Is your website's foundation holding your mission back?

We need to talk about the platform at the heart of your digital work. That legacy CMS often built on outdated .NET Framework or a proprietary monolithic architecture that isn't just familiar; it's accruing technical debt that actively works against your goals.

Think about the last urgent campaign. Was your site a flexible partner, or did you hit walls like rigid page templates, slow editorial interfaces, and integration bottlenecks? When your team spends more time on workarounds than on engagement, "stability" becomes a risk. This is about more than inconvenience; it's about the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) - a cost measured in lost donations, staff frustration, and missed opportunities.

Let's break down the real technical constraints of your legacy system and how a modern, composable platform like Umbraco 17 (built on current .NET) is engineered to eliminate them.

The real cost: technical debt in action

Your license fee is the visible line item. The real cost is the cumulative weight of technical limitations.

Development bottlenecks & slowed velocity

Any simple campaign page shouldn't require a developer to edit files or configure a new controller. If your CMS lacks a modern block-based editor, your editors are locked out of the workflow. This creates a content backlog, slows marketing velocity, and means your dev team is maintaining templates instead of building new donor journeys.

Security liability & compliance overhead

A CMS on an end-of-life (EOL) framework (like .NET Framework 4.8) no longer receives security patches from Microsoft. Every integration becomes a potential vulnerability. Manually patching and hardening this environment is a continuous, expensive overhead that distracts from strategic work and puts donor data at risk.

Performance limitations & inflexible hosting

Monolithic legacy systems often struggle with modern, cloud-native hosting. They can't easily leverage global CDNs, auto-scaling, or efficient headless delivery. The result? You overpay for server capacity to handle sporadic traffic, and page load times suffer - directly impacting user experience and SEO.

Integration friction & data silos

If your CMS doesn't expose a clean, modern RESTful API, connecting it to your CRM (like Salesforce or Blackbaud) or payment processor requires complex, fragile custom code. Data becomes trapped, forcing manual exports and preventing a unified, real-time view of your supporters.

Umbraco 17: a technically superior foundation for impact

Migrating to Umbraco 17 isn't just an upgrade; it's a strategic re-platforming onto a modern, composable architecture. Here’s what that means technically for your charity:

A future-proof core

Umbraco 17 is an LTS (Long-Term Support) release built on .NET 10 / .NET 10+. This guarantees security updates and a stable foundation until 2028, giving you a clear, sustainable roadmap. It's a natively async, high-performance application framework.

True editorial empowerment with block editors

The Block Grid and Block List editors allow us to model your site as a set of reusable, brand-compliant components (donation CTAs, story cards, etc.). Once built, your marketing team can visually assemble complex, responsive pages without touching code or waiting for a dev, dramatically accelerating campaign launch times.

Cloud-native & performance-optimized

We deploy Umbraco 17 on platforms like Umbraco Cloud or Azure App Service. This enables automated deployments, geo-redundant hosting, and seamless integration with Azure Blob Storage and ImageSharp for automatic image optimization, responsive cropping, and efficient CDN delivery - all critical for Core Web Vitals and site speed.

API-first & integration-ready

Umbraco’s API layer is robust and extensible. We can use its clean content delivery APIs for headless front-ends or build seamless, event-driven integrations with your martech stack using .NET-based integration patterns, ensuring data flows smoothly between systems.

The technical outcome: measurable mission advantage

The result of this modern foundation isn't abstract; it's measured in tangible outcomes

Faster time-to-market

Launch landing pages in hours, not weeks.

Reduced operational risk

Automated security patches, resilient cloud hosting, and comprehensive observability via tools like Application Insights.

Higher developer efficiency

A clean codebase and modern tools allow our team to build new features faster, focusing on innovation over maintenance.

Superior user experience

Faster load times, better accessibility, and seamless journeys that increase engagement and conversion.

A strategic, phased approach to migration

We recommend a low-risk, high-value migration strategy that delivers ROI at every phase:

Technical audit & journey mapping

We'll analyze your current platform's code, integrations, and hosting. Together, we'll map 2-3 critical supporter journeys (e.g., Donate or Sign Up to Volunteer) to define our MVP

Modern component modelling

We'll rebuild your core page layouts and content types using Umbraco's block editors, prioritizing editorial freedom and brand consistency from day 1

Cloud foundation & CI/CD

We'll establish the new environment on Azure/Umbraco Cloud, configuring automated pipelines, CDN, media handling, and monitoring before any content is moved

Phased launch & iteration

We'll go live with the highest-impact journey first (e.g., the donation flow), validate performance, gather feedback, and then iteratively expand. This minimizes risk and proves value early

Ready to discuss the technical blueprint for a faster, more secure, and more empowering digital platform?

Let's start with a technical discovery session. We can audit 1 key pain point, outline a realistic migration path, and provide a clear comparison to show how investing in a modern foundation like Umbraco 17 frees up resources for your mission.

Drop us an email and lets book your tech audit today.