Kentico 12 or 13? Now is the time to decide what comes next
If your website is running on Kentico 12, it is already out of support.
If you're running Kentico Xperience 13, support ends on 31 December 2026.
That doesn't mean your website will suddenly stop working, but it does mean organisations running these platforms need a plan, particularly where the website is business-critical, contains significant custom development or integrates with other systems.
The bigger question isn't "How do we upgrade Kentico?"
It's: Is our current platform still the right platform for what we need next?
Is Kentico 12 still supported?
No. Kentico's official product lifecycle states that technical support for Kentico 12 MVC ended at the end of 2022, while support for Kentico 12 Portal Engine ended at the end of 2023.
If you're still running Kentico 12, that doesn't automatically mean you need to panic and commission a new website tomorrow.
It does mean you should understand the condition of your existing platform, its dependencies and the risks associated with continuing to operate it.
When does Kentico Xperience 13 support end?
Official support for Kentico Xperience 13 ends on 31 December 2026.
During 2026, Kentico continues to provide technical support, but releases are limited to security hotfixes. From 1 January 2027, Kentico says it will stop providing support, maintenance, updates, releases, hotfixes, patches and security repairs for Xperience 13.
For organisations still running Xperience 13, now is the time to decide what comes next rather than waiting until the deadline forces the decision.
Do we need to rebuild our Kentico website?
Not necessarily. End of support creates a technology trigger, but it shouldn't dictate your solution.
Before deciding whether to upgrade, migrate or rebuild, look at the website as a whole.
Ask:
Does the current website still support your business objectives?
Does it meet the needs of your users?
How much bespoke functionality has accumulated?
Which integrations are still required?
How easy is the CMS for your marketing and content teams to use?
Are accessibility, performance or SEO holding you back?
What technical debt has accumulated?
What are you currently spending on CMS licensing, hosting, support and maintenance and does that still represent good value?
What budget is available for the next phase, and would it deliver more value through an upgrade, migration or wider rebuild?
What will you need from your digital platform over the next three to five years?
If the answer is simply that you have a good website sitting on an ageing platform, the solution may be primarily technical.
If the website itself is no longer doing what the organisation needs, investing heavily in recreating it exactly as it is may be a false economy.
End of support can be an opportunity to fix the right problem, rather than simply replace old technology with new technology.
What are the options for a Kentico 12 or 13 website?
Broadly, there are four routes. The right one will depend not only on your technical requirements, but also on budget, licensing costs, ongoing support and the total cost of owning the platform over the next few years.
1. Remain on the existing platform temporarily
There may be a legitimate business reason to remain on your existing implementation while preparing for a longer-term change.
If so, that should be a conscious, risk-informed decision, with a clear understanding of the cost and risk of maintaining an unsupported platform, rather than simply postponing the decision.
2. Move to Xperience by Kentico
For organisations happy with Kentico and its direction, remaining within the Kentico ecosystem may be the natural choice.
Kentico provides migration tooling designed to support organisations moving from previous Kentico Xperience versions to Xperience by Kentico.
But before committing to migration, consider the full commercial picture. What will the new platform cost to license, implement, host and support? And does that investment represent good value for the functionality you actually need?
A migration is also an opportunity to challenge what should, and shouldn't, be carried into the new platform.
3. Move to another CMS
End of support is also a natural point to ask whether Kentico is still the right CMS for your organisation.
For example, Umbraco is open source and built on Microsoft .NET, making it an option worth considering for organisations that want to stay within the .NET ecosystem while reassessing platform requirements and ongoing costs.
For some organisations, moving away from a commercial CMS licence can change the economics of the platform, but licence cost shouldn't be considered in isolation. Implementation, hosting, support, upgrades, integrations and internal resource all contribute to total cost of ownership.
The right CMS should therefore be based on functionality, architecture, integrations, internal capabilities, budget and long-term digital strategy, rather than licensing alone.
4. Rebuild around your future requirements
Sometimes the right answer isn't really an upgrade or migration at all.
If your organisation, audiences, services or digital requirements have changed significantly since the website was originally built, this could be the opportunity to rethink:
information architecture
user journeys
accessibility
analytics
SEO and AI search visibility
CRO and conversion journeys
integrations
content governance
performance
personalisation
how the website supports wider business goals
Crucially, consider where your available budget will create the most value. If you're already facing significant migration or redevelopment costs, it may make more sense to invest in a platform and experience designed around your next five years rather than recreating today's website on newer technology.
In that situation, the CMS becomes one part of a wider digital and investment strategy.
What should you review before making a decision?
We'd recommend looking at five areas:
Technology: Understand your architecture, hosting, integrations, custom code, dependencies and accumulated technical debt.
Content: Look at how successfully your marketing and content teams can manage the site. Years of development can leave even good CMS implementations unnecessarily complicated.
User experience: Review navigation, search, key journeys and accessibility against what your audiences need today, rather than what they needed when the site was originally designed.
Performance: Understand how effectively the website attracts, engages and converts users, including SEO, analytics, performance and conversion.
Future requirements: Most importantly, define what your digital platform needs to achieve over the next three to five years.
Only then should you decide what technology sits underneath it.
Don't let the deadline make the decision for you
If you're on Kentico 12, official support has already ended. If you're on Xperience 13, the deadline is 31 December 2026.
Neither situation means you should rush into a rebuild, but doing nothing simply reduces the time available to make a good decision.