Why Choose Umbraco?

Why choose Umbraco? An honest answer from someone who builds on it daily

I have built or looked after more than 200 Umbraco sites since 2011, so I am biased. But I also turn down work when Umbraco is the wrong tool, so let me give you the assessment I would give a friend.

Where Umbraco genuinely earns its keep

No licence fees. Umbraco is open source under the MIT licence. There are no per-seat costs and no forced SaaS tier, so your budget goes into features rather than licences.

A content model that fits your business. Document types, compositions and the block editor let a developer model your actual content instead of bending it into a theme. Editors get a clean back office that most teams learn in an afternoon.

.NET underneath. Umbraco runs on Microsoft's ASP.NET Core. If your organisation already lives in the Microsoft world (Azure, SQL Server, C# developers) it slots straight in, and integrations with CRMs, payment providers and internal APIs are ordinary work rather than plugin roulette.

A predictable release cycle. Long-term support versions with published end-of-support dates mean you can plan upgrades years ahead instead of being surprised. Umbraco 13, for example, reaches the end of security support on 14 December 2026, and everyone has known that for a long time.

When Umbraco is not the right call

Honesty matters more than a sale, so here is the other side.

If your site is a five-page brochure that will never change, a site builder will do it cheaper. If you need a heavyweight product catalogue as the core of the business, a dedicated commerce platform may serve you better than bolting one onto a CMS. If your team is entirely PHP or JavaScript and there are no .NET skills anywhere near you, the ongoing ownership cost of a .NET platform is real. And a cheap Umbraco site built badly is worse than a good WordPress site, because there are no plugins to fall back on.

If any of those apply to you, I will say so on the first call and point you somewhere better.

If Umbraco is the right call

Then it helps to have someone who has worked on every version from 4 through to 17. I have built Umbraco sites for organisations like British Red Cross Training and the Scottish NHS iHub, and you can see a range of the work on the Simon Antony portfolio. My day rate is £500, the person you brief is the person who builds, and my company, Simplepage Ltd, trading as Simon Antony, holds an Umbraco Silver Partnership directly, which means direct access to Umbraco HQ support on every engagement.

Need Umbraco help? Let's talk

Interested in customising and optimising your website with Umbraco? As an experienced Umbraco freelancer, I specialise in delivering tailored CMS solutions that meet your specific needs. From enhancing site performance to creating user-friendly content management systems, I focus on practical, effective results. If you are looking for straightforward, professional Umbraco services, get in touch to discuss how I can help with your project.

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