Sitecore Experience Manager vs. Umbraco CMS

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Sitecore Experience Manager
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Sitecore Experience Manager is an enterprise-grade CMS competing with Oracle WebCenter, IBM Web Content Manager and Adobe. It presents a fairly wide and comprehensive swath of inbuilt features. In Sitecore WCM editing takes place from within the page with its inline editor, allowing editors and authors to create display rules and content within the context of the page in an integrated process. It allows the creation of blogs, wikis, polls, integrates with social media, and is mobile…N/A
Umbraco CMS
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Umbraco is an open-source .NET Core CMS with over 700,000 active installs worldwide and with more than 200,000 active community members. It was first released on February 16th, 2005, and is still to this day an open-source project backed by a commercial company. To ensure Umbraco is always running the latest technology, the company has aligned with Microsoft's .NET release schedule to always have the Umbraco CMS…
$0
Pricing
Sitecore Experience ManagerUmbraco CMS
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Umbraco Free
$0
Umbraco Cloud Starter
$45
per month
Umbraco Heartcore Mini
$49
per month
Umbraco Heartcore Starter
$239
per month
Umbraco Cloud Standard
$283
per month
Umbraco Cloud Professional
$758
per month
Umbraco Heartcore Professional
$999
per month
Umbraco Professional
$12,000
per year
Umbraco Enterprise
Flexible pricing
per year
Umbraco Cloud Enterprise
Flexible pricing
per month
Umbraco Heartcore Enterprise
Flexible pricing
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Sitecore Experience ManagerUmbraco CMS
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe Umbraco CMS and all of its core features are the same across all plans. The paid on-premise plans include support, onboarding, licenses to add-on products (Umbraco Forms) as well as a discount on developer training courses. Umbraco Cloud is the CMS hosted on Azure Cloud servers with automated upgrades, unlimited hosting, and smooth deployments. All features can be found on Umbraco.com. Umbraco Heartcore is the managed Headless SaaS version of Umbraco.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Sitecore Experience ManagerUmbraco CMS
Considered Both Products
Sitecore Experience Manager
Chose Sitecore Experience Manager
Based on my perspective these are the main reasons for choosing Sitecore over others.
  • It is a one-stop shop for all customer engagement platforms with a lot of developer communities over the web.
  • It is a .NET based platform as there are a lot of .Net developers in the market.
Chose Sitecore Experience Manager
Of all the competitors listed above, Sitecore owned, by far, the best combination of power, easy-of-use, and extensibility. It easily outperformed the other paid-for CMS systems. Its power is especially noticeable in its ability to handle very complex workflows, security …
Chose Sitecore Experience Manager
Every product has a cost window it fits in. Umbraco is perfect for small to mid-enterprise implementations. However Sitecore is more stable from a developement standpoint.
Umbraco CMS
Chose Umbraco CMS
The performance of Umbraco is as good as Episerver. The back office in Umbraco is cleaner and more intuitive than Episerver. Sitecore is a good CMS for large projects, but the learning curve for developers and editors is steep.
Chose Umbraco CMS
  • The learning curve to develop a web application is very short. The time to market is then insignificant.
  • Umbraco is free and open source.
Chose Umbraco CMS
Umbraco provides the best bang-for-the-buck CMS option on a .NET platform for those that cannot afford Sitecore. It is much friendlier to use than Ektron, is free to use, has commercial grade plugins that are not overly expensive, and provides the functionality that most …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Sitecore Experience ManagerUmbraco CMS
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Sitecore Experience Manager
9.0
19 Ratings
12% above category average
Umbraco CMS
1.0
11 Ratings
156% below category average
Role-based user permissions9.019 Ratings1.011 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Sitecore Experience Manager
8.0
17 Ratings
4% above category average
Umbraco CMS
5.3
10 Ratings
37% below category average
API8.016 Ratings5.59 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.014 Ratings5.19 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Sitecore Experience Manager
8.4
19 Ratings
10% above category average
Umbraco CMS
1.6
11 Ratings
130% below category average
WYSIWYG editor8.019 Ratings1.011 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness9.018 Ratings1.011 Ratings
Admin section9.018 Ratings1.011 Ratings
Page templates8.016 Ratings1.011 Ratings
Library of website themes8.06 Ratings1.010 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design8.016 Ratings1.010 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.017 Ratings1.011 Ratings
Form generator9.017 Ratings5.99 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Sitecore Experience Manager
8.4
18 Ratings
14% above category average
Umbraco CMS
3.6
11 Ratings
68% below category average
Content taxonomy9.016 Ratings1.011 Ratings
SEO support8.014 Ratings1.010 Ratings
Bulk management8.012 Ratings4.98 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.017 Ratings5.210 Ratings
Community / comment management9.014 Ratings6.010 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Sitecore Experience ManagerUmbraco CMS
Small Businesses
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Score 9.8 out of 10
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Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 9.5 out of 10
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Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Tridion
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Sitecore Experience ManagerUmbraco CMS
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(27 ratings)
1.0
(11 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(4 ratings)
4.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
2.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(1 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
4.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Sitecore Experience ManagerUmbraco CMS
Likelihood to Recommend
Sitecore
Great for companies that are looking to create customized, tailored content solutions and be willing to put in the hard work and effort to maximize the value out of the tool. If your company is just looking for very basic content management without all the bells and whistles, I'd recommend looking elsewhere for less [money].
Read full review
Umbraco
Umbraco CMS is the perfect tool for a company that is looking to keep their website updated. The simple to use tools and templates means updating and creating new pages is easy. The WYSIWYG editor is a nice feature, however, for accessibility, there should be some more guidance on what is suitable to be used on the CMS.
Read full review
Pros
Sitecore
  • Personalisation of advertising banners based upon knowledge of the customer, like location or previous searches enables us to target customers with products and offers that they are more likely to engage with, which has been done to good effect.
  • The use of Sitecore for content management enables the business and design team to perform changes to things, like images, content and page structure, which would otherwise have required a code release, which is costly in terms of man power.
  • The A/B testing in Sitecore is good because it allows us to statistically verify minor changes to the site - like advert changes or component ordering on the page - as to whether or not they positively impact conversion.
Read full review
Umbraco
  • Quick to learn. For most if cases, developer needs to know Razor coding.
  • Doesn't require back-end programming.
  • Has build in users management (developers, content managers) and members management consoles (users of the site).
  • Clear admin tool (especially in version 7)
  • Fast.
  • Creating code from scratch, so it is easier to create clean code.
Read full review
Cons
Sitecore
  • Sitecore is Customer Engagement Platform. It comes with lots of features (e.g. Authoring, Analytics, personalization, A/B Test, Webforms for marketers etc), But, most of them are not being used by many clients. If you are really looking for just CMS (only authoring and publishing), then I don't think Sitecore is a way to go.
  • You need to have a strong Sitecore certified developer base to manage the Sitecore platform (if you are using all features). It's the same case with others. But, finding a Sitecore certified (costs $$) developer is tough in the market. Now the market is growing (thanks to Sitecore promotional events) and Sitecore is gaining popularity, It may be easy to find such developers in the future. If you want to leverage most out of the Sitecore community you need to be a Sitecore certified developer.
  • Sitecore comes with lots of built-in features and marketplace components. I feel this puts in a little tricky situation. It gives an opportunity for a normal developer to use some of the free marketplace module, which may or may not be supported in a future version of Sitecore. which may put the entire platform in risk to upgrade to latest Sitecore version. You need to have a proper process to control and validate the marketplace components before using them.
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Umbraco
  • Speed for older sites - Umbraco content can load slowly if you have thousands of pages of content. Of course, this would not be a problem for simpler websites
  • Complexity - since the product is free out-of-the-box, it will take technical expertise to get Umbraco setup properly
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Likelihood to Renew
Sitecore
Sitecore has proven that it can deliver on its promise of a robust, reliable enterprise CMS solution with plenty of features. Also, they keep updating it with more and better features. Now that we are highly trained on it we have started on getting the most out of it and we plan to keep doing more of that in the future.
Read full review
Umbraco
No answers on this topic
Usability
Sitecore
With any platform that offers so much capability, usability will naturally be more challenging. Sitecore does an admirable job and made massive strides in version 8, but at some times offers too many ways to achieve the same task allows users to sometimes take a path less efficient than the preferred path.
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Umbraco
Many end users will be overwhelmed with the admin interface. Some common functions are buried in menus
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Sitecore
No answers on this topic
Umbraco
Occasionally, errors will appear in the admin that make it impossible to work without developer support.
Read full review
Performance
Sitecore
No answers on this topic
Umbraco
Working in the admin panel (adding / reviewing / editing content) is very slow. The public facing site speed is dependent on what the pages are doing and how well the code was written (whether it is optimized for speed).
Read full review
Support Rating
Sitecore
Sitecore Support is very knowledgeable and helpful. We have raised a number of issues with them and they rarely fail to come up with an acceptable solution.
Read full review
Umbraco
Support for Umbraco-owned paid plugins is nonexistent.
Read full review
Online Training
Sitecore
Sitecore captures and remembers every single interaction your customers and prospects have in any part of the system, allowing you to build comprehensive, ever-learning profiles of each individual. From email marketing, to social media, to online shopping, Sitecore remembers where each interaction left off so you can automatically continue the conversation. Sitecore helps you manage your content for each and every experience your customers enjoy. Customize what content you want and the system will take care of how it's displayed.
Read full review
Umbraco
Online training is often based on older versions of the platform. So, you'll have to fill in the gaps on your own.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Sitecore
Make sure you work with a partner that can help you take advantage of the entire platform. Specifically we see a lot of customers not taking advantage of Sitecore DMS and thus missing a huge opportunity. Sitecore is a platform that is meant to be constantly optimized and improved upon.
Read full review
Umbraco
Spend the time to wireframe the content structure prior to diving in. This helps speed the process of implementation and it serves as documentation for end users.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Sitecore
The decision to select Sitecore was not ultimately mine, but the fact that we were able to leverage in-house Microsoft .Net (C#) experience on a platform that had a library of extensions, but also allowed us to customize and keep private our confidential IP has been a big help. When you see a SharePoint site or a Drupal site you can usually tell "oh this is a MS SharePoint site", but with Sitecore the ability to customize and have different views even different components based on device type makes Sitecore a clear winner.
Read full review
Umbraco
Umbraco's templating is far superior than WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, but it's update process is WAY behind those platforms. The release schedule of Umbraco is way to often and most releases are to fix something missed in the previous release and not an improvement or new feature of the CMS
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Scalability
Sitecore
No answers on this topic
Umbraco
Without significant development, the product does not scale well.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Sitecore
  • ROI depends so much on implementation. Its would be difficult to comment in a positive or negative regarding CMS product to direct ROI. A non-technical user would be surprised at what a basic installation of Sitecore looks like. "Hello World" comes to mind. With that in mind we can look at two things, Sitecore Support and Sitecore Partners.
  • Certified Internal Developers and Sitecore Support: This depends on the qualifications of your existing departments regarding implementing a enterprise CMS. No experience to some experience, this is a no brainer, rigorously vet top and middle partners and hire one to lead this effort. If your experienced still hire a partner and vet them but hire a middle to small partner and have them help, not lead.
  • "Sitecore Window": You could equate Sitecore in some implementation as throwing expensive parts at a car problem. If your business requirements and data consumption needs are not within this cost window then in the end on paper it will be difficult to see ROI or that there just wasn't a return. Then it will be time to look at other lower cost alternatives The initial cost is just the start. Over engineering and expensive horizontal integration partners can cost someone a promotion or job.
  • If your content workflows are complex, sites rendering data requirements are large and performance and scalability are paramount. Sitecore should be in your top 3.
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Umbraco
  • Has helped us to create more engaging pages that push people to complete the online forms
  • We have seen more people buy from us since we launched our new look website
  • We can easily update the content without waiting for the development team to make changes
Read full review
ScreenShots

Umbraco CMS Screenshots

Screenshot of Umbraco 8 backoffice UIScreenshot of Umbraco 8 side by side multilingual editingScreenshot of Umbraco 8 Content AppsScreenshot of Umbraco Cloud project overviewScreenshot of Umbraco Cloud environment overview