Umbraco vs Kentico: Why More Enterprises Are Making the Switch

With Kentico Xperience 13 facing end-of-support and a string of critical security issues, organisations are reassessing their CMS. For many, Umbraco is the obvious answer.

Key points:

•       Kentico Xperience 13 reaches end-of-support on 31 December 2026, with critical security vulnerabilities added to CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog in October 2025.

•       Umbraco is the most widely deployed open-source .NET CMS, powering over 800,000 active installations and supported by a global community of more than 230,000 developers.

•       Umbraco delivers up to 3x faster speed-to-live and significantly lower total cost of ownership versus comparable enterprise CMS platforms.

•       Umbraco’s composable, open-source architecture removes vendor lock-in and offers near-unlimited customisation.

•       Embrace is an Umbraco Platinum Partner with deep enterprise migration experience across financial services, professional services and regulated industries.

The Kentico to Umbraco question

The Umbraco vs Kentico debate has taken on new weight in 2026. Kentico Xperience 13 customers have been told, in clear terms, that they need to act. Critical security vulnerabilities, end-of-support deadlines, and a strategic shift toward Kentico’s SaaS-first platform are pushing thousands of organisations to reassess what their CMS should actually do for them.

For many, the bigger question now is where to migrate to. And for a growing number of enterprises, particularly those running .NET stacks, Umbraco is emerging as the obvious answer.

The Kentico crossroads

Kentico Xperience 13 reaches end-of-support on 31 December 2026. After that date, no further patches, hotfixes or security updates will be issued. The urgency has been compounded by two critical pre-authentication vulnerabilities disclosed in 2025, CVE-2025-2746 and CVE-2025-2747, both rated 9.8 on the CVSS scale. CISA added them to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog in October 2025, with a federal patching deadline shortly after.

The strategic message from Kentico is clear: customers should migrate to Xperience by Kentico, the new SaaS-first platform. For some organisations that path makes sense. For others, particularly those who valued Kentico’s flexibility and on-premise control, the move to a managed SaaS model with monthly forced updates feels like a step away from the autonomy they originally bought into.

So if you’re rebuilding your CMS anyway, it’s worth asking the bigger question: is this still the best platform for your sector?

Why Umbraco is the natural migration path

Umbraco runs on .NET, which means existing investment in your team’s skills, your infrastructure and your integrations carries across with minimal friction. Migration becomes an upgrade in flexibility, cost-efficiency and editorial experience rather than a wholesale technology pivot.

Where Kentico operates as a licensed, monolithic DXP, Umbraco is open-source and composable. Its core is free, the source code is fully accessible, and the platform supports both traditional and headless deployments. For enterprises with mature digital teams, that combination delivers a CMS that adapts to the business, instead of one the business has to keep adapting around.

The scale of the ecosystem matters too. Umbraco sits among the most widely deployed enterprise CMS platforms in the .NET world, with over 800,000 active installations and 230,000+ developers globally. The partner network, longevity and open contribution model make it a strategically safer long-term bet for organisations that want to avoid vendor lock-in.

Umbraco vs Kentico: the comparison

The business case for Umbraco

The numbers speak loudly. Umbraco’s own benchmarking shows projects going live up to three times faster than comparable enterprise CMS platforms, with up to 50% lower total cost of ownership over a five-year period. For finance, professional services and regulated sectors where time-to-market and compliance both matter, that’s a meaningful advantage.

The business case extends beyond the spreadsheet. A composable CMS gives marketing, brand and digital teams the autonomy to evolve their digital experience without being held hostage by quarterly release cycles or licensing renegotiations. It supports the kind of agility modern brands need to test, learn and adapt at pace.

For regulated industries, Umbraco’s open-source codebase is also a security asset. Vulnerabilities are visible, patchable and community-vetted in the open, rather than buried inside proprietary code that requires waiting on a vendor’s release schedule.

Migrating from Kentico to Umbraco

A well-planned Kentico to Umbraco migration typically takes between three and six months for medium-sized projects, and six to twelve months for larger, more customised builds. The work breaks down into content modelling, data migration, design and template rebuild, integration mapping, and SEO preservation.

Done well, a migration is also an opportunity. Most organisations come out the other side with a leaner content model, a faster site, stronger governance, and a digital experience that’s fit for the next decade rather than just patched up for the next renewal.

Why Embrace

Embrace is an Umbraco Platinum Partner. We’ve delivered enterprise Umbraco builds for some of the most demanding organisations in financial services, professional services and regulated sectors, including Edmond de Rothschild, Sarasin & Partners, Columbia Threadneedle Investments, Trivium Packaging and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner.

Migrations are part of what we do, and we approach them with the same rigour we’d apply to any enterprise build: secure, scalable and designed to last.

The smarter move

The Kentico upgrade question is forcing organisations to make a decision they had probably been postponing anyway. For many, it’s the right time to step back and ask whether their CMS is genuinely built for the next decade or just patched up for the next renewal. Umbraco offers a compelling answer: open, flexible, .NET-native, cost-efficient, and proven at enterprise scale.

If you’re weighing up the move from Kentico to Umbraco, we’d be happy to help you think it through. Visit our Umbraco Platinum Partner page to learn more, or get in touch.