New Companies 2026: What Their Websites Run On
The companies
Their 203 websites
* Built as code means: no WordPress, no Wix, no other system behind the site. Someone wrote the pages, by hand, as an agency, or with an AI tool such as ChatGPT, Claude or Lovable. From the outside you cannot tell who wrote the code. ** Code frameworks such as Next.js, AI-builder sites, and code pages with the modern building blocks AI tools use (Tailwind, React), without the older ones (jQuery, Bootstrap). So the share of AI-built sites lies somewhere between 2.5% (proven) and 15% (plausible).
Key takeaways
- Most new companies start without a website. 13% of all new entries and 16% of operating companies (holdings and management companies excluded) had a site we could tie to them.
- The website comes months later. Companies registered in the first quarter had a site in 19% of cases, those from the third quarter in 11%.
- 79 companies have reserved a domain but show only a placeholder, most often the STRATO default page "Domain reserved".
- WordPress is still the default: 35% of the sites. Half of them (49%) use the Elementor page builder.
- 36% run without any CMS or builder: 51 sites with no recognisable system, 18 on code frameworks such as Next.js and 5 from AI site builders.
- AI site builders are measurable but small: 5 sites (2.5%) carry a clear fingerprint of Lovable, v0, Hostinger Horizons or a typical AI-builder app. That is a lower bound, because a site that ChatGPT or Claude wrote by hand leaves no trace.
Who we looked at
We started from the lists of new commercial register entries that five chambers of commerce (IHKs) publish on their own websites: Arnsberg (Hellweg-Sauerland), Lahn-Dill, Hanau-Gelnhausen-Schlüchtern, Limburg and Trier. Together they cover eight local courts in Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate. That gave us 1,536 new entries from 1 January to 30 September 2026.
The register only contains companies such as GmbH, UG, KG and registered sole traders (e.K.). Freelancers and most sole proprietors never appear in it, so this study is about new limited companies and partnerships, not every founder. 303 of the entries (20%) are holding, asset-management or general-partner companies, which rarely have a website of their own. We report them separately.
How many new companies have a website?
We found and verified a website for 203 of 1,536 companies. "Verified" means the site's own text or legal notice (Impressum) names the company with its legal form, or its register number. For operating companies the rate is 16%; for holding and management companies it is 3%.
Share with a verified website, by legal form (operating companies only):
Time matters more than legal form. The longer a company has been registered, the more likely it has a site:
On top of that, 79 companies (5%) have reserved a domain in their own name that shows only a placeholder, most often the STRATO page "Domain reserved", sometimes "coming soon" or a host's default page. Many founders clearly secure the name first and build the site later, if at all.
What the new websites run on
For each of the 203 verified sites we read the homepage's code and looked for the fingerprints that systems leave behind: file paths, generator tags, scripts and server headers. First in three blocks:
- With a CMS (WordPress, Contao, TYPO3 …) 40%
- Website builder or shop system 23%
- Built as code, no CMS 36%
And in detail:
| Platform | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 71 | 35.0% |
| Next.js | 14 | 6.9% |
| Wix | 11 | 5.4% |
| Jimdo | 8 | 3.9% |
| Shopify | 7 | 3.4% |
| CM4all (STRATO/IONOS-Baukasten) | 4 | 2.0% |
| Contao | 3 | 1.5% |
| JTL-Shop | 3 | 1.5% |
| Squarespace | 3 | 1.5% |
| Webflow | 3 | 1.5% |
| Odoo | 3 | 1.5% |
| Mono (u. a. Telekom-Baukasten) | 2 | 1.0% |
| Lovable | 2 | 1.0% |
| TYPO3 | 2 | 1.0% |
| Astro | 2 | 1.0% |
| Nuxt | 2 | 1.0% |
| Joomla | 2 | 1.0% |
| No recognisable system | 51 | 25.1% |
| Others (one site each) | 10 | 4.9% |
CM4all is the engine behind the STRATO and older IONOS website builders, Duda behind IONOS MyWebsite Now, Mono behind several telecom website builders. "React/Vite app" is the typical output of AI app builders without a visible brand.
Inside WordPress, the page builder decides how the site is edited. Of the 71 WordPress sites, 35 (49%) use Elementor, 7 Divi, 6 WPBakery and 6 Oxygen. 25 (35%) run a WooCommerce shop. Only 23 use none of these.
How many are built with AI?
5 of 203 sites (2.5%) carry a clear AI-builder fingerprint: two from Lovable, one each from v0 (Vercel) and Hostinger Horizons, and one React app in the exact shape these builders produce. With a sample of this size the true share is somewhere between roughly 1 and 6 percent.
That number is a lower bound. A site that someone generated in ChatGPT or Claude and uploaded as plain files looks like any other hand-written site. The more telling figure is the one next to it: 36% of the new sites (74 of 203) run without any CMS or website builder. 18 use a code framework such as Next.js (14 sites), Astro or Nuxt, and 51 show no recognisable system at all. Many of these are classic hand-built sites; a growing part is exactly what AI coding tools produce. From the outside, the two cannot be told apart reliably, so we don't guess.
If you want to try that route yourself, our guide on how to build a website with AI compares the options, including what the AI leaves to you after launch.
What this means if you are founding a company
1. The first months are when people look you up. Customers, banks, suppliers and future staff search your name right after the registration. In our data 87% of new companies show them nothing they could verify, and even six months in, four out of five still have no site. A placeholder saying "Domain reserved" is the same as no site: nobody can call you from it, and Google has nothing to show.
2. Every route to a site has a catch. Our two studies show where it sits:
| Route | Getting started | After launch | What our data shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website builder (Wix, Jimdo, STRATO …) | Quick, with templates | Monthly fee, every change is yours, hard to leave | Heaviest group: 2.32 MB median, 7.5 s on a phone |
| WordPress with a page builder | Flexible, many agencies know it | Updates, plugins and security, every month | 35% of the sites, 1.64 MB median |
| An AI tool writes the code (ChatGPT, Claude, Lovable) | Fast and light | Hosting, domain, working forms, legal pages and every later change are on you | Lightest group: 0.47 MB median; up to 15% of the sites |
| Agency | Done for you | Pay and wait for each change | Shows up in all groups above |
3. So a new company needs the light, fast result of the AI route, without the work it leaves behind: a site that is up quickly, loads fast, can be found on Google and in AI search, can be changed without a developer, and still belongs to you.
4. That is the gap ShiftPress fills. You describe your business in a few sentences and ShiftPress builds real pages with real copy, as lean code: the kind of site that came out lightest in our measurement. Your own domain and SSL are included, contact forms deliver to your inbox, and SEO and structured data are handled. Afterwards you change the site by chat or by voice, see every change and approve it before it goes live. And because it is code, you can download the whole site at any time. If all you have so far is a reserved domain, this is the shortest way from placeholder to a real website.
Whatever you choose, in Germany every business site needs an Impressum and a privacy policy. The weight of the same sites is in our website carbon report 2026, and our guide on how to build a website with AI compares the routes in depth.
From placeholder to a real website
Describe your business in a few sentences and get a first version with real pages on your own domain. Then change it by chat and approve every change before it goes live.
Build my site ↗How we collected this
- Source of the companies: the free lists of new register entries published by the IHKs Arnsberg, Lahn-Dill, Hanau-Gelnhausen-Schlüchtern, Limburg and Trier (web pages and member magazines), entries dated 1 January to 30 September 2026. For Arnsberg's January to June lists, which the IHK no longer serves, we used archived copies. We did not query the official register portal.
- Finding the website: from each company name we derived likely domains (for example
firmenname.de,firmen-name.com) and counted a site only if its homepage or legal notice names the company with its legal form, or its register number. Sites on a domain that doesn't resemble the name are missed, so every website share here is a lower bound. - Recognising the system: fingerprints in the homepage code and headers (paths such as
/wp-content/, generator tags, builder scripts, hosting headers). We checked every AI-builder hit and a sample of "no recognisable system" by hand. - When: websites fetched and analysed on 20 October 2026.
- Limits: three federal states, not a representative sample of Germany; only companies that enter the register; 203 sites is enough for the big shares (WordPress ±7 percentage points) but not for fine splits of small groups. Some sites block automated visits and are missing.
- Data protection: we publish only aggregated figures. No company names, no names of people, no list of websites. Register data is public; we stored no personal data beyond what the public lists contain.