Our most popular free website apps

The web hosting on our Linux platform gives you the choice of over 70 software packages for the web. These ‘one-click installers’ are open source and ideal for developing websites: in most cases, they’re free to use.

We record the number of times each package is installed, so I thought it would be interesting to see which were the most popular, since 20i began (half a million installs!) and in recent months. So I looked at the five most popular installs in nine broad categories of software.

Out of fairness, I must state that popularity is never a guarantee of quality. See: the music charts and ‘big name’ web hosting companies… 🙂

Regardless, here’s the run-down of our most-installed:

Content management systems (CMS)

I think most people with a little knowledge about the internet might guess the #1 install here:

All time:

1. WordPress*
2. Joomla!
3. Drupal
4. Moodle
5. Concrete5

*This is interesting since these figures don’t include our optimised managed WordPress hosting platform: this is for our standard Linux web hosting only.

Last 90 days:

1. WordPress
2. Joomla!
3. Drupal
4. Moodle
5. CraftCMS

The only change here is CraftCMS entering the list, cracking Concrete5.

Ecommerce

The battle of the shop software.

All time:

1. Magento
2. OpenCart
3. PrestaShop
4. Web Host Manager Complete Solution (WHMCS)
5. osCommerce

Last 90 days:

1. Web Host Manager Complete Solution (WHMCS)
2. Magento
3. OpenCart
4. PrestaShop
5. Zen Cart

The recent increase in WHMCS is clearly due to our popularity with web hosting resellers; we started providing discounted WHMCS licences in 2018. Zencart seems to be getting more interest, pushing osCommerce out of our top 5.

Galleries

These are useful for image-heavy websites. We only provide 3 options here, but their ranking (both all time and last 90 days) is:

1. Piwigo
2. Coppermine
3. Zenphoto

Forums and message boards

We have four of these community tools to choose from.

All time:

1. phpBB
2. Simple Machines Forum
3. FluxBB
4. Vanilla Forums

Last 90 days:

1. phpBB
2. FluxBB
3. Simple Machines Forum
4. Vanilla Forums

FluxBB has changed places with Simple Machines.

Find out more about our Flarum hosting.

Social networks

Like above, these tools are for managing and creating communities, but are styled in a more ‘social media’ style. All time:

1. BuddyPress
2. Dolphin
3. Elgg

A bit of a reversal in recent months; it looks like Elgg has been gaining more followers:

1. Elgg
2. Dolphin
3. BuddyPress

Business & project management

All time:

1. Feng Office
2. Simple Invoices
3. dotProject
4. StatusNet
5. iQDesk

Last 3 months:

1. Feng Office
2. Kanboard
3. StatusNet
4. BambooInvoice
5. dotProject

Lots of changes in the business and project management world. To be fair, the two new entries could be related to them being added to our range of one-clicks quite recently.

Customer relationship management (CRM)

There are four available options from us here. All time:

1. SugarCRM
2. SuiteCRM
3. phpCOIN
4. vTiger

And more recently:

1. SuiteCRM
2. SugarCRM
3. vTiger
4. phpCOIN

Again, lots of movement in open-source CRM-land with Suite being preferred over SugarCRM, and Tigers flipping COINs.

Help desk/support/live chat

Need to create some kind of customer support or live chat solution? Here’s our most-installed help desk software, all time:

1. osTicket
2. phpFreeChat
3. HelpCenter Live
4. Trouble Ticket Express
5. SalesSyntax

Last 3 months:

1. osTicket
2. phpFreeChat
3. Trouble Ticket Express
4. HelpCenter Live
5. SalesSyntax

The only change here is that Trouble Ticket Express has moved in front of HelpCenter Live in the queue (I’m here all week 🙂 ).

Marketing, advertising and bulk email

This is probably the most arbitrary category – these tools’ functions vary a lot – but have a common theme of being ‘things that marketers use’. Most installed all time:

1. phpList
2. PHPMailer
3. Revive Adserver
4. Prosper202

In the battle of the imaginatively-titled PHP-things, ‘Mailer’ moved ahead of ‘List’ in the last quarter.

1. PHPMailer
2. phpList
3. Revive Adserver
4. Prosper202

However, they are not in direct competition: phpList actually makes use of phpMailer in the back end (thanks to phpList for pointing this out!).

Not exhaustive

There are also plenty of other website tools/software apps that I didn’t include here, such as our Laravel hosting and MediaWiki hosting. That’s because they just do one simple job really well and have no obvious ‘competitors’.

If you have time, you should check them out, have a play, and – if you’re using a software-as-a-service alternative – maybe save money?

If you’re on our Linux hosting we recommend taking your time to explore our one-clicks. We have over 70 one-click installers: you can see them all and search among them here: one-click apps.

Popular ≠ best

Finally, I want to make it doubly clear that just because a software package or tool isn’t installed by a lot of people, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth trying-out.

When a package is suggested to us by a customer, we follow criteria for its inclusion as a one-click in My20i: it needs to have a good reputation and be widely-used within its niche.

So: we think all 70+ apps are good!

Some free software isn’t very popular simply because it serves a highly specialist market: apps for schools, for example. And don’t forget: just because someone installed a piece of software, it doesn’t mean they’re actively using it…

So sorry to all the excellent apps that aren’t mentioned here.

If your favourite open source website-related app deserves some love, feel free to give it a mention below. And if we don’t support it as a one-click, let us know why we should.

Lastly: thanks and well done to the communities who develop all these tools for free, you’re all stars!