Key takeaways

• Umbraco CMS is open-source: the core platform is free to download, use, and modify. The source code is publicly available on GitHub.
• Open-source means no licence fee for the CMS software itself. Costs come from hosting, development, and optional commercial add-ons.
• You own the codebase and the data. There is no vendor dependency for your content storage. You can self-host on any infrastructure that supports .NET.
• Umbraco is built on ASP.NET Core and runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. The community is one of the largest in the CMS space, with an active forum, Discord, and global event (Codegarden).

What is Umbraco, and what does open source mean?

Umbraco describes itself as the world's most flexible open-source .NET CMS. Both of those qualifiers matter. Open-source means the code is publicly available and free to use, without a software licence fee. .NET means it is built on Microsoft's ASP.NET Core framework, runs on modern .NET infrastructure, and integrates naturally with Microsoft technology stacks. Here is what that means in practice for Australian organisations evaluating CMS options.

How much does Umbraco cost if the software is free?

The Umbraco CMS core is free. There is no per-seat licence, no content item limit, and no annual fee for the base platform. This removes a significant cost component that enterprise CMS platforms typically include.

The costs that remain are hosting (your own server or cloud infrastructure, or Umbraco Cloud), development (building and maintaining your Umbraco implementation), and optional commercial add-ons from Umbraco and the marketplace (Umbraco Engage for personalisation, Umbraco Commerce for ecommerce, Umbraco Workflow for content governance).

Who owns an Umbraco website and its content?

When you build on Umbraco, the code that runs your website belongs to you. You can modify it, extend it, and host it wherever you choose. If Umbraco as a company were to change direction, you would still have the source code of the version you built on and could continue running and modifying it.

This is the core ownership proposition of open-source: you are not dependent on a vendor's continued support or pricing decisions for the software itself. Your content lives in your database, on your hosting infrastructure.

What are you responsible for when you run Umbraco?

Open-source also means that maintenance and security are your responsibility. Umbraco releases security patches and updates, but applying them to your implementation is your task (or your partner's). You also need to manage your hosting infrastructure, apply server patches, and monitor your deployment.

• Applying Umbraco updates and security patches is your responsibility
• Hosting infrastructure management falls to your team or your hosting provider
• Third-party package updates and compatibility checks are your responsibility
• Umbraco Cloud removes most of this operational burden with managed hosting and automated updates

What does the Umbraco community give you?

One of the practical benefits of open-source is the community it creates. Umbraco has one of the largest CMS community ecosystems in the world, with thousands of packages in the Umbraco Marketplace, an active forum and Discord server, and an annual developer conference (Codegarden) in Denmark.

For Australian organisations, this means there is a significant body of existing knowledge, packages, and shared solutions available when building on Umbraco. Problems are rarely unique, and solutions are often already documented in the community.

How do you plan Umbraco upgrades?

Umbraco aligns its release cadence with the Microsoft .NET release schedule, which Microsoft publishes years in advance. Long-Term Support (LTS) versions of Umbraco receive support for an extended period. This predictability makes upgrade planning straightforward. Australian organisations can plan their Umbraco upgrades alongside the .NET upgrade cycle rather than responding to unpredictable CMS vendor decisions.

If you are weighing Umbraco against a commercial CMS, see how Dapth builds Umbraco websites, or read our Kentico vs Umbraco comparison.

About Dapth

Dapth is your Perth digital consultancy, building connected digital systems from websites and intranets to applications, software, ERP and AI tools. For more than 15 years we have helped WA businesses, government agencies and organisations unlock advantages like streamlined workflows, increased efficiency, cost savings, new revenue and more powerful marketing.

We start with your organisation, not the technology: your users, your operations and your objectives. Then we connect everything across four areas:

• Digital Consultancy: Digital strategy, service design and UI and UX design that map how your customers, people and systems should work together, before anything is built.
• Customer Experience: Websites and digital experience platforms on Xperience by Kentico (Kentico Gold Partner), Sitefinity, Umbraco and Payload CMS, plus ecommerce.
• Employee Experience: Intranets and employee portals on Microsoft SharePoint, and workflow automation that takes the double handling out of everyday work.
• Operational Systems: ERP with Odoo as our primary platform (we are an Odoo partner), plus custom software, apps and the integrations that connect them.