Almost certainly, yes. I started building on Umbraco at version 4 in 2011 and have worked with every version since, through the big architectural breaks at 8 and 9 that most developers never had to cross. That history matters for old sites: knowing how a 2013 build was typically put together is half the job of moving it forward. Very old versions do not upgrade in place; the realistic path is usually a rebuild on modern Umbraco with your content migrated across, which is also the chance to fix a decade of accumulated workarounds. I will tell you honestly which path fits your site, and what each would cost, before you commit to anything.
An Umbraco 6 or 7 site is not just an out-of-date version of a modern site. It sits on a different .NET runtime, uses templating and data layers that no longer exist, and often leans on packages whose authors moved on years ago. Upgrading is not a matter of clicking through version numbers; the platform crossed two major architectural breaks, at version 8 and again at 9, and code does not walk across those bridges by itself.
I have been on Umbraco since version 4, which means the strange things inside your old site are usually things I recognise: the XSLT macro someone wrote in 2012, the legacy media handling, the config files nobody dares touch. A developer who joined the ecosystem at version 10 is meeting these artefacts for the first time on your project and on your budget. Fourteen years of accumulated context is precisely what makes old-site work predictable instead of terrifying.
For genuinely old versions the pragmatic route is usually a fresh build on current Umbraco with your content, URLs and search rankings carefully migrated, rather than a heroic in-place upgrade through five major versions. It is often faster, cheaper and leaves you with a clean codebase instead of a taller tower of patches. For Umbraco 13 sites the calculus is different, and my fixed price £8,999 plus VAT upgrade to 17 applies; everything is laid out on the pricing page.
Send me the version number and whatever access you have, and I will map the realistic options as a short piece of development scoping. No lecture about technical debt, no scaremongering: just what it takes to get you back onto supported ground.
Tell me what you're working on and I'll come back within one working day.
A specialist Umbraco developer offering freelance / contract services to a wide variety of clients across the UK
Maesgwyn, 3 Claremont rd,
Llandudno, North Wales, LL30 2UF