Why it's time to move to Umbraco

Over 750,000 websites run on Umbraco. One new professional Umbraco site launches every hour, somewhere in the world. The Council of the European Union runs on it. So does Carlsberg. And yet, when we speak to prospective clients who've been on WordPress or Sitecore for years, the response is often the same:

"We've heard of it, but we didn't really consider it."

This post is here to change that. We'll look honestly at what the major alternatives get wrong — and why Umbraco consistently outperforms them on the metrics that actually matter to the people who use CMS platforms every day.

The case for switching

The CMS market has splintered. On one side you have locked-down enterprise suites that charge six figures before you've written a line of code. On the other, there's the WordPress ecosystem — free to start, expensive to maintain, and increasingly uncertain thanks to ongoing governance disputes between Automattic and the wider community.

Umbraco sits in a different position entirely. It's a commercial open-source platform — MIT licensed, no per-seat fees, no forced SaaS model — backed by a company (Umbraco HQ) with a clear product roadmap and a track record of shipping. You get the community energy and flexibility of open source, with the accountability and support you'd expect from a commercial vendor.

That combination is rare, and it's why the platform keeps winning on independent review sites like G2, where it consistently outscores proprietary competitors on ease of use, ease of setup, and product direction.

Coming from WordPress

WordPress powers 43% of the web, which tells you something about its reach — but not necessarily about its suitability for your project. If you've been running WordPress for a few years, you already know the friction: a plugin for this, a plugin for that, each one a potential compatibility issue or security vulnerability waiting to surface at the worst possible moment.

The deeper problem is governance. Automattic reportedly cut its open-source contributions from around 3,500 hours per week to just 45 hours. The line between community project and corporate product has blurred significantly, and the disputes between key players have introduced real uncertainty about the platform's direction.

Umbraco takes a fundamentally different approach to extensibility. Rather than a 50,000-plugin ecosystem where quality varies wildly, Umbraco's architecture encourages custom development within the platform itself — so your codebase stays clean, your integrations are deliberate, and you're not relying on a third-party developer you've never met to keep their plugin updated.

On G2, Umbraco scores 8.8 for ease of use against WordPress's 8.3. The bigger gap appears in admin (8.9 vs 8.5) and product direction (8.9 vs 8.0) — people who use Umbraco believe in where it's going.

Fewer moving parts mean fewer vulnerabilities, easier maintenance, and a faster, more reliable website experience.

Coming from Sitecore

Sitecore is a capable platform — it's also one that demands a substantial upfront commitment and locks you into its ecosystem in ways that become increasingly painful as requirements change. Implementation timelines are long, the pricing model is opaque (there's no public price list), and upgrades are a significant undertaking. Sitecore XP reaches end of life in 2027, and the recommended migration path to XM Cloud is, in practice, a full rebuild.

One client migration — ArcelorMittal, via Radley Yeldar — described the move to Umbraco as delivering "a modern, future-proofed website with rich content that handles peak loads and grows with the business."

The practical advantages against Sitecore:

• Faster release cycles — average go-live of 4 months

• Full source code access with no restriction on customisation

• Transparent pricing — you know what you're paying and why

• Smooth, documented upgrades rather than forced rebuilds

• An inclusive partner programme accessible to agencies of all sizes

On G2, Umbraco scores 8.6 for ease of setup versus Sitecore's 6.1.

Coming from Drupal

Drupal occupies a similar space to Umbraco — open-source, enterprise-proven, developer-led — so the comparison is more nuanced. Drupal is genuinely powerful for complex, data-intensive builds. The issue is that this power comes with a specialist dependency that limits your options and inflates your costs.

Drupal's community is ageing, with fewer new contributors entering the ecosystem. Its governance is fragmented — multiple stakeholders shaping a roadmap without a single point of accountability — and there's no vendor-backed support by default.

Umbraco gives you comparable enterprise capability — multi-site, multilingual, complex workflows, granular permissions — but with a cleaner architecture, a faster learning curve, and official support available directly from Umbraco HQ. The editor experience is also considerably better out of the box.

G2: Umbraco 8.8 ease of use vs Drupal 6.8. Product direction: 8.9 vs 6.7.

Coming from Webflow

Webflow is a different kind of platform, and it's worth being honest about what it does well. For visually driven marketing sites and design-led workflows, Webflow is genuinely excellent. The problem is when you outgrow it.

Headless setups, complex integrations, multi-site architectures, bespoke backend logic — Webflow's ceiling appears quickly. And because it's SaaS-only with all data hosted in the US, GDPR compliance for EU-based organisations can become a genuine blocker.

Webflow's pricing also scales poorly. What looks affordable at €20–30 per month for a simple site multiplies quickly once you add CMS seats, e-commerce, localisation, or traffic-based tiers.

Umbraco Cloud gives you managed hosting, automatic upgrades, and deployment pipelines without locking your data in a jurisdiction that creates compliance headaches.

Start in a structured and future-proof way. When you later need features, integrations, or scaling, there's no need to migrate — you can grow directly, without hitting platform limits.

Optimizely, Kentico and Pimcore

Optimizely — a powerful DXP assembled largely through acquisitions, which means the platform can feel disjointed under the surface. No meaningful mid-market entry point and opaque pricing. One migration from Optimizely to Umbraco — East Capital Group — reportedly reduced licensing and hosting costs by 65%. On G2, Optimizely users report ROI in an average of 27 months. Umbraco users report ROI in 13.

Kentico — solid mid-market CMS, but in transition. The pivot from Kentico 13 to Xperience by Kentico has caused significant friction for existing customers, with limited migration tooling and a feature set that still has gaps. Former Kentico partners are switching to Umbraco in meaningful numbers, citing better pricing, flexibility, and a more accessible partner programme.

Pimcore — strong for data-heavy, PIM-led builds but genuinely overengineered for most web projects. Open-core licensing costs kick in for companies with revenue above €5M per year. If you need a CMS first and PIM second, Umbraco with a best-of-breed PIM integration will almost always give you a better outcome with lower total cost of ownership.

What the G2 data says

Independent peer review data is the most reliable signal we have when comparing CMS platforms. G2 aggregates thousands of verified reviews, and the pattern across every Umbraco comparison is consistent.

Umbraco leads or matches on every metric. The product direction score is perhaps the most telling — 8.9 puts it level with Webflow and ahead of every other competitor in this comparison.

Ready to make the move?

A migration isn't a trivial exercise, but it's also not as daunting as it might appear. The right approach depends heavily on where you're starting from — a WordPress multisite with 200 pages is a very different project to a Sitecore XP deployment with custom personalisation workflows.

As an Umbraco Silver Partner, we've handled migrations from most of the platforms mentioned here. We can assess your current setup, identify the risks and opportunities, and deliver a structured plan that keeps disruption minimal.

If you're paying licensing fees you resent, managing plugin updates you can't control, or stuck on a platform that can't grow with you — it's worth a conversation.