Umbraco 7 is the longest running version of umbraco having first been released in 2014 and not superseded until Umbraco 8’s release in February of 2019. Having remained the main version of Umbraco for nearly 6 years lots of websites and custom applications have been built using it.
Migrating away from Umbraco 7 can be a daunting task, especially for companies who have invested time and money building custom integrations for the platform. We ourselves at Appcentric have been working with Umbraco since 2013 and have used version 7 to build all manner of implementations including headless CMSs to power native mobile apps, integrations into CRMs, and even full logistics and warehousing systems.
What Does Umbraco 7 EOL mean for my site
Your site will continue to function beyond the 30th of September, however you will no longer receive security patches and therefore you run the risk of being compromised. In addition you may have compliance issues depending on the nature of your business.
As time goes on your site will become more outdated and eventually a decision will need to be made on if you upgrade to a later version of Umbraco or migrate to another CMS.
What does the Upgrade path look like
Umbraco 7 builds can be split roughly into two categories, basic CMS websites and solutions with lots of custom integrations and backend extensions.
If your solution is the former, it should be relatively easy to migrate to Umbraco 11 which will give you a clear upgrade path to Umbraco 13 when it is released, offering your business long term support until 2026.
For solutions with more custom requirements whilst the upgrade path is complex there is no need to throw away all of your code and start again.
There are two main issues for customers migrating custom solutions in Umbraco 7 to Umbraco 11. Firstly Umbraco 10 was built using .NET Core rather than the .NET 4.7.2 framework that version 7 is built on. This offers the benefit of better performance and the ability to host in linux environments meaning costs for hosting can be considerably cheaper. It does however mean refactoring all of your code to .NET Core.
The second issue is that Umbraco 8 dropped support for Angular.JS in favour of Angular2+. This means lots of code refactoring in order to move all of those custom backend sections onto later versions of Umbraco.
What to do Next
Umbraco is still a great platform and if you are happy working with it there is no need to migrate to another provider. It is important to engage with a trusted agency to investigate how best to migrate onto the later versions of Umbraco and benefit from the Long Term Support Umbraco 13 will offer when it is released in late 2023.
At Appcentric our developers have been working with Umbraco for over a decade so we are well positioned to offer any advice should you need it, and if you happen to be in or around Birmingham feel free to drop in for a coffee and free consultation.
