Posted by: Ainsley McWilliams
16 January 2024
Updated 16 July 2025
TLDR:
Umbraco is a flexible open-source CMS built on Microsoft's .NET framework. It gives enterprise teams complete control over content, performance and integration. If you need a scalable platform that supports structured content, multilingual delivery and seamless API connections, Umbraco is a strong choice.
This guide explains what Umbraco is, how it works and why digital leaders trust it for secure content management and long-term growth.
Why choose Umbraco?
- Open-source CMS that's enterprise-ready and .NET-based
- Easy for editors and powerful for developers
- Supports multilingual and multi-site content from one platform
- Integrates easily with CRM, analytics and e-commerce tools
- Backed by a strong developer community and training ecosystem
What this guide covers
- What makes Umbraco different from other CMS platforms
- How to roll out Umbraco with minimal disruption
- How to customise Umbraco for your brand, workflows and teams
- Advanced features like structured content and workflow automation
- How to keep your site fast and secure with regular support and upgrades
- How Umbraco connects to your broader digital ecosystem
- How training, documentation and community support help your teams grow
How Growcreate helps
Growcreate is an Umbraco Platinum Partner with proven experience in complex rollouts, custom integrations and long-term support. We handle the technical complexity so your teams can focus on delivery.
We offer:
- Fast onboarding and migration
- Structured content design and content modelling
- Seamless integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics and more
- Continuous performance optimisation and security monitoring
- Full support with updates, patches and disaster recovery
Is Umbraco right for your business?
If you want a CMS that is secure, scalable and easy to integrate with your existing tools, Umbraco is a smart choice. With Growcreate as your support partner you can release the full potential of the platform and your digital experience.
Table of contents
- What is Umbraco CMS, and why do digital leaders prefer it?
- How easy is it to get started with Umbraco CMS?
- How can Umbraco be customised to fit our organisation?
- What advanced features does Umbraco offer for enterprise teams
- How does Umbraco ensure performance and security at scale?
- Can Umbraco integrate with our existing systems and platforms?
- How is Umbraco maintained and supported over time?
- What resources and community support are available for Umbraco CMS?
1. What is Umbraco CMS, and why do digital leaders prefer it?
Umbraco is a flexible, open-source content management system built on Microsoft's .NET framework. Umbraco helps teams create scalable, secure and fully customised websites and applications without being locked into rigid templates or bloated features.
Why do businesses choose Umbraco over other CMS platforms?
Because it combines technical power with editorial simplicity, developers can build complex, integrated systems using Umbraco's APIs and extensibility. At the same time, marketers and content teams benefit from an intuitive editing experience that doesn't require coding knowledge.
Whether you're launching a new digital platform, managing a global website estate or migrating away from legacy systems Umbraco offers the control and flexibility needed to scale without the overhead of proprietary software.
What are the key features of Umbraco CMS?
- Umbraco is open-source and enterprise-ready. Umbraco is built on .NET Core, providing complete control over hosting, security, and performance
- Umbraco is user-friendly for non-technical teams. It has a simple editing interface, preview options and content workflows
- Umbraco is extensible by design. You can add custom integrations, packages and plugins. Umbraco is ideal for CRM, e-commerce or member portals
- Umbraco supports multilingual and multi-site setups. It allows you to manage global content from a single platform
- Umbraco boasts a strong community and ecosystem, supported by active contributors and a thriving marketplace
This guide explores everything from setup and content management to customisation and integration. If you're a CTO comparing CMS options or a CMO looking to improve digital experience delivery, this article will help you decide if Umbraco is the right fit and how to make it work for your team.
2. How easy is it to get started with Umbraco CMS?
For many digital leaders, getting started with a new CMS feels like a risk. Will the rollout be smooth? Will your teams adapt quickly? And will the platform keep up as your needs evolve?
With Umbraco, the answer is yes, provided you have the right team or partner to support it.
How does Umbraco make content management easier for every team?
Unlike clunky legacy systems or overly complicated enterprise platforms, Umbraco is intuitive for marketers, content editors and IT teams.
Your team can:
- Structure and publish content without needing developers
- Manage multilingual sites or multi-site solutions from one place
- Work more efficiently thanks to a clean, user-friendly interface
Behind the scenes, the platform is flexible enough to meet complex requirements, but the day-to-day experience feels refreshingly simple.
How does Growcreate deliver a smooth Umbraco rollout without disruption?
Growcreate helps you get started with Umbraco in a way that avoids common pitfalls, such as rushed timelines, unclear ownership or poor documentation.
We handle:
- Platform setup and configuration
- Content structure design (using document types and templates)
- Training and onboarding for your content and digital teams
- Optional migration from existing platforms
Our approach ensures your team can hit the ground running.
How does Umbraco support strategic content management for growing teams?
From publishing regular updates and managing events to delivering secure content, Umbraco makes it easy to maintain consistency while allowing flexibility.
We help you set up the following:
- Structured content types to keep everything organised
- Re-usable content blocks to speed up the publishing
- Permission controls and workflow so the right people are in charge at every stage
You get complete visibility and governance over your digital content.
What collaboration features does Umbraco include for digital teams?
Your platform needs to support how your teams actually work and not slow them down.
With Umbraco and Growcreate, you get:
- Drafting, reviewing and publishing flows
- Scheduled publishing for time-sensitive campaigns
- Role-based access to keep content secure
- Version history of reducing errors and rework
We configure all this around how your organisation already operates to make your CMS an enabler.
Why does a smooth CMS launch matter for long-term success?
Getting started with Umbraco is about setting your organisation up for long-term success. We deliver smoother workflows, better content delivery and a platform that evolves with you and improves it over time.
3. How can Umbraco be customised to fit our organisation?
An Umbraco core strength is its ability to adapt easily to your organisation. It's not a one-size-fits-all CMS. It's a flexible platform that tailors to your brand, workflows and users' needs.
At Growcreate, we help organisations release that flexibility, without taking on unnecessary technical complexity.
What's the best way to extend Umbraco without rebuilding from scratch?
Umbraco gives you access to a large ecosystem of pre-built extensions known as packages, that add new functionality quickly and securely.
Examples include:
- SEO and accessibility enhancements
- CRM, e-commerce or payment integrations
- Personalisation and marketing automation
- Advanced search or analytics dashboards
- Growcreate's Umbraco AI Toolkit
We'll recommend and implement the packages that support your goals, avoiding unnecessary custom builds while making sure everything integrates seamlessly.
The Result: faster delivery, reduced cost, and fewer dependencies to manage.
How can Umbraco be branded and designed around your organisation's needs?
Regardless of whether you are a membership organisation with diverse audiences or an enterprise brand with strict compliance requirements, Umbraco fits your needs.
Growcreate designs:
- Re-usable templates to ensure visual consistency and reduce duplication
- Component libraries so your teams can build new pages using pre-approved building blocks
- Custom layouts that align with your user journeys, brand and accessibility requirements
We don't just skin your site, we shape the experience to serve your users better.
How does structured content in Umbraco support future growth?
Umbraco is a system of document types and templates, allowing you to define content once and reuse it everywhere.
We help you model content types around your real-world needs, like events, services, resources, case studies, and campaigns. Implement structures that are scalable, manageable, and future-proof.
This approach makes it easy for your teams to:
- Add new content without developer input
- Maintain consistency across multiple sections or microsites
- Support search, personalisation and filtering with clean, structured data
Structured content is the foundation for future growth, whether you're scaling up, going multilingual or adopting a headless CMS approach.
Why is customisation necessary for organisations?
Customising Umbraco is about making sure your platform works for your people. That your brand is consistent, your teams are empowered, and your digital delivery is seamless.
With Growcreate, you're building a future-ready platform that evolves with your organisation.
4. What advanced features does Umbraco offer for enterprise teams?
Once your Umbraco site is live, the real value begins. Enterprise teams require more than just content editing; they need scalability, governance, and flexibility to support their evolving needs. That's where Umbraco excels.
At Growcreate, we help you release Umbraco's advanced features to enhance content operations, support global publishing and prepare for personalisation and automation.
How does Umbraco improve content workflows for teams?
As teams grow, content governance becomes essential. Umbraco supports smarter operations with:
- Custom roles and approval workflows
- Draft and preview environments
- Timed publishing and version rollback
Growcreate delivers these workflows to your structure to reduce bottlenecks and support faster delivery with clear accountability.
Can Umbraco handle multilingual and multi-brand websites?
Yes. Umbraco includes native support for multilingual and multi-site setups, ideal for global teams.
- Manage multiple language variants
- Localise content, URLs and media
- Assign regional or brand-specific permissions
We help enterprise clients manage regional complexity to ensure brand consistency across their operations.
Does Umbraco support structured content and personalisation?
Structured content is the foundation of automation and personalisation. Umbraco enables you to define content models that align with real-world needs, such as campaigns, services or events.
Growcreate helps you:
- Set up Re-usable content types
- Connect content to personalisation engines and APIs
- Enable filtering, tagging and dynamic delivery
Structured content (Schema) gets your platform ready for AI, CRM integration, and future automation.
How can Umbraco surface insights and serve targeted content?
Whether you need dashboards, resource hubs, or member-only content, Umbraco allows you to structure and surface data with purpose.
- Smart filtering and content taxonomies
- Personalised dashboards and data views
- API integrations and content feeds
We design content structures that support the delivery of insights, turning data into real value for you and your users.
Why do these Umbraco features matter for digital leaders?
These features enable enterprise websites to evolve into scalable digital platforms. With Growcreate, you can:
- Deliver secure, multi-language, multi-brand experiences
- Streamline content ops without compromising governance
- Build a personalisation-ready content infrastructure
- Future-proof your platform without starting over
We don't just implement features, we help you turn them into business outcomes.
5. How does Umbraco ensure performance and security at scale?
When a digital platform slows down or becomes vulnerable, the damage is immediate: lost trust, poor rankings and operational friction. Umbraco provides the tools to prevent this, and Growcreate ensures they're used to their full effect.
We create secure and high-performing platforms, managing and safeguarding them so your team can concentrate on delivery.
How does Umbraco support fast, high-performing websites?
Website speed is a user experience issue that affects SEO, conversions and infrastructure costs. Umbraco has the performance headroom, but it takes smart configuration to optimise your solution.
Growcreate optimises for:
- Page and component-level caching for faster delivery
- Optimised media for better performance across devices
- Lean, re-usable frontend components to reduce load
- Efficient content structures and queries to minimise server load
We focus on speed to help you deliver faster journeys, higher engagement and a more cost-effective digital estate.
What built-in security features does Umbraco offer?
Umbraco provides strong security foundations which Growcreate enhances with proactive monitoring and enterprise-grade controls.
We implement:
- Role-based access to restrict who can edit or publish
- IP access lists and VPN controls for secure back-office access
- HTTPS enforcement and secure hosting
- Live threat monitoring for suspicious activity
- Patching and updates to protect against emerging threats
We also integrate Umbraco with identity systems like Azure AD or Active Directory, giving you single sign-on and centralised control.
How does Growcreate ensure ongoing security and performance?
Most issues come from inattention, not platform limits. That's why we go beyond launch with best-practice operations and long-term protection.
Our support includes:
- Regular platform audits and vulnerability checks
- Automated/manual backups with tested recovery workflows
- Structured update cycles across core and packages
- Transparent reporting to support compliance and governance
We prevent problems before they happen and resolve them quickly when they do.
Why does this matter for enterprise digital teams?
For CMOs:
Speed affects traffic, bounce rate and campaign ROI. Security protects your reputation and ensures smooth delivery.
For CTOs and Heads of IT:
You need confidence that the platform meets enterprise standards without burdening your in-house team.
For Product Owners and Digital Teams:
Whether it's a launch, high-traffic campaign or critical update, you get a platform that performs and a partner who's on call 24/7.
We manage your Umbraco platform so that you can sleep better at night.
6. Can Umbraco integrate with our existing systems and platforms?
Modern digital platforms must connect with your existing tools. CRMs, marketing automation, analytics, and e-commerce systems need to work together to deliver seamless experiences.
Umbraco is designed for seamless interoperability. Its flexible, API-first architecture ensures that integrations are secure, scalable, and ready for the future. And with Growcreate, you create joined-up journeys that deliver business value.
How does Umbraco support API integration?
At the heart of Umbraco's integration strength is its API-first design. This approach enables reliable two-way connections with the platforms you already rely on.
Growcreate helps enterprise teams:
- Pull content from CRMs, policy databases or external feeds
- Push lead data and form submissions to marketing platforms
- Sync product or content data across systems and sites
- Trigger real-time updates with webhooks for transactions or alerts
We manage your integrations, ensuring your users experience a seamless, joined-up digital journey without disruption.
Can Umbraco integrate with our marketing and analytics tools?
Yes. Your CMS will extend your marketing capability. Umbraco works well with platforms like:
- Google Analytics / GA4 for advanced tracking
- HubSpot, Salesforce, Dynamics for CRM and lead workflows
- Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp for segmentation and subscriber engagement
- Social media and custom dashboards for real-time insights
If you're building a campaign site or managing a content-rich portal, we ensure your integrations align with your data model, governance policies, and digital strategy.
What about e-commerce integration with Umbraco?
If you offer products, subscriptions or donations, Umbraco integrates easily with leading e-commerce platforms without losing content flexibility.
Growcreate supports:
- Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento integrations
- Custom checkout and subscription flows
- Secure payments and fulfilment workflows
- Content-led commerce experiences with real-time product data
We specialise in hybrid setups that are ideal for membership organisations, charities, professional services and financial firms that require both structured content and transactional capability.
7. How is Umbraco maintained and supported over time?
No platform is flawless, but with the right support, you stay ahead of problems instead of reacting to them. From performance and security to upgrades and recovery, Umbraco needs structured care to remain fast, secure and future-ready.
With Growcreate, you keep it running at its best, day in, day out.
What common Umbraco issues does Growcreate help prevent?
Proper maintenance can prevent many performance and security issues. We assist clients in staying ahead of:
- Performance bottlenecks
- Fixes: Caching, content structure tuning, database optimisation, CDN setup
- Growcreate benefit: Ongoing monitoring and monthly performance reviews
- Broken pages and 404 errors
- Fixes: Redirects, structured workflows, URL routing controls
- Growcreate benefit: Automated link checks, version rollback and QA routines
- Security vulnerabilities
- Fixes: Patch updates, role permissions, encrypted data transfer
- Growcreate benefit: Proactive auditing, live threat tracking and instant patching
Our team handles support for your Umbraco platform, so you don't have to worry about downtime, broken journeys or compliance gaps.
How are Umbraco upgrades managed with minimal disruption?
Keeping Umbraco up to date ensures better security, performance and access to new features without disrupting your business.
Our upgrade process includes:
- Full backup and rollback protection
- Plugin and integration compatibility testing
- Dedicated staging environment for QA
- Zero-downtime deployment plans
- Post-upgrade validation and support
We manage both regular patches and major version upgrades, so you're never left behind or exposed to risk.
What disaster recovery and backup services are in place?
Unexpected incidents such as outages, data loss or cyber threats can disrupt operations. They damage trust. That's why Growcreate builds resilience into every Umbraco solution.
Our recovery model includes:
- Verified recovery processes to restore fast and accurately
- Disaster recovery plans tailored to your risk profile
- Transparent status reporting for peace of mind
Whether you're handling sensitive financial data or regulated content, we've got you covered.
NHS Berkshire, Mortgage Advice Bureau, and Mercedes-Benz trust our disaster recovery and support services.
Why does support and maintenance matter for digital leaders?
For CMOs and Heads of Digital
Outages, slow pages and broken links hurt user experience and brand trust. We keep things running smoothly, so your campaigns never stall.
For CTOs and IT Leads
You gain a partner who handles patching, updates and disaster planning without draining your internal team.
For Boards and Compliance Teams
Regular reporting, secure logging and formal recovery plans provide full assurance.
Ongoing support is your digital insurance policy. And with Growcreate, it's proactive, structured and always on.
8. What resources and community support are available for Umbraco CMS?
Choosing Umbraco means joining an open, collaborative ecosystem. From clear documentation to structured training and an active global community, Umbraco gives digital teams the tools and support they need to grow with confidence.
With Growcreate, you tap into all of it, plus tailored help from a Platinum Partner who knows the ecosystem inside out.
Where can I find official Umbraco documentation and guides?
Umbraco's official documentation is practical, accessible and regularly updated to reflect real-world scenarios. Whether you're a developer, editor or product lead, you'll find:
- Step-by-step setup and configuration tutorials
- Best-practice guides for security, integration and performance
- Examples and walkthroughs for content models, workflows and APIs
Growcreate uses this documentation to create tailored onboarding materials to accelerate your team's ability to deliver from day one.
How active is the Umbraco community, and what does it offer?
The Umbraco community is one of the most open and collaborative in the CMS world. The community comprises developers, editors, partners and contributors who share knowledge and collaborate to solve problems together.
Key resources include:
- Umbraco Forum – searchable Q&A with real-world advice
- Slack groups and local meetups – quick, informal support
- Events like Codegarden – platform updates, learning and networking
Growcreate is an active member of this community so you benefit from shared expertise across hundreds of projects and implementations.
Is there training or certification available for Umbraco?
Yes. Umbraco offers official training and certification pathways, ideal for enterprise teams looking to build in-house capabilities or validate their skills.
Available programmes include:
- Content editor and workflow training
- Developer certification for implementation and customisation
- Integration-focused courses for connecting with CRMs and APIs
Growcreate can advise on the best training path for your team or provide expert support to complement your internal resource model.
Why do community and resources matter for digital leaders?
For CMOs and Content Teams:
You gain confidence to work independently, reduce reliance on developers and accelerate content delivery.
For CTOs and Heads of Digital:
You tap into a broad knowledge base, access trained talent, and reduce long-term vendor risk.
For Product Owners and Managers:
You gain a future-proof platform, backed by a global ecosystem that evolves alongside your organisation.
With Umbraco, you're supported. With Growcreate, you're empowered.
