Umbraco is an open-source .NET CMS, developed by Umbraco HQ with its community for more than 20 years. It runs as a standard ASP.NET Core application, so .NET teams can use the practices they already know and add capabilities as they grow.
Choosing a CMS isn't only about what it can do today. It's about whether it keeps working as your digital ambitions change. For teams in the Microsoft and .NET ecosystem, Umbraco is a familiar foundation that connects to the systems already in your stack, supports traditional, headless, or hybrid setups, and lets you add capabilities as you need them.
Umbraco runs as a standard ASP.NET Core web application. Developers work with the patterns they already know, such as dependency injection, MVC and Razor views, and can add their own routes, database tables, services and C# code. You keep control over your code, integrations, and long-term platform direction, instead of learning a proprietary way of building.
Umbraco uses Microsoft's own components wherever they exist, so your platform benefits directly from Microsoft's investment in .NET. For example, since version 15, Umbraco has used Microsoft's HybridCache instead of its own content cache, making it simpler to scale with a distributed cache such as Redis.
"What often surprises experienced .NET developers is how familiar Umbraco feels. The language, patterns, and way of building are already familiar, while they can still work with a CMS that keeps pace with .NET."
A CMS can become difficult to work with when integrations are hard to maintain, releases depend on workarounds, or the platform dictates too much of the wider architecture. Umbraco gives .NET teams a flexible CMS foundation they can integrate, extend, and maintain using familiar tools and patterns.
As digital requirements grow, organizations may need to support more content, integrations, sites, markets, languages, and teams. Umbraco provides a .NET foundation that can be extended as those requirements become more complex, without requiring the CMS to define the rest of your technology architecture. Because Umbraco uses Microsoft's HybridCache, a well-built site serves content from memory and can add a distributed cache, such as Redis, as traffic grows.
Connect your CMS with CRM, PIM, commerce, analytics, search, personalization, and custom business systems rather than being restricted to one vendor ecosystem. Because Umbraco is built on .NET and designed to be extensible, development teams can integrate the CMS with existing business systems and services using .NET libraries and APIs, instead of relying solely on functionality provided by the CMS vendor. Umbraco can also be extended through Umbraco's own add-on products and its package ecosystem, allowing teams to add capabilities as they need rather than making every capability part of the core CMS.
Umbraco supports organizations with complex integrations, multiple sites or markets, editorial governance, and long-term operating needs. Teams can combine the open-source CMS with Umbraco Cloud (hosted on Microsoft Azure), professional support, enterprise services, and the delivery partner that fits their needs.
Organizations moving away from complex enterprise CMS or DXP platforms may want to reduce platform complexity and total cost of ownership without giving up the .NET ecosystem their teams already know. With Umbraco, organizations can start with the open-source .NET CMS and add the capabilities they need through Umbraco products, integrations, and community packages. This means teams can focus on the functionality they need rather than adopting and learning an entire suite by default. Your developers only learn what the project actually needs.
Umbraco CMS has been open source for more than 20 years and is released under the MIT license. It is developed in public on GitHub, where anyone can read the code and follow issues. Major changes go through a public RFC process, and a community team reviews pull requests. Organizations that need more can add Umbraco Cloud, professional support, and enterprise services.
"With open source, if you hit a bug, you can fix it yourself, and your name is on the contributors list in the next release. Everything happens in public, so people can see how we've built something and tell us if we got it wrong. That's what builds real loyalty."
Umbraco's developers have worked with Microsoft's ASP.NET Core team on framework changes affecting the wider .NET ecosystem. Umbraco builds on .NET previews, moves to each new .NET version in a major release, and ships shortly after Microsoft. For example, Umbraco 15 was released in November 2024, just two days after the .NET 9 release.
See Umbraco's release schedule"Umbraco's release cadence is aligned with the .NET release cadence, so developers can work with the latest .NET capabilities in Umbraco as they become available"
Umbraco's Lotte Pitcher, Head of Developer Relations, and Emma Potter, VP of Developer Relations, who are both also Microsoft MVPs, have presented at Microsoft's .NET Conf in 2024 and 2025.
Releasing HybridCache into the Wild with Umbraco
.NET Conf 2024, Emma Potter and Lotte Pitcher
Emma and Lotte show how Umbraco 15 replaced its own content cache with Microsoft's new HybridCache from .NET 9. The talk includes a live demo of adding a Redis or SQL Server distributed cache with a few lines of standard .NET code. Umbraco 15 was launched live during the session.
From Frameworks to Friendliness: Building Welcoming Open Source in .NET
.NET Conf 2025, Emma Potter and Lotte Pitcher
Emma and Lotte share what 20 years of running Umbraco as an open-source .NET project has taught them about stability, community and governance. They cover how Umbraco follows standard ASP.NET Core conventions, why a predictable release cadence works like a contract with users, and how the community helped Umbraco move to .NET Core.
Moving from Sitecore to an open-source .NET CMS
Thames Water moved from Sitecore to headless Umbraco on Umbraco Cloud, built with .NET, React and Next.js. It serves 16 million customers and stays available during traffic spikes.
.NET & Azure for critical digital infrastructure
Bristol Airport runs Umbraco on .NET and Microsoft Azure. As Critical National Infrastructure, it needed a platform built with security and resilience as key requirements.
Moving on from a legacy .NET CMS
Agrarmarkt Austria replaced an outdated, costly Kentico CMS with Umbraco, creating a new foundation for three websites. 99.9% of the content was migrated automatically.
Umbraco is a strong fit if your team already works with .NET or a Microsoft stack, and you need a CMS that integrates with your existing systems. It suits organizations outgrowing a rigid or page-builder-heavy CMS, or moving off a complex enterprise CMS or DXP without leaving .NET. And it fits teams who value open source but still need professional support.
Yes. Umbraco CMS is an open-source content management system built on Microsoft .NET and ASP.NET Core, and written in C#. It runs as a standard ASP.NET Core web application. It allows .NET development teams to build, customize, extend, and integrate the CMS using technologies and skills from the .NET ecosystem. Experienced .NET developers can work with familiar .NET standards and development patterns, reducing the need to learn CMS-specific ways of building before getting started.
The current version of Umbraco CMS requires .NET 10 or later. Umbraco's long-term support (LTS) releases are aligned with .NET's LTS releases.
A .NET CMS can be a strong fit for organizations already using Microsoft technologies or employing .NET developers. It allows the CMS to fit more naturally into an existing .NET technology stack and enables development teams to use familiar skills, tools, and development practices. .NET itself is open source and backed by Microsoft, with a yearly release cycle and long-term support versions. For Umbraco specifically, its release cadence is aligned with .NET, helping the CMS stay current as new .NET versions and capabilities are released.
Umbraco may need further assessment if you want a highly prescriptive, out-of-the-box platform with minimal custom development, or if you don't have .NET expertise in-house or through a partner.
Umbraco's release schedule is aligned with .NET's. Umbraco builds and tests on .NET previews and release candidates, and the Umbraco major release that moves to a new .NET version ships shortly after Microsoft's release. For example, Umbraco 15 was released two days after .NET 9.
Yes. Umbraco CMS is open source under the MIT license and built on .NET. Its source code, issue tracker, and feature discussions are public on GitHub. Organizations can use and extend the open-source CMS while adding commercial services such as Umbraco Cloud, professional support, and enterprise services when required. The open-source model also supports an ecosystem of integrations and packages built by Umbraco and its developer community, allowing organizations to extend the CMS with additional capabilities.
Yes. Organizations have migrated to Umbraco from other .NET CMS platforms; for example, Thames Water migrated from Sitecore to Umbraco and Agrarmarkt Austria from Kentico to Umbraco. The migration approach depends on the existing architecture, content model, integrations, and business requirements.
New to Umbraco as a .NET developer?
Install Umbraco with the .NET CLI and have a site running in minutes.Comparing platforms?
See how Umbraco compares with Sitecore, Optimizely, Kentico, and other enterprise CMS platforms.Planning a migration?
Learn how organizations move from another CMS to Umbraco.