Each year, Kentico releases a new major version of their Kentico EMS. In December 2017, Kentico 11 was released.

Most businesses using Kentico pay an maintenance annual fee to ensure they are kept up to date with support and have access to hotfixes and EMS version upgrades. We see that most of our Kentico clients make full use of the upgrades when available, however some do fall behind a little, and perform a multiple version upgrade, which can get a little tricky at times.

Upgrading annually not only makes each individual upgrade much easier and cheaper, but also offer greater efficiency, reduced risks, and access to new features and functionality to help you grow and stay ahead of the pack.

Upgrading Kentico

Kentico release a new major version (7, 8, 9, 10, 11 etc) yearly, along with hotfixes (such as 11.0.11) weekly. We have seen with some versions Kentico have released minor versions (such as 8.1 and 8.2) however tend to stick to the annual major version release, and the regular hotfixes (that typically aren’t factored or worried about unless a cliuent is experiencing a specific problem, and then we deploy these to help resolve it).

We typically include a major version upgrade into our client roadmaps annually. Upgrades not only reduce the total cost of ownership for the platform, but also make it more stable, more effective as a tool for the business using it, offer greater functionality, plus also delivering awesome new features and modules for use.

Being Current is Cool

There’s a bucket load of new features in Kentico 11, however here’s our list of top reasons why upgrading to Kentico 11 is absolutely worth doing:

• Google AMP: If you are using the portal engine to develop a Kentico site, you can now easily add Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to the site, offering boosted SEO performance, along with page speed enhancements.
• GDPR Support: GDPR compliance is set to land on us on May 25th 2018. Kentico has introduced the Data Protection application in version 11. You will be able to create, manage, store and display consents.
• Email Builder Tool & Campaign Management: This is a seriously exciting marketing change. Kentico has provided a whole new administration interface that allows users to drop elements into an email template to create wow-factor emails without any back end coding required. Widgets can be created and reused so that you can build up a library of elements for use to quickly craft campaigns again and again.
• eCommerce Improvements: Kentico has seriously stepped up its eCommerce game with a heap of new out of the box features for online retailing. Kentico 11 now also includes impressive tracking, analytics, enhanced coupon functionality, delayed payment capture and integration with UCommerce.
• Performance improvements – Put simply, Kentico 11 is faster and performs better than previous versions. 

Go on, be brave

Are you up to date with your Kentico licensing maintenance?

Plan your upgrades on a regular cycle. It offers an enormous range of benefits, and reduces costs in the long run.

If you are already a client, we have probably had the discussion with you about an upgrade to Kentico 11, and if you aren’t a client, we’d love to have a chat, and take a look at your Kentico build, and how we can help you.