Already know you're moving off Umbraco?
This page helps you weigh an upgrade against a replatform. If you want a team to plan and run the migration, see Website migration services.
What Umbraco is, and why you’re probably here
Umbraco is the open-source .NET CMS with the biggest European footprint of any platform in its class. Born in Denmark, it has an enormous installed base across the UK, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands, and a deep bench of .NET agencies around it. Modern Umbraco runs on .NET Core with long-term-support releases on a predictable cadence, and Umbraco Heartcore is its headless SaaS flavor for teams that want the Umbraco backend with an API-first delivery model.
Most visitors to a page like this already run Umbraco, often a version that’s several majors behind, and are weighing an upgrade against a replatform. That’s the honest framing we’ll use.
Where Umbraco still fits
A current long-term-support version of Umbraco is a serviceable, well-maintained CMS. If your organization is a committed .NET shop, your install is current, and your editors are productive in the backoffice, there’s no urgent reason to leave. Heartcore even gives you a headless path that keeps the Umbraco content backend while you modernize the front end. The European community and agency ecosystem mean support is easy to find close to home, and the commercial tiers cover the named requirements larger organizations check: SSO, granular permissions, and vendor-backed support agreements.
Why teams migrate away
- End-of-life installs. Umbraco 7 and 8 are long past end-of-life, with no security patches, and they’re the single most common trigger we see. Getting from 7/8 to a modern version is effectively a rebuild of the implementation, which reopens the platform question.
- Upgrade cost rivals a rebuild. When the jump spans the .NET Framework to .NET Core divide, custom packages and integrations rarely come along for free.
- Front-end delivery drag. Long-lived Umbraco estates accumulate templating and custom code that makes shipping a fast, modern site slower than it should be.
- Structured, multi-market content. Multi-brand, multi-locale estates often outgrow what the install was modelled for a decade ago. Editors end up working around the content model instead of with it.
Stay or go: the short version
| Stay on Umbraco when | Move when |
|---|---|
 Your install is on a current LTS version and upgrades have kept pace |  You're on end-of-life Umbraco 7 or 8 with no security patches |
| Your organization is a committed .NET shop with the skills in-house or nearby | The upgrade path spans the .NET Framework divide and prices out like a rebuild |
| Editors are productive in the backoffice and content ships without tickets | Editors are blocked on developers and the content model no longer fits the estate |
| The estate is a handful of sites the current model still serves well | Multi-brand, multi-market growth has outgrown what was modelled a decade ago |
| Heartcore or a front-end decouple solves your delivery problem | You want the rebuild to buy modern delivery, not just a supported version number |
The realistic paths off an old Umbraco
Stay, but modernize
Upgrade to a current LTS version, or move to Heartcore and decouple the front end. This keeps the .NET investment and editor familiarity, but be honest that a 7/8-to-current upgrade is a real project, not a patch, and budget it as one.
Re-platform to composable
Rebuild on a headless CMS and a modern framework. Since a 7/8 migration is a rebuild anyway, choose the destination deliberately. This is the biggest win on delivery speed and operating cost, and going headless is what consolidates a multi-market estate and gives editors autonomy from the developer queue. Content, URLs, and SEO have to be handled deliberately: content model mapping, a full redirect plan, and editorial retraining are part of the project.
Pricing, in plain terms
Umbraco CMS itself is open source and license-free: the cost lives in implementation, hosting, and upgrades, plus optional commercial add-ons. Umbraco Cloud and Heartcore are subscription products, with plans starting in the tens-to-hundreds of euros per month and scaling with environments, bandwidth, and support level. The real budget line for most estates is the upgrade treadmill: major-version jumps, custom package maintenance, and agency retainers. A “free” CMS several majors behind is often the most expensive item on the web budget.
The Bejamas take
Umbraco is the big European .NET CMS question, and our answer splits cleanly on version: a current LTS install is usually worth keeping, while an end-of-life 7/8 estate is usually better rebuilt onto a composable stack than force-upgraded, because the upgrade costs rebuild money without buying rebuild benefits. The .NET investment, the custom package surface, and your editors’ attachment to the Umbraco backoffice all move the answer. In an audit we map your Umbraco estate, model upgrade-versus-replatform honestly, and recommend the path. Then, if it’s a migration, we run it without losing your rankings.