Posted by: Ainsley McWilliams
23 June 2025
Updated 11th December 2025 by Ainsley McWilliams
If you are responsible for a business critical platform, one decision matters more than the rest: who you trust to support, enhance and evolve it.
You have probably seen the Umbraco Gold and Platinum badges, read a few case studies, maybe even spoken to multiple agencies. Yet it is not always obvious what those tiers mean in practice or how they change your risk profile.
As an Umbraco Platinum Partner that specialises in complex, high risk and regulated platforms, Growcreate often helps digital leaders weigh up Gold versus Platinum for their next phase of work. (Source: Growcreate)
This guide keeps it simple and practical so you can make a confident choice.
Who this guide is for
If you are leading a digital platform on Umbraco, this guide is written for you. It will help you:
- Understand what Umbraco Partner status really means
- Compare Gold and Platinum in terms of scale, risk and strategic value
- Assess security, GDPR and ISO 27001 alignment
- Evaluate .NET, API and integration capability
- Judge 24/7 support, SLAs and monitoring models
- Decide when a Platinum Partner is the right move
The aim is not to sell you a badge. It is to help you pick the right level of partner for the level of risk you carry.
What is an Umbraco Partner
Umbraco is an open source CMS built on Microsoft’s modern .NET stack, designed to support everything from smaller marketing sites to complex enterprise platforms. (Source: Umbraco)
To give organisations confidence, Umbraco runs an official Partner Programme with three main tiers - Silver, Gold and Platinum. Each tier comes with requirements for certified developers, active engagement with the platform and a proven delivery track record. (Source: Umbraco)
When you choose a Silver, Gold or Platinum Partner you know that:
- Their developers are trained and certified in Umbraco best practice
- They stay current with new versions and features to retain status
- They have direct lines into Umbraco HQ for support and advice (often backed by formal support agreements)
Working with an official partner means you are not betting your platform on unproven code or one strong freelancer. You are tapping into a supported product, documented best practice and a community that includes Umbraco HQ itself. (Source: Umbraco)
Business value: Partner status gives you an assurance baseline on skills, support and commitment to Umbraco.
Gold Vs Platinum Umbraco Partners at a glance
Umbraco describes Gold as a tier for agencies with a proven track record that want to deepen their Umbraco expertise, and Platinum as the top tier for agencies that are fully committed and take on larger, more complex work. (Source: Umbraco)
Here is how that typically translates when you run a serious platform.
| Attribute | Gold Umbraco Partner | Platinum Umbraco Partner | What It Means For You |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical project profile | Solid marketing sites, small portals, straightforward migrations | Enterprise websites, portals, multi region estates, regulated platforms | Match partner scale to your risk and complexity |
| Certified Umbraco and .NET developers | Required, but often a subset of the team | Larger pool of certified specialists and architects | More depth on complex builds and upgrades |
| Direct access to Umbraco HQ | Yes, usually via paid Umbraco Support plans | Yes, often with closer collaboration, early roadmap insight and co creation | Faster issue resolution and better roadmap alignment (Source: Umbraco) |
| 24/7 support and SLA options | Varies by agency, often office hours plus best endeavours | Commonly offers SLA backed 24/7 incident response and monitoring | Predictable response times and protection for out of hours incidents (Source: Growcreate) |
| Security and compliance | Good practice, may align to GDPR and basic policies | Often ISO 27001 certified with Cyber Essentials and formal processes | Easier vendor due diligence for InfoSec and regulators (Source: Growcreate) |
| Integration and API orchestration | Integrations handled case by case | Deep .NET and API expertise, regular CRM, ERP and data platform work | Less risk when connecting critical systems |
| Hosting, uptime and monitoring | Can work with common hosting providers | Designed around Azure or Umbraco Cloud with uptime SLAs and proactive monitoring | Stronger reliability, performance and observability (Source: Growcreate) |
| Roadmap and optimisation | Depends on the agency model | Continuous improvement, optimisation and upgrade planning as a core service | Your platform keeps pace with business plans and Umbraco releases |
Business value: Gold and Platinum both give you qualified Umbraco expertise. Platinum adds enterprise depth, stronger guarantees and closer ties to Umbraco HQ.
What a Gold Umbraco Partner offers
Gold Partners are experienced Umbraco agencies with certified developers, proven project delivery and active involvement in the community. (Source: Umbraco)
At a Gold level you should expect:
- Certified Umbraco developers and strong .NET skills
- A history of successful Umbraco builds and launches
- Participation in Umbraco training and partner initiatives
- Access to Umbraco HQ through official support arrangements
For many organisations this is an ideal fit, especially when:
- Your site is important but not life or death
- You have a relatively simple integration picture
- You want a cost efficient partner who knows Umbraco well
Business value: Gold gives you quality Umbraco delivery without over specifying for risk you do not have.
What a Platinum Umbraco Partner offers
A Platinum Umbraco Partner takes everything above and raises the stakes.
Platinum is the highest partner tier and is reserved for agencies that specialise in Umbraco, contribute actively to the community and maintain deeper collaboration with Umbraco HQ. (Source: Umbraco)
In practice that usually means:
- Large portfolio of SME and enterprise grade Umbraco solutions and migrations
- Proven experience with security sensitive, regulated or high traffic platforms
- Higher ratios of certified developers and technical specialists
- Priority access to Umbraco HQ, with early visibility of roadmap and features
- Active contribution through events, content, testing and community projects (Source: Umbraco)
For platforms that carry meaningful operational, compliance or revenue risk, that extra depth matters.
Business value: Platinum gives you a strategic web engineering partner, not just a build team.
When you should choose a Platinum Umbraco Partner
A common question is “when should I choose a Platinum Umbraco Partner”. The short answer: when the risk of failure is higher than the saving you might make by stepping down a tier.
A Platinum Umbraco Partner is usually the right choice when:
- Your website, portal or product directly impacts revenue, trading or member services
- You work in regulated sectors such as financial services, healthcare or public sector
- You require 24/7 support, strict SLAs and board level reporting on incidents
- Your architecture is API heavy, with multiple CRMs, data platforms and line of business systems
- You are planning a major migration, replatforming or multi site rollout
- You need rock solid governance on security, data protection and change management
Growcreate, for example, supports enterprise Umbraco platforms across financial services, membership bodies and the public sector with Azure hosting, ISO 27001 controls and 24/7 SLA backed response. (Source: Growcreate)
Business value: Platinum is about risk management. You pay for fewer surprises, stronger engineering and a partner that can stand up to scrutiny from boards and regulators.
How to assess security, GDPR and ISO 27001
Security and compliance should be at the centre of any partner decision, not an afterthought.
Umbraco itself takes security seriously, with regular internal and external penetration testing, security advisories and hardening guidance. (Source: Umbraco) Umbraco A/S follows ISO 27001 standards and is working towards formal ISO 27001 certification for its product offering by the end of 2025. (Source: Umbraco)
Your agency needs to meet that level of discipline.
A quick security and compliance checklist
When you assess an Umbraco Partner, ask for evidence on:
- Information security certification - Do they hold ISO 27001 certification or follow ISO 27001 aligned controls that you can during due diligence
- Cyber hygiene - Do they meet a scheme such as Cyber Essentials and show how they patch, monitor and manage endpoints (Source: Growcreate)
- GDPR and data protection - Can they provide a Data Processing Agreement, describe data flows and explain how they handle subject access, retention and deletion
- Hosting posture - Are they using platforms like Microsoft Azure or Umbraco Cloud that already carry extensive compliance attestations for ISO, GDPR alignment and other frameworks (Source: Umbraco) (Source: Growcreate)
- Security operations - Do they run regular security testing, monitor logs, control privileged access and document incident response
For example, Growcreate is ISO/IEC 27001 certified, Cyber Essentials certified and aligns every project with GDPR and modern security frameworks. (Source: Growcreate)
When hosting Umbraco, Growcreate typically uses Azure or UmbHost managed hosting so the solution inherits Azure’s certified controls and data residency options. (Source: Growcreate)
Business value: good security and compliance reduce audit friction, satisfy procurement and protect brand trust.
How to evaluate .NET, API and integration skills
Umbraco’s strength is its flexibility. It is a modern .NET CMS with API driven capabilities that make it ideal for integrating CRMs, ERPs, data platforms and marketing stacks. (Source: Umbraco)
To tap into that, your partner needs more than surface level CMS skills.
Look for evidence that they can:
- Architect and build .NET based services, not just templates
- Design and document REST or message based integrations that can be monitored and supported
- Work confidently with Azure services, message queues and modern DevOps practices
- Integrate Umbraco with tools like Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce or HubSpot in live client work (Source: Growcreate)
Good questions to ask in a pitch or RFP:
- Which integrations have you delivered on Umbraco in the last 12 months
- How do you secure and monitor APIs in production
- How do you design for failure, retries and data reconciliation
- Can you walk us through a complex integration you support today
Business value: strong integration and .NET skills keep your platform connected, reliable and adaptable to new systems.
What to look for in a 24/7 SLA and support model
For a critical platform, support is as important as build quality.
Umbraco’s own Enterprise Support plans include guaranteed response times, architectural advising, code and 24/7 coverage for serious incidents. (Source: Umbraco) Your agency should complement that with day to day operational support.
A credible Umbraco support SLA will usually define:
- Clear severity levels - for example P1 for total outage, P2 for degraded service, P3 for minor defects
- Response targets - time to acknowledge and start work on each priority, 24/7 for P1 incidents
- Resolution targets - time to restore service or implement a workaround for P1 and P2
- Monitoring and alerting - what the partner watches, how alerts are triaged and how you are notified
- Change governance - how releases, hotfixes and rollbacks are handled
Growcreate’s 24/7 Umbraco Support, for instance, offers acknowledgement of critical incidents within minutes and full time engineering attention until they are resolved, backed by documented SLAs. (Source: Growcreate)
Business value: SLAs translate promises into measurable commitments you can hold your partner to.
How hosting, scalability and monitoring protect your platform
Your Umbraco Partner should have a clear on where and how your platform is hosted.
Umbraco can run on your own infrastructure, on Azure or on Umbraco Cloud, the managed hosting service that includes automated upgrades and deployment tooling. (Source: Umbraco)
Umbraco Cloud itself runs on Microsoft Azure, inheriting Azure’s global scale and compliance posture. (Source: Umbraco)
When you partners, look for:
- Experience designing Azure or Umbraco Cloud environments specifically for Umbraco
- Uptime SLAs (for example 99.9% or 99.95%) backed by architecture that supports those numbers
- Use of CDNs, caching, autoscaling and load balancing for speed and resilience (Source: Growcreate)
- Disaster recovery plans and restore testing, not just backups
- Active performance monitoring with clear reporting
Growcreate offers Azure based Umbraco hosting with uptime SLAs, automated backups, disaster recovery and 24/7 monitoring as standard in its enterprise packages. (Source: Growcreate)
Business value: thoughtful hosting and monitoring Umbraco into stable infrastructure rather than a constant fire fight.
Marketing features and analytics integration
For CMOs and digital marketing teams, a partner’s ability to support testing, analytics and personalisation is critical.
Umbraco Engage adds server side analytics, profiling, A/B testing and personalisation directly inside Umbraco, with first party data collection and in app reporting. (Source: Umbraco) Growcreate also maps these tools against popular CRM and marketing stacks so data flows cleanly between CMS, automation and reporting. (Source: Growcreate)
When you assess a partner, ask how they will help you:
- Implement clean analytics, tagging and goal tracking from day one
- Use A/B testing to improve conversion on key pages without burning developer time
- Integrate data with tools such as Google Analytics, Umbraco Engage, CRM and data warehouses
- Design content models that give marketing teams control without risky workarounds
Business value: better marketing integration means faster experimentation, better reporting and more value from your CMS investment.
Why organisations choose Growcreate as their Platinum Umbraco Partner
Choosing between a Gold or Platinum Umbraco Partner is important. Choosing the right agency is decisive.
Organisations work with Growcreate when they need a Platinum Umbraco Partner that pairs dependable engineering with always on support.
What that looks like in practice:
- Platinum Umbraco Partner since 2014 - with 150+ enterprise projects and direct collaboration with Umbraco product teams (Source: Growcreate)
- ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials certified - security, privacy and governance built into every engagement (Source: Growcreate)
- 24/7 SLA backed Umbraco support - real time monitoring, rapid incident response and proactive maintenance (Source: Growcreate)
- Azure first architecture - resilient hosting, scalability and data residency aligned to finance, healthcare and public sector needs (Source: Growcreate)
- Sector experience where downtime is not an option - including wealth management, NHS related bodies, public sector organisations and global brands such as Mercedes Benz (Source: Growcreate)
You get a team that treats your Umbraco platform as critical infrastructure, not just another website.
Business value: Growcreate gives you a partner you can put in front of boards, governance forums and regulators with confidence.
Partner with a team that takes your platform as seriously as you do
Choosing between Gold and Platinum is only part of the decision. You also need a partner that shows up consistently, speaks your language and shares responsibility for outcomes.
At Growcreate, we combine Platinum Umbraco credentials with ISO aligned delivery, Azure engineering and 24/7 support for teams that cannot afford surprises.
If you are weighing up your next Umbraco move, ask us the hard questions.
FAQs
An Umbraco Partner is a certified web development agency recognised by Umbraco HQ for delivering quality Umbraco CMS solutions with trained developers and ongoing commitment to the platform. (Source: Umbraco)
Gold Partners have proven Umbraco experience, certified developers and access to Umbraco HQ support. Platinum Partners sit at the top tier, with larger enterprise portfolios, closer collaboration with Umbraco HQ and strengthened capabilities around integration, support and strategic advisory. (Source: Umbraco)
Choose a Platinum Partner when your Umbraco platform is mission critical, heavily integrated or operates in a regulated space, and you need 24/7 support, strong SLAs and audit ready security and governance. (Source: Growcreate)
Ask for ISO 27001 certificates or audit reports, Cyber Essentials status, GDPR documentation and clear explanations of hosting, data flows and incident response. Check how they align with Umbraco’s own Trust Center guidance and Azure’s compliance assurances. (Source: Umbraco) (Source: Growcreate)
A strong SLA defines severity levels, response and resolution targets for each level, 24/7 coverage for P1 incidents, monitoring and alerting scope and clear communication practices during incidents. (Source: Umbraco) (Source: Growcreate)
Recent projects that connect Umbraco to systems like Dynamics 365, Salesforce or bespoke APIs. Ask about their integration patterns, security model, monitoring tools and how they handle retries and failures in production. (Source: Growcreate)
Experienced Gold and Platinum Partners should be able to plan and execute migrations from legacy CMS platforms or older Umbraco versions, preserving SEO, content and data while aligning with modern .NET and cloud standards. (Source: Growcreate)
With the right implementation Umbraco gives marketers flexible content models, multilingual support and integrations with analytics and CRM tools. Add ons such as Umbraco Engage bring first party analytics, A/B testing and personalisation directly into the CMS so teams can optimise campaigns without leaving the platform. (Source: Umbraco)
