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Dec 19 2025

Core Web Vitals Champ: Open Source Versus Proprietary Platforms via @sejournal, @martinibuster

The Core Web Vitals Technology Report by the open source HTTPArchive community ranks content management systems by how well they perform on Google’s Core Web Vitals (CWV). The November 2025 data shows a significant gap between platforms with the highest ranked CMS scoring 84.87% of sites passing CWV, while the lowest ranked CMS scored 46.28%.

What’s of interest this month is that the top three Core Web Vitals champs are all closed source proprietary platforms while the open source systems were at the bottom of the pack.

Importance Of Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals (CWV) are metrics created by Google to measure how fast, stable, and responsive a website feels to users. Websites that load quickly and respond smoothly keep visitors engaged and tend to perform better in terms of sales, reads, and add impressions, while sites that fall short frustrate users, increase bounce rates, and perform less well for business goals. CWV scores reflect the quality of the user experience and how a site performs under real-world conditions.

How the Data Is Collected

The CWV Technology Report combines two public datasets.

The Chrome UX Report (CrUX) uses data from Chrome users who opt in to share performance statistics as they browse. This reflects how real users experience websites.
The HTTP Archive runs lab-based tests that analyze how sites are built and whether they follow performance best practices.

Together, the report I generated provides a snapshot of how each content management system performs on Core Web Vitals.

Ranking By November 2025 CWV Score

Duda Is The Number One Ranked Core Web Vitals Champ

Duda ranked first in November 2025, with 84.87% of sites built on the platform delivering a passing Core Web Vitals score. It was the only platform in this comparison where more than four out of five sites achieved a good CWV score. Duda has consistently ranked #1 for Core Web Vitals for several years now.

Wix Ranked #2

Wix ranked second, with 74.86% of sites passing CWV. While it trailed Duda by ten percentage points, Wix was just about four percentage points ahead of the third place CMS in this comparison.

Squarespace Ranked #3

Squarespace ranked third, at 70.39%. Its CWV pass rate placed it closer to Wix than to Drupal, maintaining a clear position in the top three ranked publishing platforms.

Drupal Ranked #4

Drupal ranked fourth, with 63.27% of sites passing CWV. That score put Drupal in the middle of the comparison, below the three private label site builders. This is a curious situation because the bottom three CMS’s in this comparison are all open source platforms.

Joomla Ranked #5

Joomla ranked fifth, at 56.92%. While more than half of Joomla sites passed CWV, the platform remained well behind the top performers.

WordPress Ranked Last at position #6

WordPress ranked last, with 46.28% of sites passing Core Web Vitals. Fewer than half of WordPress sites met the CWV thresholds in this snapshot. What’s notable about WordPress’s poor ranking is that it lags behind the fifth place Joomla by about ten percentage points. So not only is WordPress ranked last in this comparison, it’s decisively last.

Why the Numbers Matter

Core Web Vitals scores translate into measurable differences in how users experience websites. Platforms at the top of the ranking deliver faster and more stable experiences across a larger share of sites, while platforms at the bottom expose a greater number of users to slower and less responsive pages. The gap between Duda and WordPress in the November 2025 comparison was nearly 40 percentage points, 38.59 percentage points.

While an argument can be made that the WordPress ecosystem of plugins and themes may be to blame for the low CWV scores, the fact remains that WordPress is dead last in this comparison. Perhaps WordPress needs to become more proactive about how themes and plugins perform, such as come up with standards that they have to meet in order to gain a performance certification. That might cause plugin and theme makers to prioritize performance.

Do Content Management Systems Matter For Ranking?

I have mentioned this before and will repeat it this month. There have been discussions and debates about whether the choice of content management system affects search rankings. Some argue that plugins and flexibility make WordPress easier to rank in Google. But the fact is that private platforms like Duda, Wix, and Squarespace have all focused on providing competitive SEO functionalities that automate a wide range of technical SEO tasks.

Some people insist that Core Web Vitals make a significant contribution to their rankings and I believe them. But in general, the fact is that CWV performance is a minor ranking factor.

Nevertheless, performance still matters for outcomes that are immediate and measurable, such as user experience and conversions, which means that the November 2025 HTTPArchive Technology Report should not be ignored.

The HTTPArchive report is available here but it will be going away and replaced very soon. I’ve tried the new report and, unless I missed something, it lacks a way to constrain the report by date.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Red Fox studio

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Aug 1 2025

2025 Core Web Vitals Challenge: WordPress Versus Everyone via @sejournal, @martinibuster

The Core Web Vitals Technology Report shows the top-ranked content management systems by Core Web Vitals (CWV) for the month of June (July’s statistics aren’t out yet). The breakout star this year is an e-commerce platform, which is notable because shopping sites generally have poor performance due to the heavy JavaScript and image loads necessary to provide shopping features.

This comparison also looks at the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) scores because they don’t mirror the CWV scores. INP measures how quickly a website responds visually after a user interacts with it. The phrase “next paint” refers to the moment the browser visually updates the page in response to a user’s interaction.

A poor INP score can mean that users will be frustrated with the site because it’s perceived as unresponsive. A good INP score correlates with a better user experience because of how quickly the website performs.

Core Web Vitals Technology Report

The HTTP Archive Technology Report combines two public datasets:

Chrome UX Report (CrUX)
HTTP Archive

1. Chrome UX Report (CrUX)
CrUX obtains its data from Chrome users who opt into providing usage statistics reporting as they browse over 8 million websites. This data includes performance on Core Web Vitals metrics and is aggregated into monthly datasets.

2. HTTP Archive
HTTP Archive obtains its data from lab tests by tools like WebPageTest and Lighthouse that analyze how pages are built and whether they follow performance best practices. Together, these datasets show how websites perform and what technologies they use.

The CWV Technology Report combines data from HTTP Archive (which tracks websites through lab-based crawling and testing) and CrUX (which collects real-user performance data from Chrome users), and that’s where the Core Web Vitals performance data of content management systems comes from.

#1 Ranked Core Web Vitals (CWV) Performer

The top-performing content management system is Duda. A remarkable 83.63% of websites on the Duda platform received a good CWV score. Duda has consistently ranked #1, and this month continues that trend.

For Interaction to Next Paint scores, Duda ranks in the second position.

#2 Ranked CWV CMS: Shopify

The next position is occupied by Shopify. 75.22% of Shopify websites received a good CWV score.

This is extraordinary because shopping sites are typically burdened with excessive JavaScript to power features like product filters, sliders, image effects, and other tools that shoppers rely on to make their choices. Shopify, however, appears to have largely solved those issues and is outperforming other platforms, like Wix and WordPress.

In terms of INP, Shopify is ranked #3, at the upper end of the rankings.

#3 Ranked CMS For CWV: Wix

Wix comes in third place, just behind Shopify. 70.76% of Wix websites received a good CWV score. In terms of INP scores, 86.82% of Wix sites received a good INP score. That puts them in fourth place for INP.

#4 Ranked CMS: Squarespace

67.66% of Squarespace sites had a good CWV score, putting them in fourth place for CWV, just a few percentage points behind the No. 3 ranked Wix.

That said, Squarespace ranks No. 1 for INP, with a total of 95.85% of Squarespace sites achieving a good INP score. That’s a big deal because INP is a strong indicator of a good user experience.

#5 Ranked CMS: Drupal

59.07% of sites on the Drupal platform had a good CWV score. That’s more than half of sites, considerably lower than Duda’s 83.63% score but higher than WordPress’s score.

But when it comes to the INP score, Drupal ranks last, with only 85.5% of sites scoring a good INP score.

#6 Ranked CMS: WordPress

Only 43.44% of WordPress sites had a good CWV score. That’s over fifteen percentage points lower than fifth-ranked Drupal. So WordPress isn’t just last in terms of CWV performance; it’s last by a wide margin.

WordPress performance hasn’t been getting better this year either. It started 2025 at 42.58%, then went up a few points in April to 44.93%, then fell back to 43.44%, finishing June at less than one percentage point higher than where it started the year.

WordPress is in fifth place for INP scores, with 85.89% of WordPress sites achieving a good INP score, just 0.39 points above Drupal, which is in last place.

But that’s not the whole story about the WordPress INP scores. WordPress started the year with a score of 86.05% and ended June with a slightly lower score.

INP Rankings By CMS

Here are the rankings for INP, with the percentage of sites exhibiting a good INP score next to the CMS name:

Squarespace 95.85%
Duda 93.35%
Shopify 89.07%
Wix 86.82%
WordPress 85.89%
Drupal 85.5%

As you can see, positions 3–6 are all bunched together in the eighty percent range, with only a 3.57 percentage point difference between the last-placed Drupal and the third-ranked Shopify. So, clearly, all the content management systems deserve a trophy for INP scores. Those are decent scores, especially for Shopify, which earned a second-place ranking for CWV and third place for INP.

Takeaways

Duda Is #1
Duda leads in Core Web Vitals (CWV) performance, with 83.63% of sites scoring well, maintaining its top position.
Shopify Is A Strong Performer
Shopify ranks #2 for CWV, a surprising performance given the complexity of e-commerce platforms, and scores well for INP.
Squarespace #1 For User Experience
Squarespace ranks #1 for INP, with 95.85% of its sites showing good responsiveness, indicating an excellent user experience.
WordPress Performance Scores Are Stagnant
WordPress lags far behind, with only 43.44% of sites passing CWV and no signs of positive momentum.
Drupal Also Lags
Drupal ranks last in INP and fifth in CWV, with over half its sites passing but still underperforming against most competitors.
INP Scores Are Generally High Across All CMSs
Overall INP scores are close among the bottom four platforms, suggesting that INP scores are relatively high across all content management systems.

Find the Looker Studio rankings for here (must be logged into a Google account to view).

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com

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Dec 4 2024

Accessibility Champ: Wix, WordPress, Squarespace, Duda, Or…? via @sejournal, @martinibuster

The HTTP Archive published its report on the state of accessibility on the web, based on scores generated with the Lighthouse Accessibility Audit, a feature of Google’s Lighthouse website auditing tool that also measures website performance, best practices, and SEO. The report compared traditional content management systems with website building platforms, with WordPress scoring surprisingly well.

Lighthouse is a feature available through Chrome DevTools built into every Chrome-based browser and as one of the audits on the standalone PageSpeed Insights tool.

HTTP Archive

The research was conducted by the HTTP Archive, a community driven open source project that tracks data about how how sites are built and perform. They offer a configurable report of how different content management platforms perform that is updated monthly.

The accessibility report was done using data collected by the The WebAim Million study which is based on the top one million website home pages. WebAim Million uses data from the Tranco list which itself is based on six different sources to come up with the list of million sites, a list that is designed to be resistant to manipulation.

The Tranco List site explains:

“Researchers in web security or Internet measurements often use rankings of popular websites. However, in our paper we showed that these rankings disagree on which domains are most popular, can change significantly on a daily basis and can be manipulated (by malicious actors).

As the research community still benefits from regularly updated lists of popular domains, we provide Tranco, a ranking that improves upon the shortcomings of current lists. We also emphasize the reproducibility of these rankings and the studies using them by providing permanent citable references.

We currently use the lists from five providers: Cisco Umbrella (available free of charge), and Majestic (available under a CC BY 3.0 license), Farsight (only for the default list), the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) (available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license), and Cloudflare Radar (available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license). Tranco is not affiliated with any of these providers.”

Top CMS Accessibility Performance

HTTP Archive performed it’s research to identify the best performing platforms and shortcomings of each.

Accessibility: Traditional CMS

Adobe Experience Manager and Contentful were the top traditional content management systems when it came to accessibility, tied with a score of 87%, followed by Sitecore and WordPress in second place. An interesting fact about the top ranked CMSs is that, except for WordPress, three of the four top ranked CMSs were closed source, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Contentful and Sitecore .

Accessibility Scores By CMS:

Adobe Experience Manager 87%
Contentful 87%
Sitecore 85%
WordPress 85%
Craft CMS 84%
Contao 84%
Drupal 84%
Liferay 83%
TYPO3 CMS 83%
DNN 82%

What’s going on with the CMS scores? HTTP Archive explains:

“When most folks think about CMS, they think about the ones that you can download and install yourself. This is predominantly made up of open source tools, but not exclusively. Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Contentful and Sitecore were the most accessible three in this list of top 10. A possible explanation for this is that closed-source software like AEM is more likely to be used by larger corporations, which have more resources to address accessibility issues. Additionally, open-source software gives website owners a lot of freedom, which in some cases can lead to worse accessibility.”

Accessibility: Website Platforms

This comparison is by website building platform, comparing platforms like Wix, Duda, and Squarespace. The accessibility scores for the platforms were higher than the scores for traditional CMSs, reflecting how private platforms are better able to control variables as opposed to an open source CMS that offers users a more open ended experience.

Accessibility Scores By Website Platform

Wix 94%
Squarespace 92%
Google Sites 90%
Duda 87%
Hubspot CMS Hub 87%
Pixnet 87%
Weebly 86%
GoDaddy Website Builder 85%
Webnode 84%
Tilda 83%

Wix Beats Out All CMS & Platforms

What’s notable about these scores is that sites built with Wix score higher for accessibility than all other sites built on any other CMS or website building platform. Ninety four percent of sites built with Wix have a That’s a reflection of Wix’s well-known effort to create a product that is strong in performance, SEO and accessibility.

Here is the list arranged in descending order by percentage:

1. Wix – 94%
2. Squarespace – 92%
3. Google Sites – 90%
4. Adobe Experience Manager – 87%
5. Contentful – 87%
6. Duda – 87%
7. Hubspot CMS Hub – 87%
8. Pixnet – 87%
9. Sitecore – 85%
10. WordPress – 85%
11. GoDaddy Website Builder – 85%
12. Weebly – 86%
13. Craft CMS – 84%
14. Contao – 84%
15. Drupal – 84%
16. Webnode – 84%
17. Liferay – 83%
18. TYPO3 CMS – 83%
19. Tilda – 83%
20. DNN – 82%

Website Accessibility

SEOs are understandably motivated by best practices for ranking better. For example, many didn’t prioritize site performance until it became a ranking factor, even though website performance improves sales and advertising performance and may have indirect impact on rankings.

Accessibility also has indirect advantages for improved search performance. For example, about .5% of the female population and 8% of males are color blind. Why would anyone who cares about their rankings alienate, frustrate and exclude approximately 4.5% of website visitors?

Wix and Squarespace are prioritizing accessibility. Everyone else should as well, because it’s both ethical and a sound business practice.

Read the HTTP Archive report here.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Happy_Nati

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Aug 22 2024

Duda Announces ActiveCampaign Marketing Automation Integration via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Duda announced a partnership with ActiveCampaign, a marketing automation and CRM company. The partnership allows agencies to bring marketing automation to their client sites to help boost sales and customer engagement.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform that makes it easy to cultivate post-sales engagement and repeat sales. It’s also functions as a CRM and enables sales automation, specifically for SMBs.

The integration within the Duda editor makes it easy for agencies that build sites on the Duda platform to bring advanced marketing automation to their client sites.

This is a major feature upgrade for Duda’s users because it allows agencies to add advanced capabilities like post-sale emails, and personalized follow up for cultivating repeat sales and increased engagement.

Integration With Duda

The partnership enables integration with Duda’s native contact form, eCommerce, and membership features with the advanced marketing automation of ActiveCampaign.

According to Shay Howe, chief marketing officer at ActiveCampaign:

“Partnering with Duda amplifies the value we bring to agencies and their clients by seamlessly integrating marketing automation into the web development process.

This collaboration empowers agencies and SaaS companies to deliver personalized, data-driven customer experiences without the need for complex technical setups, allowing them to focus on what truly matters — growing their customers’ businesses.”

Featured Image by Shutterstock/ViDI Studio

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May 20 2024

Duda Website Builder For Agencies Adds More AI Tools via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Duda has announced the addition of new AI assistant features that help digital agencies scale their website creation and optimization, making it easier for them to handle more clients without increasing costs.

Duda Website Builder For Digital Agencies

Duda is a proprietary website builder platform created specifically for digital marketing agencies that allows them to scale and take on more clients without having to hire an army of web developers to scale along with their growth.

The Duda platform facilitates creating high quality websites and easily maintaining them for clients. White labeling allows digital agencies the ability to provide a branded experience to their clients.

Duda AI Assistant Features

Duda added two new features to their robust set of AI tools that further improves the automation of webpage creation and optimization of alt text. The new Sections tool creates webpage sections and layouts using just prompts to describe what is required. It’s almost like something out of a science fiction movie where a designer tells the computer what it wants and the AI completes the project.

The alt text tool expands on the current alt text tool by now acquiring the ability to create alt text for images in bulk for the purposes of accessibility and search optimization. The improved AI alt text tool can also add alt text in multiple languages.

Video Of AI Tool

According to the Duda announcement:

“Duda’s AI sections tool automatically generates new site sections with suggested design, layout, copy, and images from a short user-provided prompt in just a few clicks. This feature drastically reduces the time needed to lay out the page, write copy, and select images. Now, content sections can be tailored and stylized in seconds.

Similarly, Duda’s AI alt text tool boosts productivity by enabling the creation of alt text for all site images at once. Users can generate alt text in multiple languages for images lacking tags or for all site images, streamlining the process of optimizing websites for SEO and accessibility.”

Duda’s continual improvements to their products demonstrates their commitment to helping digital agencies lower their costs while scaling their ability to handle more clients to keep growing into larger and more profitable businesses.

Read the announcement here:

Duda reveals industry-first website creation and optimization AI Assistant for digital marketing agencies

Read about the Duda AI Assistant:

Duda’s AI Assistant: The future of web building is here

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Shutter_M

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