Sitecore vs. Umbraco – introduction

Author: Anders Dreyer | Posted: 9. March 2010 19:03 6

In the last couple of years, a number of bloggers and journalists have given their take on the comparison between the two Content Management Systems – Sitecore and Umbraco. Both of them were founded in Denmark about 10 years ago, and have since grown and have had much success, both nationally and abroad. So a comparison is very much in order.

So why have I decided to share my opinion?

Well, the main reason is that many of the other comparisons have been quite superficial, and I would like to give a more detailed and complete description of where the two systems differ. The comparison will be a bit long, but – I hope – more fulfilling.

My qualifications for making a comparison…

I work as Head of Development at 1508 A/S, a Digital Design Agency specializing in implementing excellent design and user experiences in both Sitecore and Umbraco. We have implemented large scale solutions on both platforms and have a lot of experience with both systems. About 75% of our CMS solutions are based on Sitecore, the rest uses Umbraco. (And - just for the record – this blog post is my own opinion, and should not be considered an official statement from 1508).

Janus Boyes blog post…

One of the bloggers who has blogged about Sitecore vs. Umbraco is Janus Boye (check out http://www.jboye.com/blog/). Janus wrote a post headlining “Why pay for Sitecore when you can get Umbraco for free?”. My first thought was “ok, so he thinks Umbraco is just as good as Sitecore, and can see no reason why anyone should pay the license fee”. However, if you read the entire post, this is not the case. He actually advises his readers to look at which system will meet the requirements most efficiently. I totally agree with this advice. Some of the people I’ve discussed the article with, didn’t read the entire piece (or merely the headline), and had a wrong view of Janus’ opinion. Hopefully the headline will match the content better next time.

My comparison is mainly from a developer point of view, but I’ll try to keep it fairly simple.

I’ll publish the complete comparison in 3 parts, and the topics will be as follows:

Part 1: