State of Headless CMS Technology Study Finds Adoption Surging in the Enterprise

AUSTIN, Texas—March 4, 2021— WP Engine, the world’s most trusted WordPress technology company, announced the results of a new, international research study showing headless is already pervasive in the enterprise. 64 percent of enterprise respondents already use headless, and more than 90 percent of those not currently using headless plan to evaluate headless solutions over the next 12 months. Further, the results showed 92 percent of respondents agreed that implementing headless CMS technologies makes it easier for organizations to deliver a consistent content experience. 

The research, commissioned by WP Engine and carried out in the U.S., UK and Australia by Vanson Bourne, was undertaken to assess the state of headless technology as a whole, how it’s being used in the enterprise, and how WordPress plays a role. 400 IT/technical employees with a knowledge of headless technologies at companies with at least 1,000 employees and revenue that averaged out to $2.7 billion were interviewed in January and February 2021.

“Headless technology, and all the flexibility and improvements it provides developers and content providers, truly is the future of the web,” said Jason Cohen, Founder and CTO of WP Engine. “This research, and other research we’ve undertaken, shows an impressive trend of enterprise organizations embracing headless and the link between the use of headless and their companies’ digital success. Given WordPress now constitutes 40% of the entire web, powering many of the largest, most popular sites in the world, it makes sense that it will increasingly be a very popular choice for headless architectures.” 

Key Findings

Some of the key findings from the international study include:

• Headless is now well-entrenched within the majority of enterprise organizations. 
  • 64% of enterprise organizations are currently using a headless approach, which is almost a 25% increase over 2019.
  • Among the enterprise organizations that aren’t currently using headless technology, more than 90% plan to evaluate headless solutions over the next 12 months—up 15% from 2019.   

• Enterprise organizations increasingly see a direct link between digital experiences and the overall success of their business. 
  • An impressive 92% of respondents see the importance of digital experiences as being important to their organization’s success.
• Headless technologies are viewed as the most effective solution for delivering powerful digital experiences. 
  • 92% of respondents say deploying headless technologies makes it easier for organizations to deliver a consistent content experience.

As the world’s most popular CMS, WordPress powers many of the world’s largest websites. With the continued adoption of headless in the enterprise, many implementations will continue to use WordPress as the back end because of its flexibility, extensibility, and endless features that content creators love, all of which make WordPress a natural fit for headless configurations.

Solutions like WP Engine’s Atlas, the complete Headless WordPress hosting platform, will play a central role in driving Headless WordPress adoption. Delighting both developers and content publishers, Atlas brings together the customer’s choice of modern development framework with powerful front-end Node.js hosting and Headless WordPress all in one complete package, providing one trusted partner, one price, and one support organization with the expertise to troubleshoot everything that’s included. 

Helping Drive Your Business Forward Faster With WordPress

As the leader in Managed WordPress Hosting and WordPress technology, WP Engine is the driving force behind 1.2 million digital experiences for over 150,000 customers across 150 countries. In fact, WP Engine is the fastest WordPress hosting platform, hosting more WordPress sites among the top 10 million than any other WordPress vendor. 

To learn more about WP Engine Atlas or talk to one of our headless experts, please visit www.wpengine.com/atlas.  

About WP Engine

WP Engine, the world’s most trusted WordPress technology company, powers the freedom to create on WordPress. We provide the most relied upon and trusted brands and developer-centric WordPress products for companies and agencies of all sizes, including Atlas, Flywheel, Local and Genesis. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, WP Engine has offices in Brisbane, Australia; Kraków, Poland; Limerick, Ireland; London, England; Omaha, Nebraska and San Antonio, Texas. Read more at www.wpengine.com

Contacts

WP Engine

Eric Jones

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