As Umbraco 7 reaches End of Life, here's why you should consider making the switch to Umbraco 10

Umbraco 7 is due to become End of Life (EOL) in September 2023. Umbraco 10 is the latest version, built on .NET 6 (previously known as .NET Core) and supplies the most powerful implementation of Umbraco yet. As one of 26 worldwide contributing gold partners with multiple MVPs (Most Valuable People) in our team, we’re perfectly placed to help your organisation make the switch smoothly.

What does End of Life mean for your organisation?

When software reaches End of Life, that version is no longer supported by the Umbraco development team. Certain features will become unsupported, and Umbraco won’t release fixes for bugs, regressions or security issues.  

Umbraco recommends you don’t continue using products past End of Life, as it can potentially expose your website to security risks, and features become outdated. In short, it can be detrimental to the experience for both users, content editors and development teams working on the CMS (Content Management System). It also means you aren’t getting the newest features which are really important for keeping your website as accessible as possible.  

The benefits of switching

There are so many benefits to migrating or rebuilding your digital estate to Umbraco 10, including longer term support and benefits for developers, users and the environment. 

Long term support  

Umbraco has also committed to LTS (Long Term Support) of version 10 until 2025, and it's the first version of the software to follow a .NET release cadence. Updates are aligned with Microsoft .NET versions, and this ensures a consistently up-to-date environment and full functionality for developers. The pattern of releasing major updates every six months is also beneficial when it comes to planning a future roadmap. Major version upgrades are simpler because they are more regular, meaning they take less time and investment once you've made the switch. 

Better for developers 

Following the .NET release cadence ensures that developers are working in an up-to-date environment and can benefit from the latest improvements in both the platforms and .NET language features.  

In addition, Umbraco 10 has upgraded the codebase to run on .NET 6, which has been benchmarked to be on average 50% more performant than .NET 5 and enables Hot Reload for quicker local development. Umbraco 10 also now comes with SQLite support out of the box. This ensures developers running on Linux or macOS can have a native development experience rather than having to use a tool like Docker or a virtual machine. Version 10 also uses C# 10, the latest version of C#, creating a simpler and more productive experience for developers. 
 
More information on .NET 6 features can be found here.  

Better for editors and users 

A more structured release cadence means newer features, faster. Since Umbraco 10 launched in June 2022, we’ve seen support added for WebP, runtime modes, importing and exporting dictionary items, localised searching and read-only editors.  

One of the newest and most interesting features added in Umbraco 10.2 is language variants. On large multilingual sites, content editors would previously have had access to all content in all languages. If you have a team of editors specific to certain languages, you can now restrict access to edit this in both the Content and Translation sections.  

There are also some useful tools for users in latest 10.3 release, most notably the new Block Grid Editor which supersedes the current Grid Layouts Editor. It means developers can now craft tailored editing experiences, giving editors more flexibility when it comes to the layout and content of pages.  

All these new features give you increased control over your digital estate and enable editors to work more creatively and with a greater degree of customisation. A win-win! 

And of course, the most important people to consider are your users. Umbraco 10 is faster, more performant and more secure. Greater scope for customisation means there are more ways to create personalised digital experiences tailored to user needs. 

Better sustainability credentials 

One of the most exciting and promising new benefits to upgrading to Umbraco 10 are the sustainability benefits. As part of our ongoing strategic efforts to build cleaner and greener digital spaces, we’ve done a lot of discovery and testing with migrating older Umbraco websites over to versions 9 and 10. We’ve worked with clients to benchmark the sustainability of their digital estates before and after their Umbraco upgrade, and the data we’ve collected indicates an average improvement to page cleanliness of around 50%.  

We can help you move to Umbraco 10

If you’re looking to make the switch to Umbraco 10 there are likely a couple of options to consider, dependent on what version of Umbraco your website is currently on. We’ll work with you to define the most efficient way. 

Speak to us about Umbraco 10, and how we can help you upgrade your website by getting in touch at hello@nexerdigital.com, or give us a call at 01625 427718.