Discover the hidden technology behind every website
Wappalyzer shows in one click what runs any website: CMS, tracking tools, host, payment solution. Useful before a redesign, or to size up a competitor.
Faced with a well-built site, the first question is often: what is it made with? A browser extension answers in a second, without reading a line of code.
What Wappalyzer detects
The extension analyzes the open page and lists the technologies it recognizes:
- the content management system: WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow
- the theme and main plugins, on WordPress
- the measurement tools: Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, Hotjar
- the payment solution and the shop engine
- the host and the delivery network: Cloudflare, AWS, OVH
- the technical libraries: jQuery, React, Bootstrap
One click on the icon and the list appears. Nothing to configure.
Four concrete uses for a small business
Before a redesign. You pick three sites in your field that you like. The extension tells you straight away whether they run on WordPress, on Shopify or on custom code. That immediately frames the budget and the kind of supplier to contact.
To assess a quote. A supplier proposes a "proprietary platform". Look at their own work: if all of it runs on WordPress with an off-the-shelf theme, you know what to negotiate — and you know you will be able to take your site elsewhere.
To understand a competitor's measurement. A competitor with three tracking tools and an advertising pixel is investing seriously in acquisition. A competitor with none measures nothing and is flying blind.
To take over an inherited site. When nobody in the company knows who built the site or with what, the extension gives you the starting point for the inventory.
What it does not see
It reads what the page exposes publicly. A site behind an application firewall, or deliberately discreet, can hide its traces. It can also be wrong: a library loaded for a single animation shows up at the same level as the CMS.
And it says nothing about quality. Two WordPress sites can be one solid, the other unmanageable.
The exercise to run on your own site
Open your site with the extension. You will see the list of everything running on it. Three things are worth a look:
- The tracking tools you forgot. An old advertising pixel, a chat widget installed for a trial, an analytics script from three years ago. Each one slows the page and sends data somewhere.
- Outdated technologies. A library abandoned years ago is a known way in.
- What you expose. The exact version of your CMS, publicly visible, helps anyone looking for sites to attack.
Five minutes of inventory, and you know what is really running on your site.