Umbraco upgrades

Umbraco upgrades & what to expect

Why Umbraco is a great platform for you.

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Yoyo has been using Umbraco for 15 years. While we’ve built on more lightweight platforms like Wordpress, as well as heavy-duty enterprise systems like Sitecore and Optimisely, for most of our clients, Umbraco is the best solution. And here’s why:

Flexibility

The system is fully flexible, with no templates or an extended web of plug-ins. This means that your UX and design is built around you and your different audience needs. It is a more streamlined system meaning that it typically lasts longer, with better performance, than other systems.

Security

This is a key aspect for so many of our clients, and is one of the key differences against more vulnerable CMS. This is due to its Microsoft .NET stack and less of a reliance on 3rd party plug-ins, which can make a website more vulnerable. Umbraco takes security very seriously, with continuous testing, meaning it is one of the most secure content management systems out there, which is so important for our clients.

Intuitive content editing experience

One of the highlights of Umbraco is the ease of use for the content editors. Working with Yoyo, we will always design your Umbraco platform around your internal processes to make it as simple and intuitive as possible.

Permission setting

This allows you to control who can see and edit each section of your website. You can even set approval processes and workflows.

Multi-site and Multi-lingual capabilities

Umbraco does this with ease. Some of our clients need this from the outset, others require this later down the road as their organisation grows. An Umbraco platform means this can be developed simply and intuitively.

Seamless integrations

Due to its robust Microsoft.Net foundation, it integrates effectively with all third party platforms such as payment providers, CRMs, event management systems, email platforms, etc… Yoyo have extensive experience with dozens of different integrations, but given the API-first architecture and the supportive Umbraco community, there has never been an integration that we haven’t managed to implement.

SEO & marketing tools

Powerful and effective tools to support your wider marketing efforts. Tracking scripts can be easily added, and on-page SEO can be optimised directly in the platform.

Perfect size

Umbraco has the global reach, resources and a very strong community to deliver ongoing innovation and advancements. But it is not a global giant, which has the significant price tag to match. They are European based, highly accessible and customer-centric. And as Umbraco Gold Partners, we have closer access to make the changes and developments that our clients need.

Shared values & B Corp alignment

Umbraco is officially B Corp certified, an ethical commitment that directly mirrors our own at Yoyo. Partnering with Umbraco means choosing a platform that prioritises sustainability, high social standards, and responsible tech practices, helping you meet your own ESG and corporate responsibility goals.

Umbraco commercials

Umbraco as a CMS is free to use. It generates its revenue from products such as Umbraco Cloud, Umbraco Forms, Umbraco Heartcore and Umbraco Engage, and also from commercial engagements with agency partners. For instance, at Yoyo, we put all our developers through regular Umbraco training and certification, generating revenue for Umbraco.

Umbraco are a team of over 100 staff across the world, and they have a strong internal development team working on the core product every day. However, as it is an open source CMS, there is a close partnership between HQ and the Umbraco community, where people volunteer their time to feedback issues, build fixes or develop more sophisticated functionality that gets added to the marketplace for others to use. It’s a hugely collaborative, supportive and friendly network of designers and developers working together to continue to grow the platform.

This is what makes it incredibly special and powerful.

HQ are responsible for updating and upgrading the platform, and releasing new versions of the platform. Although the platform itself is free, keeping your website optimised, secure, and up to date requires an ongoing investment. A crucial part of this process involves regular platform upgrades. Below, we explain how these upgrades work and what they mean for your organisation.

Here are some of the key reasons to upgrade your website:

Security

Upgrades keep the website more secure and not vulnerable to attacks, by patching security vulnerabilities and improving the robustness of the platform.

Performance

With a cleaner back-office architecture and cleaner code in general, the site performance improves. This can improve the speed of the website, give a boost to your SEO, and even reduce your website’s carbon emissions.

New features & innovations

HQ takes customer feedback and develops new features with each upgrade. This could be improving the editing experience, the media library, designing a more intuitive interface, or improving the accessibility of the back office. One key area of development is around AI integration within the platform helping you in future with content editing and workflows.

Remaining modern & relevant

Design and development standards are constantly evolving and new versions aim to keep up with these changes. For instance, techniques for making your website more accessible, or more sustainable have evolved, so have marketing techniques including SEO & GEO.

Technical Health Check

An indirect benefit of an upgrade is to check that everything is working as it should, especially with third party integrations.

There are two types of upgrades: major versions shown by the first number, and minor versions shown by the second number.

For instance, as of August 2026, we are currently on version 17.5.3. You can see the view upcoming release dates here. The upgrades to Umbraco 13 and Umbraco 17 have been the most significant to date, and these will likely remain the most significant for a long time. This is because the entire back office has been rebuilt from the ground up. Why? To remove outdated underlying technology and replace it with modern, future-proof web standards. Because this heavy lifting is now done, the pathway for future upgrades will be much simpler and more straightforward, although major upgrades are planned every two years, and you can read more on the timings of these below.

Cadence of Upgrades

Umbraco run a predictable release cadence to ensure continuous development and is transparent about their EOL timeline, to make it easy for us and you to plan ahead.

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Umbraco is aligned with Microsoft .NET LTS.  When a new .NET Long-Term Supported (LTS) version is available, a new Umbraco Major LTS is released shortly after. The goal is to offer a platform that is supported and secure for as long as possible. The most recent LTS is Umbraco 17, supporting .NET 10 LTS.

Minor Releases

Umbraco release small and frequent updates and additions on a fixed cadence every 6 weeks (minor releases). The aim of these releases is to bring new features, functionality, and improvements.

We assess each release and decide upon which are the most relevant and valuable to implement. We research and we test before making any updates to ensure that it is stable and it is the right option for you, as a client.

Patch Releases

Umbraco work to fix bugs and release the fixes as soon as possible (patch releases). Patch versions are released as needed.

For minor and patch releases, there are two implementation processes. If you are on Umbraco Cloud, the update is easy and automatic. Although we would still do testing to ensure it has gone smoothly. If you host the website elsewhere, it is a little more involved but largely straightforward. Depending on the ongoing package you have with Yoyo, these are typically included when we are doing routine maintenance on the website and can take a few hours.

Major Releases

Starting with the release of Umbraco 9 (September 28th, 2021), Umbraco releases a new major two times per year. This means that they aim to only introduce “breaking changes” two times per year. They believe this is an appropriate cadence, as they want everyone to continually upgrade (and are aware that work may be required) but also need this ability in order to advance the software in the best possible way, without creating technical debt. As with the minor releases, we will always assess which is the best version for each of our client websites, and liaise with you directly on the plan and commercials to support more major upgrades.

Major LTS Upgrades

Long-term supported version upgrades happen every two years, meaning that previous versions reach a point where they are no longer supported by Umbraco. This has happened to the following LTS versions in the last few years as follows:

  • Umbraco 8 - End of Life (EOL): Feb 2025

  • Umbraco 13 - End of Life (EOL): December 2026

  • Umbraco 17 - The latest Long Term Support (LTS) version. End of Life (EOL): Nov 2028

  • Umbraco 21 - this will be the next LTS version, scheduled for release on 9th December 2027.

  • The upgrade to 21 - from 17 - will be necessary before 17 reaches end of life in November 2028.

For version upgrades, these need to be factored into your roadmap and carefully planned out. For some of our clients, for reasons of governance and IT regulations, the website needs to be on the latest version, well ahead of EOL, and for others (this includes most of our clients), the time and cost needs to be weighed up against the value gained. These vary in scope depending on the complexity of the website and the nature of the upgrade, but these can be 2-3 days, up to 20+ days.

A version reaching ‘EOL’ does not mean that the website stops functioning. It means that it is no longer supported by Umbraco, so there are no more fixes, security patches and they are no longer actively working on it. This presents an operational risk - it could continue for many years without issue, or there could be a security issue within the year. The risk is largely unknown.

For some of our clients, they upgrade ahead of time. For others, they upgrade within 6-12 months. And for a small number of clients, they have left their website on previous versions for many years without any significant issues. Yoyo can help debate this risk with you, but the risk is owned by our clients.

To find out more about Upgrades and the process: https://yoyodesign.com/services/umbraco/umbraco-upgrades/

Future roadmap of the platform

Umbraco HQ and the Umbraco community are constantly working on improving the platform, introducing new features and functionality, and innovating. It is an incredibly exciting time as the platform has grown considerably in recent years, backed by increasing investment and focus on development.

As things are always evolving, we are committed to keeping our clients up to date with the new features through our newsletters and of course, through your day to day contact with your project teams. We will also be hosting a drop in session for our clients with Umbraco, so you can ask direct questions and they can present their roadmap for the years ahead.

Let's talk

Umbraco resources.