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What is Umbraco CMS?

Umbraco is an open-source .NET CMS with more than 500,000 active installs worldwide. It is known and loved for its intuitive editing experience, freedom for developers, and seamless integrations.

The open-source CMS is backed by a commercial company, Umbraco HQ, that offers direct support to give you a stable and high-performing platform.

Besides the open-source version, Umbraco is available as two different SaaS solutions:
Umbraco Cloud (CMS)
Umbraco Heartcore (Headless CMS)

Who Uses Umbraco CMS?

Umbraco fits businesses that want to develop top-of-the-class tech solutions, where developer flexibility and seamless integrations without vendor lock-in are the highest priorities.

Umbraco CMS Software - Umbraco Interface
Umbraco CMS Software - Side-by-side editing
Umbraco CMS Software - Integrated Apps

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Reviews of Umbraco CMS

Average score

Overall
4.1
Ease of Use
4.2
Customer Service
4.0
Features
4.1
Value for Money
4.5

Reviews by company size (employees)

  • <50
  • 51-200
  • 201-1,000
  • >1,001

Find reviews by score

5
33%
4
57%
3
5%
1
5%
Ali
Ali
Information Technology Adviser in Azerbaijan
Verified LinkedIn User
Information Technology & Services, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Powerful .NET-based CMS with the possibility of using the cloud or your servers

4.0 4 years ago

Comments: We have been using this CMS for many years and have used it for many of our clients' projects. There is also a two-week trial version that I think you should try and see how simple it is. It's Powerful .NET-based CMS with the possibility of using the cloud or installing on a local or custom web hosting server.

Pros:

It is completely open-source, dot NET-based, and works very fast and smooth. I like the form builder section which is very simple and various forms can be easily created and used. The file and image management section is also very simple. Files and images can be easily categorized and named in custom folders. Also, it has a professional community and support team.

Cons:

The online Photo editor is not professional enough and must upgrade. CMS has good facilities and performance on the windows servers and Microsoft Azure, but Umbraco developers must think about the Linux version because most projects are managed by Linux servers.

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Information Technology & Services, 10,000+ Employees
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Best CMS for .NET Developers

5.0 3 years ago

Comments: I love using Umbraco CMS to build customer's and my personal websites. Umbraco is open-source, free and written in .NET. Now, with Umbraco 9, it also support ASP.NET Core, which is cross platform. Now I can deploy my Umbraco website on Linux as well. Which is pretty cool. Umbraco is mature and has wide community support.

Pros:

Umbraco setup is very easy, all you need is SQL Server database. I also like Umbraco's media management. I can store my media either on Azure Storage or in AWS S3 bucket. This way I can scale my website horizontally. And the last thing which I like most is this is completely written in .NET, that's a blessing for .NET Developers.

Cons:

Would love to see Umbraco supporting multiple database such as PostgreSQL and MySQL as they are open-source and free.

Sunaina
Facilitator in New Zealand
Education Management, 51–200 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Not my first choice when it comes to CMSs

3.0 4 years ago

Comments: Overall, if you have in-house devs ready to roll up their sleeves and custom code stuff, Umbraco should work out just fine. But if you are looking for a CMS that 'just works' out of the box, you may want to keep looking. At least that has been my experience thus far.

Pros:

When you find your way around things, it is fairly easy to use. The pages can be updated fairly quickly and the WYSIWYG page editor is straightforward. What I liked the most was how quickly a page can be saved and published. But my list of gripes is probably longer than the stuff that I like.

Cons:

Basic stuff that should come out of the box like rel canonical tags etc. have to be custom coded - at least for the sites I have encountered. The search functionality within the CMS is horrible. While carrying out some image optimisation, it was impossible to find the images with their URLs. I had to put in the exact filename to find those images. Even then it was a hit or a miss which was not ideal. And even with a CDN in use, it was hard to get good PageSpeed scores with Umbraco.

Brian
Software Engineer in US
Computer Software, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Umbraco - a great CMS option for .NET

4.0 4 years ago

Pros:

Umbraco can be built and extended with C# (using Visual Studio), utilizes MVC framework, and is simple to setup. The newest version of Umbraco is being built with .NET Core, so it will likely get faster and continue to stay relevant in today's Microsoft .NET tech stack.

Cons:

Occasional hiccups when starting are not uncommon. The errors provide less than ideal guidance on how to address them. Building your own property editor is done with Angular JS (older and less used as time goes on).

Redley
Network Engineer/Student/Freelancer in Papua New Guinea
Computer Networking, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Overall Review Of Umbraco CMS

5.0 2 years ago

Pros:

-Free to use and customize-Easy to scale- Has strong community support- Great management features

Cons:

-Steep learning curve, especially for people unfamiliar with CMS software.-There is no official support and no drag-and-drop functionality.