Umbraco vs. Kentico: the core metrics that define long-term value

When evaluating digital experience platforms (DXPs), the choice often boils down to a fundamental philosophical difference. It is a battle between Kentico’s "integrated, licensed suite" versus Umbraco’s "modular, open-source composable platform."

Kentico is a strong contender. It focuses on delivering an all-in-one solution for content, marketing, and commerce. However, we believe a truly valuable digital investment must deliver agility, predictable costs, and sustained innovation. By focusing on core business metrics, the choice becomes clear.

Maximizing agility: the time-to-market advantage

Agility in a DXP is defined by how quickly your team can build, launch, and iterate.

Kentico's strategy involves a dual product track, offering Xperience for digital marketing and Kontent.ai for headless content. To be honest, this often creates confusion around pricing, features, and integration approaches for agencies and clients alike. Furthermore, we still see feature gaps in Xperience—like a lack of advanced forms or back-office localization—which often requires us to build workarounds.

The Umbraco metric: modern, lightweight foundation

Umbraco, in contrast, offers a modern, lightweight foundation built on .NET Core. It provides a modular platform that combines traditional CMS and headless capabilities in 1 unified place.

This focus on a unified architecture allows us to accelerate implementation. Umbraco is built to be agile and future-proof. As 1 CEO noted after migrating: "It gave our team the flexibility to scale, adapt, and deliver personalized digital experiences without the complexity we faced before." This modularity means we can integrate best-of-breed solutions today and easily adapt to tomorrow’s technologies without painful platform migrations.

Minimizing friction: the true total cost of ownership (TCO) difference

Predictability is paramount. The difference between the platforms’ pricing models is arguably the most critical factor in your ROI.

Kentico operates on a license-based pricing model that scales with additional features. This system can lead to a rapid cost increase; multi-site implementations, headless channels, and extra marketing tools incur added costs, making larger deployments expensive to maintain. Users on older versions also face costly replatforming and nearly doubled license fees for migrations.

The Umbraco metric: cost transparency and faster ROI

Umbraco champions cost transparency by building upon a completely open-source core without license fees.

We love that they offer clear, publicly available pricing for SaaS, support, and add-ons. This model ensures clear ownership and stability while providing predictable investment. Our structure eliminates mandatory license fees, ensuring your budget goes into building exceptional experiences rather than paying for platform overhead. By avoiding tiered licensing, Umbraco's model works for both small and enterprise projects.

Mitigating risk: stability, innovation, and ecosystem power

Long-term stability and continuous innovation are hallmarks of a safe investment.

Kentico’s community is small and controlled, relying on official releases and certified partners. This vendor-driven roadmap means innovation is slower, resulting in fewer third-party packages and less collaborative problem-solving compared to open-source platforms. While Kentico has a strong quality of support rating on G2, its ecosystem is simply less open.

The Umbraco metric: community and professional ecosystem power

Umbraco is driven by a vibrant global community of 250,000+ developers. This power accelerates innovation, knowledge sharing, and rapid improvements—far more open than a vendor-driven roadmap.

The platform is backed by Umbraco HQ, providing stability, transparency, and flexible service options for professional support. This combination of community-driven innovation and HQ-backed stability mitigates the long-term risk associated with closed ecosystems.

The Umbraco advantage: the user experience differentiator

Umbraco consistently outperforms Kentico where it matters most for productivity: the user experience.

While Kentico Xperience boasts a modern backoffice UI, Umbraco is still rated higher by G2 users for overall usability:

• Ease of use: Umbraco 8.8 vs Kentico 8.4

• Ease of setup: Umbraco 8.6 vs Kentico 7.8

• Ease of admin: Umbraco 8.9 vs Kentico 8.4

This confirms Umbraco's clean, intuitive design allows content teams to work efficiently and independently.

Ready to invest in value, not overhead?

The choice is not between power and features—both platforms are capable—but between cost transparency and platform flexibility.

Umbraco delivers:

• Open and flexible architecture gives you full control to build exactly what you need without being locked into a rigid structure

• Cost transparency means an open-source core avoids tiered licensing, enabling predictable and fast ROI

• Community and ecosystem power ensures continuous innovation backed by a global, vibrant community

Stop paying for platform overhead and start investing in your digital experience. Contact us today to learn how our Umbraco partnership can unlock cost-effective growth for your business.