Year 2020

  Shopify  

The enormous popularity of its hosted e-commerce platform makes Shopify a somewhat surprising winner of the web hosting category. No other hosting company has added more websites in 2020. Last year's winner Google is second with its cloud service offerings. The Russian provider Beget is third as the most popular hosting provider in its home market.

Reverse Proxy Provider of the Year 2020

  Cloudflare  

Cloudflare is the reverse proxy provider of the year for the 5th time in a row. Cloudflare continues to dominate this category with more than 81% market share, by adding websites at a daily rate of 1154 new sites from the Alexa top 10 million in 2020. Fastly and Amazon CloudFront swapped the places from last year and come in second and third.

DNS Server Provider of the Year 2020

  Cloudflare  

This is the first year we nominate a DNS server provider of the year, and Cloudflare also wins this category, as many of its CDN customers also use their DNS services. Cloudflare thus wins three of our categories, underlining the strong position of that company in the web services market. The cloud service providers Google and Amazon and very strong and growing competitors also in this category.

Email Server Provider of the Year 2020

  Gmail  

Google is our first email server provider of the year with its Gmail service. Gmail is both the fastest growing and the most popular email service used by 18.3% of websites. Microsoft is the second-most popular provider with 9.5% of the market, and also the second in this list of the fastest growing providers. The Russian provider Yandex comes in third.

SSL Certificate Authority of the Year 2020

  IdenTrust  

IdenTrust, which is often used as root certificate for Let's Encrypt, is the SSL certificate authority of the year for the 4th time in a row, now being used by 42.7% of the websites. DigiCert Group, which replaced Sectigo as the second-most popular SSL certificate provider in 2020, comes in second this year, and GlobalSign, a two-times winner of this category few years ago, is third.

JavaScript Content Delivery Network of the Year 2020

  CDNJS  

The result in the JavaScript content delivery network category is exactly the same as in the last two years: CDNJS, now used by 11.7% of the web, is the winner for the 5th time in a row. jsDelivr and unpkg come in second and third. Google Hosted Libraries are still leading this category, but with declining popularity.

Traffic Analysis Tool of the Year 2020

  Facebook Pixel  

We have a new winner in the traffic analysis tool category: Facebook Pixel is the winner, after ranking second last year, increasing its usage rate to 10.1% of websites. Yandex.Metrica, a two-time winner from previous years, is second this time. Hotjar is third, just like last year.

Advertising Network of the Year 2020

  Google Ads  

Google has managed to further increase its dominance in the web advertising market, and is again the fastest growing ad network for the 7th time, if we include DoubleClick and AdSense, which we counted as separate networks many years ago. PubMatic is a somewhat surprising second in this very competitive market. Yandex.Direct is third, like last year, and thus accomplishing the third mentioning of Yandex in this web technologies of the year report.

Tag Manager of the Year 2020

  Google Tag Manager  

The tag manager market is completely dominated by the Google Tag Manager with an amazing 99.4% market share. It is our tag manager of the year for the 7th time in a row. Google hereby wins three of our categories this year. The fastest growing competitors in tag management are Tealium and the Matomo Tag Manager.

Social Widget of the Year 2020

  Pinterest  

Pinterest wins our social widget of the year competition for the second time after 2013. Pinterest usage grew by 18% in 2020, in a market in which many competitors struggle to grow at all. LinkedIn is second, ahead of last year's winner WhatsApp.

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

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