Why Developer Adoption Is Stalling—and How the Best Teams Are Fixing It
- Kyle Tyacke
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
A snapshot of the State of Developer Adoption 2025 Report from the Developer Marketing Alliance and Instruqt. Understand the obstacles to developer adoption, the tactics top teams are using, and how developer marketing needs to adapt.
Instruqt and the Developer Marketing Alliance (DMA) have released one of the most comprehensive reports to date on the state of developer adoption, packed with insights that matter. We’ve distilled the most relevant findings from their 2025 report to help you benchmark your own programs, spot areas for improvement, and stay ahead of evolving enablement trends.
Top 5 Takeaways:
Developer adoption remains slow, with most developers needing 1–3 months to fully onboard.
Hands-on, real-world training is ranked as the most effective enablement strategy, but remains underutilized.
Budgets are holding steady or growing, with investments shifting toward personalized learning and community engagement.
Marketing teams are playing a leading role in developer education, driving alignment with sales and customer success.
Metrics are evolving from completion rates to product usage and developer satisfaction.
Read on for more of what we’re seeing, learning, and recommending based on the latest research.
Why Developer Adoption Still Lags—Even in 2025
According to the 2025 State of Developer Adoption report from Instruqt and the Developer Marketing Alliance, the gap between interest and actual product usage hasn’t shrunk. If anything, it’s yawning wider than before, and innovation is getting lost inside it. Despite a boom in dev-first platforms, tools, and communities, turning curiosity into commitment is still like herding highly caffeinated cats.
So what’s jamming the gears?
Budget constraints and tech complexity are neck-and-neck for the top spot, each flagged by 42.7% of orgs as their biggest blockers.
Time-to-value is sluggish. Nearly half of devs take 1–3 months to really get rolling.
Just 22% ramp-up in under a month, which doesn’t bode well for teams chasing quick wins.
And here’s the kicker: in today’s go-to-market game, developer education is product marketing. When adoption’s clunky, sales slow, NPS sags, and churn creeps in.
Hands-On or Hands-Off? Where Orgs Are Still Getting It Wrong
Most companies still use the classics: docs and videos. 72% provide written documentation, and 67% roll out video tutorials like they’re handing out swag at a conference booth. But ask developers what actually works. It’s hands-on, real-world training.
We’re talking guided onboarding, self-paced sandbox trials, environments where devs can poke, prod, and maybe break things without consequence. Basically—let them play.
Here’s where things get sticky: only about a third of companies are doing this. So while everyone agrees it works, very few are actually walking that talk. Which makes it less of a trend, and more of a missed opportunity.
If you remember just one thing: Documentation is still the table stakes. But it’s not the main event. Developers don’t just want to be told—they want to touch. Let them in.
Budget Priorities: Holding Steady, But Shifting Toward Self-serve and AI
Despite the economic pinch, most orgs aren’t pulling the plug on developer enablement. In fact, over a third plan to spend more this year, while more than half are keeping their budgets right where they are. But how they spend is changing.
The money’s flowing toward personalized learning paths, active developer communities, and AI-driven content that can adapt, support, and scale. And yet, only 7.5% of respondents say they’re very likely to invest in interactive labs. This is another case of "we know it works, but we’re still not doing it."
If you’re a GTM leader, this is your neon blinking sign: Align your enablement tools with the outcomes that matter. Speed. Stickiness. Self-sufficiency. That’s how developer marketing initiatives become growth engines.
“When developer adoption is aligned across marketing, sales, and education, it becomes a growth engine.”— Sean Lauer, VP Marketing & Product, Instruqt
DevRel and Marketing Join Forces
In 2025, developer adoption is everyone’s business. With 61% of survey respondents from marketing, it’s clear that adoption has moved out of its silo and into the spotlight of the entire go-to-market strategy.
The winning teams operate like a hive mind, with marketing, sales, customer success, and DevRel all synced up and moving with purpose. The developer education journey isn’t an afterthought; it’s baked into the journey from day one.
These teams are ditching PDF handoffs in favor of product-led onboarding that actually works. Fewer hurdles. More hands-on experience. Happier devs who get what they need, fast.
It’s not just feel-good fluff—it’s a shift in how success is being measured.
Product usage rates and developer satisfaction now top the KPI list, with 57.3% and 42.7% of companies, respectively, using these as their north stars, and time-to-value is improving too. And only 24.4% of orgs are still focusing on training completion rates. Just because devs are ticking the completion boxes, doesn’t mean they’re sticking around after class is over.
Instead of waiting for quarterly business reviews to course-correct, the sharpest teams track engagement monthly or even weekly. Real-time feedback allows them to make real-time improvements.
This isn’t just alignment. It’s a superpower.
Developer Adoption in 2025: Accelerate Interactivity
If there’s one thing this report makes painfully clear, it’s this: developer adoption is no longer a documentation issue. It’s a product experience challenge.
In 2025, developers want a hands-on, personal, and immediate experience. Think AI-generated content that adapts in real time, CRM and LMS systems that actually talk to each other, and feedback loops that don’t wait for a quarterly review to flag what’s broken.
The smartest organizations aren’t just taking notes; they’re taking action. They’re rethinking onboarding stacks that still rely on static PDFs and carving out budgets for interactive labs that let developers play, break things, and learn fast. They’re aligning DevRel with the broader GTM strategy because they know that dev success feeds into revenue, retention, and roadmap wins.
This isn’t about checking “developer marketing” boxes. It’s about removing friction, fast-tracking value, and building the kind of product experience developers want to stick around for.
If you're serious about turning insights into action, Catchy can help. We partner with developer-first companies to build and scale GTM strategies that developers actually love.
Whether you're launching a new product, refining your enablement experience, or revamping your onboarding journey, we have the experience in Go-To-Market Strategy to help you succeed.
