What is an Umbraco retainer and why do businesses need one?
An Umbraco retainer is a flexible monthly support agreement that gives your business priority access to a certified Umbraco developer for ongoing maintenance, security patching, performance monitoring, and ad-hoc development work. Rather than hiring an in-house .NET developer, which costs upwards of GBP 45,000-65,000 per year according to Glassdoor UK salary data, a retainer gives you senior-level expertise on demand at a fraction of the cost.
Simon Antony Limited offers retainer plans starting from just a few hours per month, scaling up to dedicated multi-day support for larger organisations. Our retainer clients include the British Red Cross, specialist recruitment firms, and marine science organisations. Most have been with us for over three years, our longest retainer relationship spans over a decade.
Every retainer includes guaranteed priority response times, proactive security monitoring, and direct access to Simon Steed, the Umbraco Certified Master who leads all technical work.
What makes Simon Antony's retainer support different?
What makes Simon Antony's retainer support different?
Most agencies assign retainer work to junior developers rotating between client accounts. At Simon Antony, your retainer is handled by the same senior developer who understands your codebase, your business logic, and your deployment pipeline. There's no ticket queue, no account manager relay, you contact us directly and get a response the same working day.
We currently support clients running Umbraco versions from v8 through to v17 LTS, including legacy .NET Framework sites that other agencies won't touch. Our retainer work covers everything from routine CMS content updates and security patching to complex feature development, third-party API integrations, and full version upgrades.
According to Umbraco's own lifecycle policy, version 8 reaches end of extended support in 2025, and version 10 LTS in 2025, Umbraco 13 LTS ends in December 2026. If your site is approaching end-of-life, our retainer plans include upgrade planning and migration at no additional consultancy fee.
What does an Umbraco retainer include?
Security patching and version updates — We monitor Umbraco security advisories and apply patches within 48 hours of release. This includes .NET runtime updates, NuGet dependency upgrades, and Cloudflare WAF rule adjustments. In 2025 alone, Umbraco issued 4 critical security patches that required immediate attention.
Performance monitoring and optimisation — Monthly Core Web Vitals checks against Google's thresholds (LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1). We identify and fix performance regressions before they affect your search rankings or user experience.
Content support and troubleshooting — From adding new page types and content blocks to resolving editor workflow issues, we handle the CMS-level work so your marketing team can focus on content creation.
Backup, recovery, and disaster planning — Automated daily backups with tested recovery procedures. We maintain documented runbooks for every retainer client so recovery is predictable, not improvised.
Do you provide IT consultancy beyond Umbraco?
Yes. Our technical background extends beyond CMS development into infrastructure, database administration, and systems architecture. Simon Steed spent over a decade in IT leadership roles, including Head of IT at Yes Telecom (now part of Vodafone), before founding Simon Antony Limited in 2008.
Our consultancy services include SQL Server performance tuning, Azure infrastructure reviews, Cloudflare configuration and security hardening, and strategic technology roadmapping. We regularly audit database query performance, identifying slow-running queries and indexing opportunities that can reduce page load times by 50% or more.
For organisations running legacy systems alongside modern platforms, we provide integration consultancy, connecting Classic ASP applications, older .NET Framework services, and third-party APIs with current Umbraco installations. This bridge approach extends the life of existing investments while planning a staged migration to modern platforms.
Can you support legacy Classic ASP and older .NET applications?
Many businesses still depend on Classic ASP or older .NET Framework applications that were built 10-20 years ago. These systems often run critical business processes, customer portals, internal tools, reporting dashboards, and can't simply be switched off overnight. Finding developers willing to work on Classic ASP in 2026 is increasingly difficult.
We maintain and support legacy systems while planning and executing staged migrations to modern platforms. Our approach prioritises business continuity: we keep your existing system running securely while building the replacement in parallel, then migrate data and switch over with minimal disruption.
Our legacy support covers security hardening (patching known IIS and ASP vulnerabilities), performance optimisation, database migration from Access or older SQL Server versions to current platforms, and integration with modern APIs and services. We've successfully migrated Classic ASP applications to Umbraco on .NET Core with zero data loss.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Get answers to some of the most common questions about our services, expertise, and how we can help with your digital projects.
Let’s Talk About Your Umbraco Support Needs
Get in touch today to discuss a flexible retainer that keeps your Umbraco site performing at its best.
Get in touch today!
Contact us
- Umbraco support, retainers, maintenance
- IT consultancy, database management
- Classic ASP support, custom software development
