Umbraco 8 End-of-Life: What Do We Need to Do?

Does your company use Umbraco 8? If so, this article is a must-read for you. We will answer the questions that we are frequently asked, plus things that you should consider when planning your upgrade.

Umbraco 8’s EoL is 24^th February 2025.

In the software world, ‘EoL’ refers to a stage in the software lifecycle when the software is no longer supported by the Developer.

Lifecycles are a common process within software and allow the manufacturer to focus their resources on developing better solutions with new features & functionality, bug fixes, security improvements, and performance enhancements. Content Management Systems such as Umbraco are no different.

The simple answer is yes – your website won’t suddenly disappear on the 24^th of Feb ’25.

When we reach this date, however, Umbraco will no longer provide fixes for security issues that may arise. Whilst security attacks are always a possibility in the world of web, there will be a heightened security vulnerability to your company if you have not upgraded from version 8 by this point.

Indeed, online security attacks are becoming more prevalent and increasingly sophisticated. In 2022:

• 39% of UK businesses identified a cyber-attack.
• 21% of the 39% reported a sophisticated attack such as a denial of service, malware, or ransomware attack.

(Gov.UK, 2022, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/cyber-security-breaches-survey-2022/cyber-security-breaches-survey-2022)

If you decide against upgrading your platform, you will miss out on a range of performance improvements meaning that your site speed may suffer, thus affecting the user experience. This can also negatively hit SEO.

By using the most updated platform, your website will naturally deliver a better UX and provide you with a stronger technical SEO foundation.

This is entirely up to you, but there are several factors to consider.

If you are happy with your existing Design and have no plans to re-design in the next three years or so, then we can integrate your existing Design & Front-End with a new version of Umbraco.

However, if you are looking to re-design in the next three years, it makes a LOT of sense to complete it as part of the Umbraco rebuild project. If you leave a re-design until after the rebuild, you may have to re-integrate several areas of the website again, thus paying twice for similar work. This is wasted resource for your business which could be better spent on your digital marketing efforts.

Like Microsoft, Umbraco have introduced Long-Term Support (LTS) versions into their release cadence.

LTS versions will be supported for two years, whilst versions in between, ‘Current Releases’, will be supported for one year. Umbraco 10 is the first LTS, followed by Umbraco 13, and then 17. Please see further information here: https://umbraco.com/blog/announcement-support-lts-and-eol-for-umbraco-cms-cloud-and-packages/

The good news is that - once you are on Umbraco 10 - if you maintain a consistent upgrade pattern (10 > 11 > 12) - which we always advise you do for the latest features and patches, each upgrade should be a considerably smaller task than it is currently, e.g., 8 > 10.

CSI Media is one of the UK’s most experienced Umbraco agencies having developed 125+ custom Umbraco solutions over the last 10 years.

Everything is done in-house by our team of digital specialists will support you during the entire process, from the initial scoping to launch and beyond for support and maintenance. We will advise you on when you are required in the project lifecycle, for example, User Acceptance Testing, ensuring to give you plentiful notice to prepare. Find out more about our Umbraco services.

If you are an existing client, please contact your Account Manager for further details and a quotation.