When should you choose an Umbraco website?

You usually choose a CMS for years to come. If the system doesn't fit your organization, you often only notice once your website needs to grow with you. This article explains when an Umbraco website is the right fit, when another system works better, and what to look for when you decide.

A marketing manager wants to launch a campaign page with a form that sends leads straight into the CRM. The current CMS has no block for that, and there's no connection to the CRM. Every change goes through a ticket to the developer, so the campaign launches two weeks later than planned.

Delays like this rarely come from one bad decision. More often, the CMS simply no longer fits what the organization needs from its website.

What is Umbraco?

Umbraco is an open source CMS, a content management system you use to manage what's on your website. It runs on Microsoft .NET and was created in Denmark. The software itself is free; you pay for building, hosting, and maintaining your website.

Umbraco doesn't come with ready-made themes. A developer builds the website to your specifications and sets up the editing environment with the pages and content blocks your organization needs. Your editors then work in an environment that matches how they work, with fields they understand.

When is an Umbraco website a good fit for your organization?

Umbraco works well for organizations whose website needs to do more than display information. If you recognize one or more of the situations below, Umbraco deserves a serious look.

Your website needs to work with other systems

Leads come in through a form, and a colleague retypes them into the CRM by hand. Product information lives in an ERP system and is maintained a second time on the website. That costs hours every week and leads to mistakes.

With Umbraco, we build integrations through an API, a standard way for systems to exchange data. Your website pulls data from your other systems or sends it back, with no retyping. Because the code is custom, you don't depend on whatever plugins happen to be available.

Your editors want to do the work themselves

Every new page means a ticket to the developer. Editing text feels risky because the layout might break. Your marketing team waits while the campaign is already running.

In Umbraco, we set up the editing environment with content blocks in your brand style. Editors build pages with those blocks, and the design stays intact. You can also manage multilingual websites from a single environment.

You serve several audiences or need a complex structure

A website for clients, partners, and job applicants at once quickly turns into a maze in a standard template. Visitors can't find what they need and leave.

Umbraco doesn't force a fixed page structure on you. We design the structure around your audiences and build features like a client portal, filters, or personalized content to fit. Personalization is added through custom development or an extension, since the CMS doesn't include it out of the box.

Security and continuity matter

A CMS running plugins from many different vendors is hard to keep secure. A single plugin that stops receiving updates can open a vulnerability in a website that is otherwise in good shape.

Umbraco works with scheduled releases and LTS versions, long-term support releases that receive three years of support under Umbraco's release policy. Because it's open source, developers around the world review the code. A custom Umbraco website needs few third-party extensions, so there are fewer parts that can become outdated.

When is Umbraco not the right choice?

Umbraco requires a developer, both to build the site and to maintain it. If you have a small website with a few pages that rarely change, you're paying for flexibility you won't use.

In these situations, a simpler system is often a better fit:

• You run a small, local business with a website of just a handful of pages.
• A standard template covers everything you need.
• You want to build and design the website yourself, without a developer.
• You don't have a budget for ongoing maintenance and updates.

Still unsure? Look a few years ahead. If you expect integrations, multiple languages, or a client portal, factor that into your CMS choice now.

Why True People works with Umbraco

We see it regularly with organizations that come to us: the website was once set up quickly in an off-the-shelf package, then an integration was added, then a second language, then a forms plugin that stopped getting updates a year later, and at some point nobody dares to run an update anymore. Rebuilding a website like that takes more work than setting it up properly from the start.

We focus on complex challenges for organizations that need a custom website, web portal, or data solution. Umbraco gives us room to do that: we write the code ourselves and build only what your organization actually uses. As an Umbraco Gold Partner, we've worked with the platform for years and keep your website current with new versions.

We work in three phases: Discover, Build, and Grow. In Discover, we map out what your organization needs. In Build, we develop the website and its integrations. In Grow, we keep improving it together. You have one dedicated point of contact who knows your project inside and out.