--- description: What is the tech forecast for 2025? Capterra UK studies the latest technology trends in 2025 to assess emerging software that is a must-have for businesses. image: https://gdm-localsites-assets-gfprod.imgix.net/images/capterra/og_logo-e5a8c001ed0bd1bb922639230fcea71a.png?auto=format%2Cenhance%2Ccompress title: Capterra UK software industry statistics study 2025 --- # 2025's software market trends: How the UK market is evolving Canonical: https://www.capterra.co.uk/blog/7639/tech-market-uk-emerging-technologies Published on 28/07/2025 | Written by David Jani. ![2025's software market trends: How the UK market is evolving](https://images.ctfassets.net/63bmaubptoky/70ylgALaHi9ndgAkNJdI5T/93b3302b9f059b5f805fafa9b408eeed/Tech_trends_header_-_UK.png) > The battle for market share is becoming ever more fierce. This puts companies in a race to remain competitive, optimise processes, and innovate. Choosing the right software plays a crucial part in this constantly evolving landscape. In this report, we reveal what software is most in demand in the UK and how software market trends are evolving. ----- ## Article Content The battle for market share is becoming ever more fierce. This puts companies in a race to remain competitive, optimise processes, and innovate. Choosing the right software plays a crucial part in this constantly evolving landscape. In this report, we reveal what software is most in demand in the UK and how software market trends are evolving.In this articleTrend 1: Creative and marketing software solutions are among the most popular tools on Capterra UKTrend 2: Essential functionality = crowded marketplaceTrend 3: Reviews listings indicate HR adoption has grownKey takeaways: 3 ways to understand the UK’s market conditions in 2025As a modern business, keeping on top of the developing and trending software technologies is vital to avoid losing ground and sleeping on major innovations. Understanding the new trends in software can help UK businesses make more informed decisions on their future technology investments to gain efficiencies in operations, improve customer experience, and lower costs.On the other hand, software providers need to respond to evolving market demand to adapt their own products. This not helps them strategise better, but it also provides them with the solutions UK businesses need in the current moment.Capterra has explored its extensive platform data on software buyers and vendors. From this we’ve identified what technology is booming in the UK and how the software market is evolving. The following report is based on analysis of proprietary data covering January to April 2024 versus the same period in 2025. This provides a comprehensive analysis of the state of the UK software market.Key insights:UK software buyers are increasingly seeking out creative, marketing, and sales solutions.Vendor competition is fierce in vital software categories such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), human resources (HR), artificial intelligence (AI), and compliance making it harder for consumers to select the right tool for their needs. HR software and people management focused software are the most reviewed categories in the UK, suggesting more recent uptake.Trend 1: Creative and marketing software solutions are among the most popular tools on Capterra UKWe identified the most important software categories for 2025 based on Capterra traffic data for the UK and monthly search volume and divided them in 3 groups\*:Trendsetters are the categories that had the highest number of sessions and the highest percentile growth in web traffic. Established solutions that have the highest search volume and the highest percentile growth in web traffic. Industry-focused software for niche business uses that demonstrated effective year-on-year growth. \*To identify the most important software trends for 2025 for this report we analyzed Capterra traffic data for the UK. This studied the annual percentage increase in user engagement, which we measured in sessions (page views per visitor), and the monthly search volume on our site.TrendsettersAmong our trendsetting software examples, an interesting pattern shows that sales, marketing, and creative tools were among the biggest movers from 2024 to 2025. This underscores a growing trend for companies to prioritise software that helps improve their content and visual assets, and reach customers more quickly and easily. Some of the key examples of this at play include:eCommerce software: enabling businesses to sell products and services online and manage product listings, inventory, customer orders and payments. Graphic design software: helping firms to design visually appealing content for assets such as banners, logos, social media and websites.Email marketing software: providing features for designing, sending and tracking email marketing campaigns. Like many software categories in 2025, these specific tools are starting to include AI features, and this may cause customers to reassess their tech stack. In the case of eCommerce and sales focused tools, this includes beneficial additions such as AI powered features to recommend products to customers based on their buyer behaviour, adjust pricing based on purchase patterns, or to automate customer service elements.However, a factor in features that are common across both ecommerce, marketing and visual software is generative AI (Gen AI). These can be used to create or adjust images and videos more quickly, and create copy to use in digital assets. AI content created by Gen AI has become increasingly visible across the internet. This visibility could in turn be increasing the fear of missing out (FOMO) amongst UK firms when considering their customer facing storefronts and communications. This offers extensive opportunities to software vendors also in acquiring new customers. Some of the findings in our 2024 GenAI in Social Content\*\*\* survey last year contextualise this pattern. Among, the key results of this survey, we discovered:The majority of UK marketers surveyed use generative AI (GenAI) for creating social media images (62%) and social graphics (58%).83% of marketers anticipated an increase in spending on GenAI tools in the subsequent 18 months.The return on investment (ROI) from using these GenAI tools proved positive. 77% said that AI led to an increase in social media engagement and impressions.Therefore, it is likely that some of the growing interest in creative tools seen in our web traffic data has centred on Gen AI-enabled solutions. This may be set to increase further as Meta seems set to introduce AI-enabled social ad tools for its users in the near future. \[1\] Established categoriesWith established categories, we also saw some of the focus of sales and marketing tools come through via the popularity of customer relationship management (CRM). Yet, it is tools such as accounting and project management that seem to have had the biggest overall impact in web traffic. Many of these results make sense, given the importance of these software categories for business operations more generally. However, a factor that could be helping their growth is the need to maintain and bolster digital security. All of these systems process a large quantity of sensitive data, and therefore security is a major concern in their use, which could encourage firms to shop around for better protection. As our 2025 Tech Trends report\*\* shows, security is a top concern for businesses in the UK generally, and this doesn’t necessarily just count for dedicated IT security software. This is vital when assessing individual software options too, especially when systems that will handle sensitive data for payments, or customer information.  This is especially critical right now. Security in retail is an area that has been particularly vulnerable of late, with major attacks affecting brands such as M\&S, Harrods, and Co-op. Businesses in this sector, whether small or large, therefore should remain vigilant. According to findings from the UK Government, 43% of businesses have experienced a cyber breach or attack in the past 12 months. \[2\] We also observed in our own research that security vulnerabilities cause regret among 35% of software buyers in the UK. It is therefore essential for businesses to keep security standards high and put in place software that can help them manage this goal. Industry-focused software for retail and property is a major area of consumer focusOur findings also show that consumers have been especially focusing on niche tools for property and retail aligned businesses. Some of the categories demonstrating this fact with the biggest traffic growth include:Restaurant management Hospitality property managementSalon software Whilst it might be hasty to say this indicates a turnaround in the often financially pressured hospitality industry, these findings indicate an active embrace of new software by businesses despite the challenges. Pressures in this market partially explain why companies may switch software like this. For instance, they may seek to take advantage of competitive prices from rival vendors. This makes pricing on the vendor-side an especially important factor right now to avoid losing audience-share. Additionally, new features emerging in these categories also factor in. Businesses can benefit from new AI-powered features such as:More intuitive analytical insights from sales and customer data to allow better customer personalisation and experience. Automations of elements such as payments, task management and reporting can help businesses pursue better internal efficiency.Evolving software can, in some cases, lead to new purchases as businesses look to capitalise on better efficiencies, more automation or tools that provide a better fit for a company. Emerging categories further emphasise creative, marketing, and sales software growthEmerging categories discovered in our web traffic represent new fast-growing software types that received little or no traffic the year prior. We observed a number of categories that received very-little-but-some attention from buyers in 2024, but grew exponentially in 2025.Among these emerging software types, the same pattern as our trendsetters seems to be at play, whereby creative-focused tools are attracting high interest from buyers. This is exemplified by the emergence of categories such as AI image generation software, video-making software, and PDF, all tools that are used to create visualised assets. The prevalence of AI tools in this case actually fell in line with the findings of last year’s 2025 Tech Trends Survey\*\*. Here, we observed that 31% of software buyers in the UK identified AI tools as a top investment priority, and this seems to be holding true in terms of consumer behaviour we observed.  Trend 2: Essential functionality = crowded marketplaceWhile it is clear from our traffic information that there has been more buyer interest in categories such as marketing, sales, and creative design (utilising AI in particular), is the software market responding to this demand? Categories with the most product listings on Capterra UK between January 2024 and May 2025 show that this is the case to an extent, with artificial intelligence and CRM among those offering the widest variety of products to users overall. However, that doesn’t tell the whole story. Instead, what comes across from the most listed products found on Capterra UK, is the availability and volume of software offered for essential business functions. By far, the software types with the widest range of products are in areas such as ERP, HR, compliance and billing, as well as the already mentioned CRM and AI. This gives an interesting picture for both buyers and vendors, but one that can be reflected on both positively and negatively. On the plus side there are lots of options available for essential business functions for managing staff, communication with customers, compliance with essential rules and regulations and managing company resources effectively, meaning there is more likely to be a specialised solution out there tailored to an individual business’s needs.The downside of this volume of products is that finding the right software becomes a trickier and more time-consuming mission, with more chance of possible purchase regret for consumers. In the case of vendors, this is a double-edged sword too because of the additional competition, making it more difficult to stand out in the market.Avoiding purchase regretIn our 2025 Tech Trends report\*\*, we identified several important areas that most commonly cause dissatisfaction among UK buyers following a purchase, including:The software costing more than expected - 34%Adopting technology which is too complex for the business - 30%Difficulty with onboarding - 30%Incompatibility with existing software systems in a company - 29%Complexity and delays with technical implementation - 28%Adopting software that doesn’t meet expectations can also lead to negative business outcomes such as higher costs, worsening productivity, and vulnerability to cyberattacks. So the costs of choosing the wrong software can be very high. Purchases of some key types of software are also particularly vulnerable to regret, with security, marketing, finance, project management, and HR proving the most common. As we can see with our product listings data, these are also some of the most competitive software categories for the volume of products available. Therefore, it is even more important to make sure choosing software in these categories is carefully managed. Trend 3: Reviews listings indicate HR adoption has grownAs a reviews focused website, Capterra collects thousands of comments from software users in the UK each year, offering feedback on their purchases and experience in using a system. When comparing Q1 2024 and Q1 2025 we can see that the most reviewed categories in the UK relate to collaboration and employee management. Collaboration software in particular grew 67% while maintaining the top position from 2024, showing that businesses are continuously reviewing options and exploring better solutions in this category on a regular basis. The overall findings showing widespread activity in HR-focused software and mostly follows what we observed in our Tech Trends 2025 data\*\* in the UK. Here we saw that a considerable proportion (25%) had adopted HR software for permanent use in the 12 months prior. As many software buyers had bought this software in 2024 it stands to reason that it got a high proportion of reviews. Additionally, HR, team communication, and employee engagement are relevant for all types of companies, regardless of their size or industry. HR software is especially crucial as it conveys many important benefits to business such as:Improving performance and efficiency: This is achieved via use of automations, employee self-service forms, analytical insights, and digitised record-keeping.Assisting in business growth: Tools such as applicant tracking, payroll and compensation management can support businesses as they grow and scale.Securely storing data: HR data can be collected easily in a secure and compliant way in employee databases, reducing errors and manual work. These findings in our reviews data contrast with Q1 2024, when HR and employee management focused tools did not even feature in the top ten. During that time period, we observed products such as project management, productivity, and marketing software receiving much higher consumer activity.This is not to say that project management as a topic didn’t get as much attention from reviewers in 2025. In fact, it remained largely unchanged, with a similar number of new reviews as before. However, these shifts in consumer activity demonstrate the cyclical nature of business software buying as businesses adjust around their necessities and new technological developments. That said, vendors in the PM market might want to watch carefully as a reset may be on the cards. Our Tech Trends 2025 findings show that project management is a higher priority (selected by 18% of UK buyers) than HR (14%) for business investments for the year ahead. This may see it regain some growth as buyers adopt new PM products and as new HR systems are more likely to have already been acquired within businesses after last year. Fluctuations are still at play, demonstrated by categories receiving reviews on Capterra, yet the market remains dynamic as purchasing trends adjust.Quick tips to narrow down software selectionChoosing the right software when there is a wide choice available can make the process longer and more complicated. However, there are ways to simplify a software search.Based on findings from our 2025 Tech Trends survey\*\*, we found that buyers with no regret in their software purchase stick to the following rules: Creating a more focused initial candidate list of 1-4 software optionsMaintain flexibility, don’t be afraid to rethink your list and seek expert advice and hands-on product reviews to assess optionsBe sure to test your final selections with a product trial or demonstration first. Key takeaways: 3 ways to understand the UK’s market conditions in 2025Our findings identify a number of dynamics at play within the market: The trendsetting categories suggest AI, sales, marketing and design are sought after solutions.Categories in key business areas maintain a strong performance but tend to be the most competitive in terms of number of products on the market.HR is currently receiving lots of user feedback. However, there are signs project management may be about to make a comeback.These changes show the shifting demand at play as new technologies enter the market and as companies seek to improve efficiencies. However, it is at least clear that AI is having an impact not only on the type of software businesses want to adopt but also in how vendors evolve their products. Whilst many aspects shift and change in a business-as-usual way, there are also unique factors prompting action from UK software buyers. Looking for CRM software? Check out our catalogue. ## Disclaimer > Sources:Facebook and Instagram owner Meta to enable AI ad creation by end of next year, The Guardian Cyber security breaches survey 2025, GOV.UK Methodology\* Proprietary traffic data from capterra.co.uk \*\* The Capterra 2025 Technology Trends Survey was conducted online in August 2024 among 3,500 respondents in the US (n=700), UK (n=350), Canada (n=350), Australia (n=350), France (n=350), India (n=350), Germany (n=350), Brazil (n=350), and Japan (n=350). The survey was designed to understand software buyers' timelines, organizational challenges, adoption and budget, vendor research behavior, return on investment expectations, and satisfaction. Respondents were vetted to ensure they are involved in enterprise software purchasing decisions.\*\*\* Capterra's GenAI for Social Content Survey was conducted in May 2024 among 1,680 respondents in the U.S. (n=190), Canada (n=108), Brazil (n=179), Mexico (n=199), the U.K. (n=197), France (n=135), Italy (n=102), Germany (n=90), Spain (n=123), Australia (n=200), and Japan (n=157). The goal of the study was to learn more about the impacts of generative AI on social media marketing strategies. Respondents were screened for marketing, PR, sales, or customer service roles at companies of all sizes. Each respondent indicated their use of generative AI to assist with their company's social media marketing at least once each month. ## About the author ### David Jani David is a Content Analyst for the UK, providing key insights into tech, software and business trends for SMEs. Cardiff University graduate. He loves traveling, cooking and F1. ## Related Categories - [CRM Software](https://www.capterra.co.uk/directory/2/customer-relationship-management/software) - [Email Marketing Software](https://www.capterra.co.uk/directory/30013/email-marketing/software) - [Lead Management Software](https://www.capterra.co.uk/directory/30017/lead-management/software) - [Online CRM Software](https://www.capterra.co.uk/directory/30072/online-crm/software) - [Task Management Software](https://www.capterra.co.uk/directory/10030/task-management/software) ## Related Articles - [5 best appointment scheduling software for small businesses in 2020](https://www.capterra.co.uk/blog/1179/5-best-appointment-scheduling-software-for-small-business) - [The impact of the UK economic crisis on consumer spending habits](https://www.capterra.co.uk/blog/3660/consumer-spending-habits-cost-of-living-crisis-UK) - [Digital transformation: 70% of SMEs worldwide adapted their business offerings as a result of COVID-19](https://www.capterra.co.uk/blog/1641/digital-transformation-70-of-smes-worldwide-adapted-their-business-offerings-as-result-of-covid-19) - [Capterra’s "Best of" Badge Program Methodologies](https://www.capterra.co.uk/blog/7643/best-of-badges-methodologies-uk) - [Keeping track of projects is easy with our free example of a Gantt chart](https://www.capterra.co.uk/blog/1153/keeping-track-of-projects-with-free-gantt-chart-template) ## Links - [View on Capterra](https://www.capterra.co.uk/blog/7639/tech-market-uk-emerging-technologies) - [Blog](https://www.capterra.co.uk/blog) - [Home](https://www.capterra.co.uk/) ----- ## Structured Data