The latest in our series where popular CMS platforms go head-to-head, our next contest sees WordPress go up against Umbraco, two fundamentally different content management systems that each offer their own approach to website management.

WordPress, widely adopted across the web, boasts an enormous ecosystem of support and integrations to benefit from. Umbraco, meanwhile, is a flexible .NET-based CMS favoured by organisations with more technical or enterprise requirements.

Differences aside, we’ll be looking at both from a marketing perspective, taking into account a range of capabilities marketers can use to support their activity with, from SEO and integrations to scalability and ease of use. Let’s see which one is best for business below.

Quick Links

• Security & Maintenance
• Marketing Team Independence
• Performance
• SEO Capability
• Content Marketing
• Integrations
• Ease of Use
• Scalability

Comparing Umbraco vs. WordPress

Which CMS you choose depends on your needs and goals. Over the course of this section, we’ll put the features of both up against each to see whether it’s Umbraco or WordPress that can achieve your goals more effectively.

Security & Maintenance

WordPress

The platform’s popularity means there’s a large ecosystem at play, with core, theme and plugin updates a regular occurrence. As such, security needs to be actively managed. The wide range of security solutions can safeguard your site, but could be a struggle if you lack resource. If this is the case, then managed WordPress hosting – where an external team handles the management for you – can reduce the maintenance burden.

Umbraco

Umbraco has a strong security architecture going for it, so there’s lots in the way of permissions, authentication and additional integration. That said, updates and development typically require greater technical involvement. But if you’re a large organisation with dev team muscle to flex, then Umbraco’s need for expertise will be a strong fit.  

Verdict

Umbraco comes out on top here. Generally, WordPress’ security concerns tend to be a bit exaggerated, but if you have the resource to really strengthen your security, Umbraco offers plenty of robust solutions. 

Marketing Team Independence

WordPress

WordPress’ intuitive design and array of features give marketing teams plenty of control over their content. It’s easy to publish content, create landing pages, optimise SEO and install marketing integrations without roping in dev teams to do it for them. If it’s quick changes that need to be made, WordPress empowers marketing teams to adapt to incoming news and trends with ease.

Umbraco

With its strong editing capabilities and highly configurable options, Umbraco offers plenty of adaptability. However, more complex changes might need the support of developers to carry out, which can slow up any reactive activity that needs actioning quickly. Its dependence on governance only creates more red tape for marketing to navigate, which makes Umbraco less hands on than most marketing teams would probably prefer. 

Verdict

WordPress wins this round. Marketers don’t want to wait for developers to take care of every single marketing change when they can handle it themselves with WordPress.

Performance

WordPress

A large degree of WordPress’ performance hinges on hosting, plugins and implementation – which in turn hinges on the quality of the hosting and plugins you choose. Though there are plenty of options to choose from, some due diligence will be needed to make sure you opt for something reputable. WordPress also has extensive caching and optimisation options, such as CDN computability, to help with site speed. Overall, when it’s properly configured, WordPress’ delivers quality performance across the board.

Umbraco

From a performance perspective, Umbraco unsurprisingly favours the developer with experience. With greater control over underlying implementations, it’s comparatively more sophisticated, and offers strong performance potential – but it’s less user friendly for marketing teams wanting to do it themselves.

Verdict

The two are tied here. Implementation matters more than CMS name when it comes to comparing website performance. A website that’s poorly built on a more reputable CMS will still be a poorly built website. Likewise, an optimally built website on a comparatively slower CMS can perform if everything has been properly implemented.

SEO Capability

WordPress

With an extensive SEO plugin ecosystem, WordPress is primed for organic search excellence. On top of that, you’ve got a high level of control over metadata, URLs and structured data and plenty of content optimisation capabilities – so expanding functionality as you grow is a simple, intuitive process.   

Umbraco

Boasting strong technical SEO capabilities of its own, Umbraco gives developers metadata control, features built-in URL tracking and can dynamically generate sitemaps and robots.txt files to name just a few. It’s highly customisable too, but implementation can tend to depend more heavily on how the site is built.   

Verdict

In terms of accessibility, WordPress is the better option, especially for marketing teams looking to actively manage and expand their SEO strategy themselves.

Content Marketing

WordPress

Originally built for publishing purposes, WordPress’ blogging prowess is well established at this point. As such, its editorial capabilities are strong, allowing non-technical teams to create content with ease, supported by a huge ecosystem of content tools to aid with the likes of SEO, workflow, analytics and reach.

Umbraco

Umbraco’s first-party add-on, Umbraco Engage, offers a suite of content marketing tools to help professionals know their content is driving results. From A/B testing and customer profiling to in-app reporting, it’s an add-on tailored to websites with complex content architectures structured around bespoke business requirements.

Verdict

Since Umbraco caters to specialised (and larger) businesses, WordPress’ more generalised approach makes it well suited to businesses where blogging, thought leadership and organic content have a central role to play in acquisition.

Integrations

WordPress

Speaking of content marketing, WordPress’ considerable ecosystem of integrations covers the likes of CRM, analytics, email marketing, Ecommerce, social media, lead generation and marketing automation. For the sheer number of available integrations, the CMS offers near-limitless potential for optimisation.

Umbraco

As you’d expect, Umbraco requires more developer involvement to benefit from integrations. But with its strong API capabilities, readiness with enterprise technology stacks and custom integration suitability, there is no doubt about its potential for optimisation.

Verdict

The breadth of WordPress’ ready-made integrations makes it the better choice for marketers, but with the necessary resource and expertise, Umbraco is most definitely powerful in its own right.

Ease of Use

WordPress

We’ve talked about WordPress’ intuitive content management already, but it has plenty of other user-friendly features going for it. It’s easy for marketers to make content changes, and the large ecosystem of themes and plugins. And even if you do run into issues, there’s a vast array of training and support resources to help you out.  

Umbraco

When it comes to editing content, Umbraco is a clean and marketer-friendly experience, with a highly configurable CMS. However, any implementation is best left to developers, so non-technical teams should look at other options elsewhere.  

Verdict

The lower barrier to entry makes WordPress the better choice for marketing teams wanting a plug-in-and-play-style CMS.

Scalability

WordPress

The platform’s extensive hosting options gives users greater control over their site’s hosting environment, creating the right conditions for scaling as and when a business needs to. For ambitious websites, WordPress can support vast amounts of traffic, while its multisite capabilities suit businesses making moves into different regions and markets requiring different languages.

Umbraco

With its strong enterprise capabilities, Umbraco can help the complex websites of large organisations scale in line with their goals. This is especially true if your business has invested in and built applications using Microsoft .NET technologies.

Verdict

Credit where it’s due, Umbraco’s scalability in enterprise-specific use cases is great for large businesses. But don’t discount WordPress, which can scale considerably further than many prospective users would assume. We’re giving this one to WordPress.

Choosing Umbraco or WordPress

We’d Recommend WordPress If…

WordPress is highly suited to businesses with a focus on marketing, SEO and content. Thanks to its flexibility and lower barrier to entry, SMEs and businesses in need of extensive integrations would also benefit from using it as their CMS. As for teams wanting greater independence when it comes to content changes and site updates, WordPress’ intuitive design delivers the hands-on, dev-free capabilities to do that.

We’d Recommend Umbraco If…

Umbraco, on the other hand, is a better fit for larger organisations with extensive developer resource who have the capacity to create highly bespoke digital experiences. The platform provides a better environment for Microsoft .NET applications, as well as complex architectures requiring strict access and permissions.

Umbraco to WordPress migration

Currently using Umbraco but looking to migrate to WordPress? We can help you make the change to its user-friendly, marketing-focused setup. Experts in WordPress site builds, our team can deliver a continuously-improving website that’s fast, affordable and secure, optimised by a tailored content migration plan courtesy of our in-house SEO professionals. Get in touch with us here to get started.