Important note:  This article men­tions several in­stant­ly recog­nisable brand names; there’s no­thing inher­ently wrong with the com­panies or or­gan­i­sa­tions behind those names.  The pur­pose of this ar­ticle is to warn readers about frau­dulent “re­search” claim­ing that these busi­ness­es use Joomla.

If you’re wondering what “well known” organisations—recognisable, iconic brands—are currently using Joomla to power their websites, you’ll probably do what most people do:  use your favourite search engine and search for “businesses using Joomla”.  Joomla is used to power a lot of websites on the internet but, when you look at the results of your query you may be wondering if what you’re seeing is for real.

“What?”, you ask, “eBay uses Joomla to power their websites!”.source: https://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/ebay-chooses-joomla.html.  This announcement—in 2010—is used as “authoritative research” by other commentators.  The eBay community portal uses Lithium CMS today. Well of course eBay—a $27 billion company with twelve and-a-half thousand employees—doesn’t use Joomla to power one of the largest global online marketplaces in the world.  eBay doesn’t use Joomla; nor does the Harvard University, Lipton Tea, Holiday Inn hotels, the Guggenheim museum, General Electric or, would you believe, Linux.  These organisations and businesses do not use Joomla; we cannot verify if any of them have ever used Joomla.  But that’s not what dozens of websites are saying.  We’ll look at what’s really at play here and so that you understand the truth behind these long-playing scams.

The source of much of this false narrative was an article published on the Joomla! Community Magazine™ in 2012.10 Most Popular Websites Using Joomla!, Joomla! Community Magazine, 1-Jul-2012..  Let’s look at the websites listed there:

We won’t debate the number of websites powered by Joomla; we won’t talk about comparisons between Joomla vs Wordpress vs Drupal, etc. and recommendations to use one over another; we won’t even debate whether there’s empirical evidence that Joomla is better (or worse) than another CMS.If you have a few hours to spare you can watch a few YouTube videos where a bunch of talking heads compare Joomla against other CMS website builders.  Here’s a short list of some I’ve watched recently:
» Is Joomla 5 the WordPress 6 KILLER of 2024? CMS Comparison: Who Reigns Supreme?
» Best Content Management Systems (CMS) for Your Website
» WordPress, Drupal, Joomla: Which One Should You Use? | The Journey
» What is a CMS? Content Management Systems Explained For Beginners  It’s not particularly difficult to discover the technologies used by websites; you can get a good idea if you look at the raw HTML source code.  But, even if you don’t have the HTML experience, there are browser-based addons (e.g. Wappalyzer) that do a half-reasonable job.  The purpose of this article is to explain why you should not believe “research” stating Peugeot and IKEA use Joomla to run their businesses.  The purpose of that “research” is not to encourage you to invest in Joomla just because a lot of big name com­panies—that you may have heard of—use Joomla (which you may know much about).  The “research” was never done; the articles are made up, invented nonsense/click-bait so that, when you search for “businesses using Joomla”, you will be drawn to web hosting companies or software developers who only want your business; much ado about nothing.

Let’s look at a few websites that continue to make baseless claims about Joomla being used to power “well known” organisations today.

1.  Enterprise Monkey

An Australian-based website design and hosting company that is the top-most result returned by Google search when looking for “well known” businesses that use Joomla.  The page listing the well-known websites that use Joomla says that Joomla has 3.5% of the CMS market share.  W3Techs, which is a better guide about CMS market share states that, in 2023, Joomla’s market share was between 2.5-2.7%.source:  https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management/all/y  This one percentage difference may not seem much but a one percent different represents millions of websites!source: https://www.appmysite.com/blog/cms-market-share-top-trends-and-usage-statistics/ .  Aside from the false claims that there are 10 well-known companies that use JoomlaWith the exception of iTWire (J! 3.10.12), the point of that article is summed up in the following direct quote:

Now you are aware of the top 10 most popular websites built using Joomla and how they look and excel in their niche.  Joomla’s capabilities are not only restricted to flexibility, robustness, and highly scalable.  But is beyond the navigation and just frontend designs.

Joomla offers many extensions and templates to allow easy updates and customisation.  If you are looking to get a Joomla-based website for your brand, consult a Joomla web development company that can help you create a website altered to your needs.  Enterprise Monkey excels in Joomla development over its competitors.

The big brands use Joomla and this is your inspiration to rely on this content management system.10 Well-Known Websites That Use Joomla, Enterprise Monkey, 23-May-2023

As you can see, the purpose of the page I’ve referred to above is just to attract customers to spend their money with a business that makes false claims about Joomla.

2.  A2Hosting

A US-based hosting company displays five “well known” organisations that use Joomla on their website.  Although somewhat dated—their “research” was supposedly conducted more than ten years ago—none of the websites listed on their information page use Joomla.  Again, the purpose of that article is summed up as:

For high speed Joomla hosting, click here to get started with A2 Hosting!The top 5 well known businesses that use Joomla, A2 Hosting, 3-Jun-2016

3.  enlyft

Based in the US, their website has “data” about  500K companies that use Joomla.  While it may be true that enlyft has data, the list of companies that use Joomla is false.  The purpose of their data is to give people the impression that enlyft has information about the web design market and what technologies are being used that may be useful to companies vying for the same share of the market.

4.  Cloudways

A website design and hosting company, their website makes similarly false representations about the “10 most popular websites” that use Joomla.  Sup­posedly “updated” in 2019, the list is similar to the one appearing on the Enterprise Monkey website.  I’m not alleging outright plagiarism but there are suspicious similarities.  Again the information sources are unverified but if you jump to the comments section at the foot of the page, you’ll realise that you wasted your time reading that article.  The information looks legitimate but it’s only window-dressing around the site’s main business:  website design and hosting.  I don’t know anything else about Cloudways.

5.  Web Tribunal

A website that acts as a front-end to a website design and hosting company listing “30+ Joomla statistics for the newly-fledged webmaster in 2023”.  If you’re looking for a Joomla “wow factor”, check out these numbers:

…
• Joomla is downloaded over 123 million times.
• 2.5 million active sites run on it.
• That makes Joomla the second largest CMS, with a 3.5% market share.
• Among business-oriented sites, 9% opt for Joomla.
• About 780 volunteers contribute to Joomla's development.
• Over 800,000 people are registered on the official Joomla forums.
30+ Joomla Statistics for the Newly-fledged Webmaster in 2023, Web Tribunal, 20-May-2023

We have no idea how many websites may exist on the internet that use Joomla.The usage statistics information on the J! developers website is broken.  You can see examples of these graphs, captured as images two years ago, in Confidence in Joomla! as a platform for building websites.  The J! CMS software has been downloaded millions of times; downloads used to update websites from older versions of J! to newer releases account for a sizeable proportion of this number but the total count does not relate to the creation of new websites.  W3Techs most recent analysissource:  https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management/all places J! as equal sixth with 1.6% of CMS market share.  We do not know which “business-oriented sites” opt for Joomla, what percentage of “business-oriented sites” opt for Joomla or where such information comes from.  There are not currently 780 volunteers contributing to J!’s development.  Over the time since the first version of J! was released, there have been hundreds of people who have contributed ideas, source code, documentation, etc. to the J! project but the current number has fallen to a handful or people.  The current number is probably less than one hundred.  It’s true that there are about 800K user accounts registered at The Joomla Forum™; over two-thirds of those accounts have been banned for violating the forum rules (usually for spamming) while there are hundreds of thousands of accounts that have never posted anything on the forums.  I would only be guessing the number of people who are using the official J! forum these days.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t have anything against passionate evangelism that relies on facts and figures to support their cause; however, merely using big numbers (and expecting those figures to make the case by themselves) doesn’t help.  I think that people need to hear more personal stories told by people who have lived the experience rather than looking at bunch of numbers and thinking that the bigger the number means a bigger truth.

6.  The Joomla Forum™

Aside from being heavily biased towards J! as a CMS (and strongly against Wordpress or other alternatives), you would consider this should be a good place to obtain first-hand experiences about Joomla.  In answer to a questionsource:  https://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=936303#p3433622 about “Why other CMS users have very little respect for Joomla?  Why companies don’t use Joomla?” there are reassurances (with examples like Intel, Citigroup, Wiley and NYU that are supposedly current users of Joomla) but those assurances fall pretty flat today.  The Joomla forum does not have more recent discussions about the popularity (i.e. market share analysis) or testimonials that might persuade people to use Joomla instead of something else.  The J! forum is a good first point of contact if you have a technical problem using the software but it’s not the place for unbiased opinions.

7. Artful Web+Print+Design

An Australian website design and hosting company lists half a dozen “well known” Joomla sites on one of their blog pagessource:  https://artful.com.au/blog/joomla-tips/famous-joomla-sites.html but I could only find that one of these—Wildlife Victoria (using J! 3.10.12)—still uses Joomla today.

8.  Canberra Web

Closer to home, this Canberra-based website design list 14 very well known names—Harvard University, Linux, United Nations, Guggenheim, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King, MTV, Harley-Davidson, Porsche, Mitsubishi Motors, Nikon, Olympus, Yamaha, Jetstar … and “many more!”—but none of these names are in associated with Joomla in any way.  Perhaps they should have mentioned the High Court of Australia website (J! 1.5.15) that is based in Canberra that uses Joomla (J! 1.5.15)?

9.  djextensions

One of their blog pagessource:  https://dj-extensions.com/blog/general/20-most-popular-websites-using-joomla names “20 most popular websites using Joomla”.  This list is mostly accurate, apart from a couple of notable exceptions (e.g. Nintendo), but the list is somewhat outdated even though the blog was updated less than a fortnight ago.  There’s a mix of J! 3.x and 4.x websites here.

10. Joomlashack

This is a website that is pretty much all about Joomla; I subscribe to their newsletters and use a couple of their extensions myself.  The articles at Joomlashack are well written, maintained on a more-or-less regular basis and generally quite reliable.  It’s a little disappointing that the most-recent discussion about “famous sites using Joomla” is five years old.  Again there are some similarities between this listsource:  https://www.joomlashack.com/blog/joomla-powered/famous-joomla-sites/ and the list at djextensions.  However, there’s a comments section at the end of the page where other commentators have added a couple dozen other examples.  Unfortunately, if we take the list of sites mentioned in the article, together with the sites mentioned in the comments, together as a whole, less than one-third of those use Joomla today.

Summary

In conclusion I am not saying anything about the quality of the J! CMS product; people can form their own impressions as they like; however the misinformation about Joomla needs to be called out because it doesn’t help you or me or the J! project.  I am not evangelising for or against the J! project.  When people ask me if I know which businesses or organisations use Joomla to power websites, I know of a few.

The most important lesson is to not implicitly believe all that you digest based on the results of a search of the internet.  Do your own independent research, talk to people who have lived the experience, draw your own conclusions.  “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, people say, and nearly all the technology we use to build things with is disposable—here today, gone tomorrow—but the myths will live on forever.

About the author:

Michael Russell has worked in the information technology industry since 1971 and, since retiring from the workforce in 2007, is a website hobbyist specialising in Joomla, a former member of the Kunena project for more than 8 years, and contributor on The Joomla Forum™. The opinions expressed in this article are entirely those of the author. View his profile here.