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Kentico CMS Cadence Cuts Migration Risk

Kentico CMS Updates
Kentico CMS Updates

Why Boring Matters

Kentico’s September 2025 hotfix and migration guidance didn’t trend on LinkedIn. But here’s the truth: boring saves budgets.With Xperience 13 hitting end-of-life in 2026, every organization running it is on a countdown clock.

The hotfix signals two things: stability in the present and a nudge toward planning migrations now, not in panic later.


The Migration Timeline Dilemma

  • Migrate in 2025: Predictable costs, less risk, more vendor support.

  • Delay until 2026: Rising instability, unsupported features, premium consultant rates.

One university IT leader told me, “We thought we’d save by waiting. Instead, we paid double for emergency help when systems broke during admissions season.”


The Hidden Costs of Delay

  • Staff churn: Engineers don’t want to babysit unsupported platforms.

  • Emergency spend: Crisis consultants cost 2–3x more.

  • Downtime: Even a 2-hour outage during enrollment or ecommerce can burn millions.


The Kentico Ecosystem: Strength in Familiarity

Kentico has always thrived in the mid-market sweet spot: organizations too complex for WordPress but not ready for the cost or complexity of Adobe or Sitecore. Its ecosystem includes a strong network of regional implementation partners across Europe and North America who specialize in digital agencies, higher education, and membership-driven organizations.


This ecosystem brings a pragmatic advantage: partner familiarity. Many Kentico-certified agencies have been building with the platform for over a decade, giving customers a deep bench of experienced developers, ready-made modules, and migration tooling. While not as vast as Sitecore’s or Optimizely’s partner networks, Kentico’s ecosystem is known for responsiveness and tight community support, something that often matters more to mid-sized organizations balancing budgets and timelines.


Mid-Market Adoption Trends

  • Stick with Kentico: Many membership orgs and universities value its all-in-one simplicity.

  • Shift headless: Mid-market B2B firms often migrate to Contentful or Sanity to modernize.

  • Hybrid: Some are running Kentico alongside a headless CMS during transition.


What the Board Needs to Ask

  • What’s our risk tolerance if we stay on Xperience 13 past support?

  • Do we have budget set aside for migration before 2026?

  • Which migration path (Kentico Xperience by Kentico vs. composable CMS) aligns with strategy?


A Leader’s Migration Playbook

  1. Build a risk burn-down chart for the next 18 months.

  2. Map dependencies: CRM, ERP, and ecommerce touchpoints.

  3. Plan phased migration — don’t wait until “big bang” 2026.

  4. Set communications plan: migration anxiety is cultural as well as technical.


The Big Lesson

Hotfixes are boring. Migrations are stressful. But planning ahead means you control the narrative — not the system.


Question for you: What’s the one unknown that keeps you awake during CMS migrations?


👉 At ecm.dev, we run Migration Control Rooms with playbooks, QA, and comms to make migrations predictable.


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