Upgrade or pivot from Kentico?

This year, specifically at Kentico, has been a pivotal year.    

While the markets have been volatile, and all have felt economic and logistical pressures, innovation will still press on, no matter the headwinds. Many of us regularly weigh and push forward exciting marketing decisions at our respective companies.  

Kentico has set forward an ambitious and robust vision for their product roadmap that has required many marketing pros to make yet another decision: upgrade to Kentico 13 or pivot away from the platform?  

To help with that decision, we have produced this article! Kentico has published a lot of material regarding their roadmap as well as resources that help you understand why staying with Kentico would be the right move.  

Even if your current platform is not Kentico, the following will still provide long-term value. I highly recommend that you understand that while it may be a different platform than what you are using, the concepts below are still relevant.   

The practice of reviewing your platform and comparing it against its respective roadmap on an annual basis is a necessary discipline. The questions in our planning section below are portable, so you should be able to leverage them regardless of the respective platform you use today.
 

Where are you today vs. the latest Kentico roadmap 

Why are we publishing this now? Well, Kentico is in a transitional period where many customers are on a lesser version of Kentico that is either no longer supported or won’t be by the end of 2023. The future of Kentico is Kentico 13 using MVC, which will be supported through refreshes and hotfixes via subscription through at least 2026. You can check out the full schedule in the graphic below.    
 
If you have a lesser version than 11 or even 12, you may be concerned that your site will not be operational. That is not the case, but it does mean Kentico can no longer support your version, such as encountering an issue you cannot debug, a security concern related to the core framework or if you wish to apply a hotfix. Your site is still operational, but you cannot get direct technical support from Kentico.   

So, we recommend talking with us and walking through our checklist below. 
   

What to do if you want to pivot? 

Should you come out confidently knowing that you want to pivot from Kentico, we can help fill in the details and work, as well as benefits, ahead for you. 

Our Development and SysOps Teams have done many platform migrations in just the last 12-24 months. Platform migrations are not rare and not isolated just to Kentico. These migrations have involved many clients moving to Kentico as well as to and from platforms like HubSpot, WordPress, Drupal, Sitecore and Umbraco.  

The effort and, ultimately, the cost will be dictated by the following elements within four categories of importance: 

• Layouts & Experience 
  • Total unique templates 
  • Total unique modules within templates 
  • Front-end frameworks (CSS, JS, Libraries used, HTML) 
• Content  
  • Content model  
  • Volume 
• Control 
  • Administrative control preferences 
  • Desired workflows 
• Add-Ons 
  • Integrations  
  • Custom code 
  • External dependencies  

Once this information is gathered, we can provide a confident estimate with reasoning and a calendar to migrate. 
 

What does a Kentico upgrade look like? 

When you have decided to upgrade to Kentico 13, it’s similar to what a migration would look like, but with some technical benefits of staying within the same product family. 

We can quickly provide a Kentico migration plan for you. 

Our clients who moved to Kentico 13 have benefited from many of its new features and performance. 
 

The right agency for you 

Who can help you with your evolving needs in both technology, digital support and performance marketing that your website drives? 

What a softball of a question.  

(We write this blog, so we have complete editorial control.) 

THUNDER::TECH! (Yes, us!) We can help you with your Kentico strategy, but more importantly, we can support you where you are with your goals for marketing, operating and capital budgets and timelines. 

We have a strategically diverse clientele that spans the full spectrum of the mid-market. With that portfolio, we have built within our agency the agility, talent, services and processes to support our clients no matter where they might be in cost, scale and need. 
 

Want to see for yourself? Here are a couple recent examples of our platform migrations: 

• Lake Metroparks - https://www.lakemetroparks.com/
  • Kentico 9 to Wordpress  
• The MLC - https://www.themlc.com/
  • Drupal to Hubspot 
• Hospice of Western Reserve - https://hospicewr.org/
  • Sharepoint to Kentico 12 

 

Some additional reasons our clients choose us over other Kentico and digital partners: 

• We have been a Gold Partner for 13+ years, starting with version 6 of Kentico. 
• We offer flexible and tailored Support packages starting at just 5 hours / month. We don’t require large minimum expenditures or overly complex engagements. 
• Our expertise spans beyond just Kentico. We offer unbiased recommendations across a wide array of platforms and technologies. 
• We have experts and thought leaders providing services beyond just websites and platforms. We offer Communication, Performance Marketing, SEO and Branding services that may be useful regardless of your Kentico needs.   
• Simple = better. 

We have done this before and are happy to start a conversation with you. Simply send a message our way and we can answer any questions you may have!