Should you upgrade or rebuild Umbraco?
Adam Weston, Midday Digital
I set up Midday to offer practical, grounded support for people whose digital responsibilities have grown and become harder to manage.
Don’t let the person who benefits from the outcome make this call.
You've had the end-of-life warning. Your Umbraco version is reaching end of support, and you have been told that you either need to upgrade or rebuild your Umbraco platform. Usually, that someone is also the person who'd be doing the work.
I know that agencies believe in what they pitch. But a rebuild can be a bigger job than an upgrade, and it's hard for anyone to remain neutral when the project's size affects their own pipeline.
If you don't check this, you risk spending money twice: rebuilding what could have been upgraded, or upgrading what should have been replaced. You usually only find out which after you’re committed.
Before you take any advice, check your platform against four things.
How clean is the underlying data and content structure, honestly?
How much custom code is sitting underneath it, and does anyone still understand it?
How many systems is it connected to, and what happens to each one if the migration fails (including Umbraco packages)?
If you rebuilt today, would your team or revenue benefit?
Score your platform against those four, and you get to your answer. I've seen businesses pitched a rebuild that would have been fine to upgrade. This is the same scoring I use for an Umbraco audit when someone wants a second opinion before committing. If the agency you're talking to is a Platinum Partner, it's worth knowing what that badge does and doesn't tell you.
A good agency would rather you arrive with a clear, independent brief than a vague instruction to just get it done. It saves them time and gets everyone to the real work faster.
That's how I work. I look at the decision first, with no stake in the outcome. Then I hand over a brief to whichever agency fits best, including ones I already work with. The agency gets a client who’s thought the project through. Everyone ends up better off.
If you've had the end-of-life warning and haven't made the upgrade or rebuild call yet, get an Umbraco audit before you ask for a quote. Or see how Midday's Umbraco Platform Leadership service works if you want to talk it through first.
I hope this helps.
Adam
UK-based. In person, where possible.