Umbraco Predictions for the CMS landscape 2025
AI-Driven Content Evolution: Generation, Curation, and Personalization
In 2025, AI will revolutionize how content is created, managed, and personalized, marking a new era in digital experiences. CMS platforms will harness generative AI to automate high-quality content creation while ensuring ongoing, intelligent content management through human-in-the-loop curation.
Marketers and content creators will see their roles transform, as AI-driven insights identify content gaps, refine strategies based on performance analytics, and align outputs with audience-specific preferences and trends.
The next generation of CMS platforms will leverage AI to make personalized, real-time content feasible at scale—something that has previously been a challenge for resource-constrained teams. Predictive analytics will enable adaptive, automated content delivery that evolves with user behaviors and expectations, drastically reducing manual effort.
This transformation will empower organizations to create personalized journeys for vast audiences, ensuring relevance and resonance while achieving scalability and efficiency. By automating content creation, curation, and engagement, businesses can overcome barriers to personalization, unlocking new opportunities for meaningful user interactions and driving measurable business results.
“In general, I see the trend of dedicated CMS players, like Umbraco, staying focused on their core, composable CMS platform, providing the flexibility for more technologically mature organisations to select and integrate the right external AI tools for real-life use-cases.”
- Paul de Metter, Chief Technology Officer at Conclusion Experience
Demand for ROI-Centric Digital Platforms
As businesses increasingly scrutinize their digital investments, they look toward platforms, including content management systems, that demonstrate measurable and fast returns on investment (ROI).
Organizations are prioritizing solutions that deliver rapid time-to-value by enhancing user engagement, improving conversion rates, and streamlining processes through automation. This shift reflects a growing expectation for digital platforms to align more closely with business goals and prove their worth.
In 2025, continued pressure on marketers to demonstrate efficient use of tightening budgets will drive CMS vendors to emphasize how they can help deliver quantifiable ROI.
As an integrated digital marketing and development agency, we’ve seen first-hand the impact that a new website can have on bottom line revenue. With a rapidly evolving search landscape, an optimized website can quickly produce a lucrative ROI, with even small increases in conversion rate, speed, and user experience positively impacting results from all of your marketing efforts. Choosing a CMS with faster deployment and time-to-value will allow your organization to realize and multiply these results sooner.
- Kyle Brigham, Chief Strategy Officer at Marcel Digital
Security and Compliance in an Increasingly Risky Landscape
As cyber threats grow in sophistication and in numbers, CMS platforms must evolve to ensure robust security and compliance frameworks. In 2025 tools leveraging machine learning will preemptively address threats, offering businesses a proactive defense against breaches.
With emerging privacy laws in the US, driving the need for advanced data protection measures on digital platforms, alongside existing regulations including EU GDPR and the European Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) adopted by the Council of the European Union on October 10th, 2024, compliance will remain a core focus for digital platforms. Key features such as multi-factor authentication, end-to-end encryption, and secure cloud integrations will be standard expectations.
CMS vendors that can demonstrate strong security credentials and transparency, alongside seamless compliance support will gain a competitive edge in this increasingly cautious market.
In an era of escalating cyber threats and tightening privacy regulations, CMS platforms have no choice but to innovate. Leveraging machine learning for proactive threat detection will become table stakes, as will offering built-in compliance solutions tailored to frameworks like GDPR and the Cyber Resilience Act. The platforms that prioritise security as a business enabler—through features like multi-factor authentication, encryption, and seamless cloud integrations—will set the benchmark for trust and resilience in 2025 and beyond.
Zoja Antuchevic, Chief Executive Officer at Solution Lab
The “Race to the Middle”
In 2025, businesses will increasingly seek solutions that empower non-technical users to create and manage digital experiences with minimal developer input. These tools lower barriers to entry, enabling faster go-to-market strategies and greater flexibility in delivering content.
Simultaneously, we’ll witness the rise of “Universal CMS”, which aims to bridge the gap between user-friendly, all-in-one solutions and highly specialized, composable platforms. This “race to the middle” prioritizes scalability, flexibility, and accessibility, making CMS platforms versatile enough to serve both small businesses and enterprise-level needs. Vendors that offer intuitive no-code interfaces combined with the flexibility and scalability of composable architectures will be in charge of defining the next generation of CMS technology.
Marketers want to be empowered to move quickly, utilizing technology to amplify - rather than hinder - their efforts. Historically, marketers have been put into a box, oftentimes feeling the slow crawl towards technological obsolescence as they “put up” with a CMS that refuses to meet their needs. This is typically due to constraints around the technology or a developer-first approach to CMS implementation. The future will be about meeting both needs. Universal CMS will give developers even more flexibility, and provide marketers with a customized, intuitive user experience with the ability to scale.
- Alex Vilmur, Web Development Director at Marcel Digital
Orchestrating Composable Digital Ecosystems for Marketers and Users
The increasing complexity of digital ecosystems demands better orchestration between diverse tools and platforms. In 2025, the shift toward composable architectures—integrating CMS, PIM, CDP, marketing automation, and more—will be at the forefront. Organizations will favor flexible, API-driven solutions that allow them to choose best-of-breed components while avoiding vendor lock-in or cumbersome custom integrations.
However, the current focus on IT-driven benefits has often left marketers behind, with systems that are unintuitive and overly technical. Orchestration solutions, that elevate the CMS to serve as a central hub, will offer marketers a streamlined method to manage content and campaigns within a familiar workspace, and are more likely to be successfully applied within enterprises.
The next wave of orchestration will prioritize usability for non-technical users, ensuring that even in composable setups, the CMS provides a seamless editing and publishing experience. This evolution will empower businesses to leverage a flexible, scalable, and marketer-friendly tech stack, uniting IT and creative teams under one cohesive ecosystem. Platforms that deliver this balance will set the benchmark for the future of composable DXP solutions.
Having the flexibility to add or remove CMS features, in-line with current needs and available budget, means that marketers can focus more on marketing, and generating ROI, and less on technical headaches, usability issues, and wasted licence costs. Orchestrating all of this in a way that continues to be user-friendly and seamless to CMS platform administrators is golden, and the reason why composable architecture will continue to be the best choice for our clients’ digital experience platforms in 2025.
- Matt Sutherland, Head of Technology at True Digital
Curious to dive deeper into Umbraco's 2025 journey?
Join the Umbraco Winter Keynote on January 9th, 2025, for exclusive insights on Umbraco's journey in 2024 and what's ahead in 2025! Our CEO, Mats Persson, COO Javier Miranda, CTO Filip Bech-Larsen, and Director of Developer Relations Emma Burstow will walk you through everything Umbraco - from thrilling business updates to upcoming product launches and community highlights. Don't miss your chance to ask direct questions to this expert panel 👇