Railo Download Statistics

August 5, 2010 · By Mark Drew · 21 Comments

In this blog post I wanted to share with the community some of the download statistics that we have had from http://www.getrailo.org.

The statistics I could grab have only been from the end of February 2010 to the start of August (I compiled these statistics on the last day of CFUnited, waiting for the shuttle) hence February looks quite anaemic. Then we have a massive jump in March (not sure what we were doing then? Something right obviously!) and then downloads are pretty steady for the rest of the year.

How about more information about the people that download Railo? We have a form on the website that some people fill in before downloading Railo (it's optional):

Since quite a few people have filled in this form (over 1000) we can get some interesting statistics of who is using Railo.

It's interesting to see that second to Railo/CFML we have PHP developers being interested in the engine, then Java developers and then Flex developers.

A lot of people find us through search engines, which makes sense but the second most common way to hear about us is through a friend's recommendation. I guess we are doing something right that people will recommend us, it's good to see the community being interested.

As an aside, looking at WHAT people are searching for to find us, it's hardly surprising:

Most of the keywords are directly related to Railo (or the mis-spelled "ralio") and only 45 hits looking for an "open source coldfusion server" since January this year. looks like jboss and Railo itself are good search terms. So the name is getting out there.
Removing the obvious "railo" search term, we get the more detailed chart below:

So the name seems to be getting out there too.

But where are our visitors from?

This chart shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, what *IS* a surprise is that Brazil comes up so high, the same as Germany and Canada.

Finally, here is the interesting chart, 40% of people downloading Railo (well, filling in the form) are new to Railo! That is a very hefty proportion of our users! And we welcome you!

f course, if you haven't tried out Railo yet, why not head over to http://www.getrailo.org/index.cfm/download/ and give it a spin. We think you might like it too!

Edit: We changed the final chart to reflect the question of being a new user to Railo. So that we can get better statistics we have changed the question on the download form.

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Tags: Community · Websites

21 responses so far ↓

1 Gert Franz // Aug 5, 2010 at 3:22 PM

One thing about the countries where the people come from is important. We only ask people where they come from since the beginning of July. That's why 12 people from Germany already make 5% of the total votes. So these numbers will be much more trustworthy, the longer the poll runs...

Gert
2 Martijn van der Woud // Aug 5, 2010 at 3:36 PM

So maybe I should not have downloaded Railo 3000 times last March...
;-P
3 Sergii Galashyn // Aug 5, 2010 at 4:14 PM

Mark, is it possible to disclose the raw stats about Ukraine? How many downloads, at least. Thanks.
4 Mark Drew // Aug 5, 2010 at 4:31 PM

Gert has all the original figures, we are still looking for a way to better manage these stats so the information might not be right to hand.
5 matt // Aug 5, 2010 at 5:09 PM

thanks a lot for these, it is a real shame Adobe doesn't release there stats.

on to a diff topic I only just had a look at the image at top of screen.
Looks like the north face of the Eiger on the left and Lauterbrunnen on the right, such a beautiful part of the world
6 Sergii Galashyn // Aug 5, 2010 at 5:19 PM

Mark, I just wanted to know the % of Ukraine in this chart :)
http://www.railo.ch/blog/images//blog/images/country.png
7 Mark Drew // Aug 5, 2010 at 6:30 PM

Hi Sergii
I just don't know that yet, I am still processing the statistics.
8 Gert Franz // Aug 5, 2010 at 6:51 PM

@matt: Yes that's Eiger, Mönch & Jungfrau seen from the Männlichen (if you know what I am referring to. Here's another image of it: http://bit.ly/ceO9tp)

Gert
9 Brad B // Aug 5, 2010 at 8:04 PM

Why did you omit results for the "Have you ever used Railo before" question?

Where does the data come from for "New CFML Users"? This isn't asked on the survey. How are you determining this?

Are you tracking use of Railo beyond the downloads? Do you have any sense of how many of those downloads turn into successful installs? How many of those installs turn into an applications that gets deployed?
10 Terrence Ryan // Aug 5, 2010 at 8:24 PM

Glad to see you posting numbers. But I do have a slight question. How are you calculating "new to CFML?" It doesn't appear to be a question on your survey. Is there another survey, or are you doing some sort of forumla based on the survey questions that you show here?
11 Gert Franz // Aug 5, 2010 at 9:24 PM

One thing needs to be clear as well. If it says 40% new users then the users are new to Railo (due to the question). So we need to distinguish between new users and new Railo users in the future...

Gert
12 Gert Franz // Aug 5, 2010 at 9:36 PM

@terry, @brad
As already pointed out in my last comment, this question was indeed a little misleading. Since it only shows how many people are new to Railo. So we have changed the question into "Are you new to CFML" and then we will publish these results from this day forth...

Gert
13 Todd Rafferty // Aug 5, 2010 at 9:44 PM

@Brad: How would you track if those downloads became successful installs / deploys?
14 Gert Franz // Aug 5, 2010 at 10:01 PM

@brad, @todd: Something that we can do as well is to check how many people upgrade their engines so that we can get real install numbers...

Gert
15 Terrence Ryan // Aug 5, 2010 at 10:02 PM

Okay so just to be clear... that big chart that says "New to CFML" up above, actually means "New to RAILO."
16 Gert Franz // Aug 5, 2010 at 10:11 PM

@terry: yes you are. So we will change the question so that it is quite clear. At the moment I have no deeper insight on how many of them come from PHP, Adobe CF, Bluedragon, .NET or somewhere else.

Gert
17 Mark Drew // Aug 5, 2010 at 10:14 PM

I have changed the final chart to reflect the question on the form, as Gert mentioned previously, we have changed the download question to ask if they are new to CFML rather than Railo so we can get better statistics on how many downloads are from people that have not programmed in CFML.
18 Todd Rafferty // Aug 5, 2010 at 10:31 PM

@All: Another thing to keep in mind, this form is completely optional. These are all the responses from people that bothered to actually fill them out.
19 WilGeno // Aug 6, 2010 at 1:13 AM

The survey should also have another question. Reason for downloading? Possible options could be 1. Just Experimenting 2. Transitioning from a different non-CFML engine 3. transitioning from a different CFML engine. 4. Other

Just a thought. Survey questions and multiple choice answers can cause very inaccurate results if they are not crafted properly.

Also, this question "What Web Development language do you currently primarily use?" Does not include Non-Railo CFML engines. It would be very useful to know if Railo is cannibalizing Adobe or BlueDragon?
20 AJ Mercer // Aug 6, 2010 at 5:35 AM

for the question 'What Web Development language do you currently primarily use?'

If they do not check 'Railo/CFML' could you not infer they are new to CFML?

If so it would be 54% new
21 Hamad Amaral // Aug 11, 2010 at 12:35 AM

Brazil has a strong CF community (unfortunately neglected by Adobe Brazil).

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