Crafted Labs - Upgrading Your Kentico Website

A guide to upgrading your Kentico website.

Discover the benefits of upgrading to the latest version of Kentico.

If you're thinking about upgrading your Kentico website, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about the latest version, Xperience by Kentico and why it’s a smart investment for your business.

As Gold Partners, we’ve partnered with Kentico for 15 years, having started building websites on V3, and in this post, we’ll be looking at:

What happens when Kentico comes to end of life
Key benefits of upgrading
The latest version of Kentico
The platform's key features & benefits
Considerations when upgrading

When it comes to your businesses’ website, staying up to date with the latest platforms and technology is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge.

From enhanced features and improved performance to increased security and scalability, upgrading offers a host of benefits that can help propel your online presence to new heights.

Kentico End of Life: What happens when support for Kentico ends?

Kentico periodically releases new versions of its platforms to introduce enhancements, address vulnerabilities, and adapt to changing market demands. However, this also means that older versions eventually reach their End of Life (EOL).

For example, Kentico 12 reached its EOL on the 31^st December 2023 and Kentico Xperience 13 will come to its EOL at the end of 2026.

A version of Kentico reaching EOL doesn’t mean that your website will stop working. However, there are a number of issues from being version locked that arise. These include:

No Official Support: Users will not be able to receive assistance from Kentico for any issues, bugs, or technical problems encountered with the software.

No Updates or Security Patches: Similarly, Kentico will stop providing updates and security patches for the EOL version.

Compatibility Issues: Over time, as the technology evolves, the EOL version of Kentico might become incompatible with newer operating systems, browsers, and third-party software. This can severely impact the functionality and usability of your website.

Regulatory Compliance Concerns: Depending on the industry and region, there may also be regulatory requirements or standards that mandate the use of supported software versions.

So, to mitigate the risks associated with reaching EOL, users are advised to upgrade to a supported version of Kentico.

Expert Tip

Lee, Technical Director

When upgrading your Kentico website, be sure to involve wider stakeholders to deliver the most effective project. It could be a more efficient way to tick off further technology or compliance requirements.

The key benefits of upgrading your Kentico website.

Regardless of how sophisticated your digital estate may be, upgrading your website can be daunting, and it’s often tempting to stick with your current setup. However, ensuring your website runs on the latest version of your CMS and digital experience is essential and has many benefits.

Typically, it’ll enable better compatibility with modern devices, browsers, and software applications. This enhances accessibility and usability, enabling you to reach a wider audience and maximise your online presence.

By upgrading your website you’ll get:

Improved performance

By upgrading to the latest version of Kentico, you’ll benefit from improved performance, having a site that is not only quicker for users to browse but will also have SEO benefits and improve user experience, ultimately driving business growth and revenue.

Efficiency across the board

By staying updated with the latest tech, further development enhancements are generally faster to implement. With Kentico’s updated UI, your website admins will be able to make changes significantly quicker and without the frustrations of using an outdated and inevitably slower CMS.

Enhanced security & bug fixes

With each new release, Kentico introduces security patches and updates to address bugs and vulnerabilities discovered in previous versions.

Access to new features

Migrating to the latest version of Kentico allows you to leverage the latest platform features and functionalities that may not have been available in older versions, allowing you to enhance your marketing effectiveness.

You can find a history of changes and the new features that have been added here.

Need Kentico advice? We're here to help Get in touch

What’s the latest version of Kentico?

Xperience by Kentico is the latest and flagship version of Kentico's line of content and digital experience management platforms. With a hybrid, headless Digital Experience Platform (DXP), it’s designed to help businesses to maximise their ROI.

Unlike previous versions of Kentico (Kentico 12, Kentico 13 etc.), Xperience by Kentico doesn’t follow the same trend and is not Kentico 14.

Instead of major version upgrades every couple of years, Kentico will now provide continuous updates in the form of monthly refreshes, providing regular new features that present new opportunities for your website.

What does this mean for you?

By removing some of the resource overheads on security patches and platform updates, you can focus your development budget on your key business needs.

With less major platform releases, it helps businesses have autonomy over their website roadmap. Often full rebuilds become a necessity to avoid being version-locked. If that pressure is reduced, other factors can play a leading role in the decision to rebuild such as launching a new brand or marketing ambitions outweighing the original site specification.

Changes with Xperience by Kentico.

This latest version introduces some big changes from previous versions of Kentico Xperience and provides a smaller, more focused set of features.

The back-end CMS has been completely rebuilt and as such, your existing version will need to be migrated onto Xperience by Kentico.

Xperience by Kentico also introduces the concept of channels. Instead of being focused primarily on providing content for a single website, Xperience now houses re-usable content that can be shared across websites, microsites, social media platforms, emails, apps and other third-party integrations, each designated as its own channel.

Multichannel CMS

Digital Marketing with AI

Maximum Flexibility

Marketing & Content Tools

Smart Insights

Personalisation

Key considerations for approaching your Kentico upgrade.

Unlike some previous upgrades of Kentico, moving to Xperience by Kentico is a significant change in the platform’s configuration and will require a rebuild.

As such, it’s worth looking at this as an opportunity to make key changes to your website, and not just updating the technology to get the most value out of the project.

Kentico helps developers deliver more efficient migrations from previous versions or other platforms such as Sitecore through its Ultimate Migration Toolkit. Described as “a communication bridge between your old platform and Xperience by Kentico”, the toolkit is designed to help with automating the migration process, saving time, money and valuable data.

When upgrading to a new version of Kentico, it’s crucial to undertake some key checks and measures to safeguard your site and ensure a smooth transition.

Our technical consultants will deliver the functional aspects of upgrading such as:

Backing up your site including files and databases
Reviewing system requirements and hosting environment
Checking technical compatibility across elements such as third-party integrations
Building a staging environment to provide a test site for your team and ours during the upgrade
Planning the upgrade process
Reviewing and planning the content migration
Optimising performance, tracking and other site requirements

You’ll also want to consider:

Do you understand the latest platform features and opportunity?
Will upgrading still meet your technology and marketing requirements?
Do you have technical SEO expertise to support the migration?
Does your current content align with the new website structure and how much can be automated vs manually loaded prior to launch?

This is just a snippet of the key questions you need to answer when approaching a new website project or major upgrade. We cover a more extensive list within our Perfect Brief content.