Before committing to an Umbraco upgrade, you need to understand the work involved, the risks to your business and the likely investment.
Absurd’s Umbraco 13 upgrade assessment examines your existing website and establishes a practical route to Umbraco 17. We review the implementation, identify dependencies and define the work required to migrate, test and launch successfully.
You receive a documented recommendation, an outline scope of work, and an indicative budget and delivery programme.
Why assess the website before upgrading?
Umbraco 13 reaches end of life on 14 December 2026, when standard support and security updates from Umbraco HQ end. Organisations running Umbraco 13 need to plan an upgrade, rebuild or extended-support arrangement.
The scale of that work depends on your implementation. Content structures, custom backoffice extensions, third-party packages and integrations can all affect the migration route.
An assessment brings these requirements into view before delivery begins. It helps you set a realistic budget, agree priorities and distinguish essential upgrade work from optional improvements.
What will Absurd do?
1. Establish the business requirements and scope
We’ll begin with a discovery session involving your website owner and relevant technical or marketing stakeholders.
What we’ll do
- Understand how the website supports your organisation and which functions are business-critical.
- Confirm the websites, languages, environments and applications included in the assessment.
- Identify existing problems, planned developments and requirements the upgrade needs to accommodate.
- Establish delivery constraints, including campaign dates, procurement requirements and periods when changes must be avoided.
- Agree the information and access needed to complete the review.
What you’ll receive
A scope summary recording the objectives, systems in scope, key stakeholders, constraints and agreed priorities.
Why it matters
This gives the assessment a clear business context and helps prevent important requirements emerging after the delivery budget has been agreed.
2. Review the application and custom development
We’ll examine the existing codebase and how the website has been implemented.
What we’ll do
- Review the Umbraco version, application structure and relevant dependencies.
- Examine custom controllers, services, templates and publishing behaviour.
- Identify custom backoffice extensions and property editors that may require redevelopment.
- Review how the frontend connects to Umbraco, including any headless implementation.
- Identify technical debt that could materially affect the upgrade.
- Assess which elements appear reusable and which need modification, replacement or further investigation.
What you’ll receive
A technical compatibility review and an initial development work breakdown, with findings classified by their effect on the upgrade.
Why it matters
Custom development is often a significant source of uncertainty. Understanding it early produces a more credible scope and reduces the likelihood of unexpected redevelopment during delivery.
3. Assess content structures and migration requirements
We’ll review how content is stored, organised, edited and published.
What we’ll do
- Examine document types, data types, templates and relationships between content.
- Review Block List, Block Grid and any legacy editors or content structures.
- Assess multilingual content, language variants and publishing requirements.
- Review media usage and dependencies between pages, files and reusable content.
- Identify content transformations and migration tooling likely to be required.
- Define an approach to migration rehearsals, content validation and the final content transfer.
What you’ll receive
A content migration outline identifying the main content structures, migration tasks, potential problem areas and proposed validation approach.
Why it matters
A technically successful upgrade still needs to preserve the content people rely on and provide an editing experience your team can use effectively.
4. Review packages and business integrations
We’ll identify the components and connected systems that the website depends on.
What we’ll do
- Inventory installed packages and assess their compatibility with the target version.
- Identify packages requiring an upgrade, replacement, licence change or custom alternative.
- Review integrations such as CRM, search, payments, booking systems and marketing platforms, where applicable.
- Examine forms, data submission workflows, authentication and single sign-on.
- Identify dependencies on external vendors, credentials, test systems and client-side teams.
- Define the integration scenarios that will need testing.
What you’ll receive
A package and integration register showing compatibility findings, proposed actions, dependencies and outstanding questions.
Why it matters
These connections often support essential business processes. Their readiness can determine both the delivery effort and the earliest achievable launch date.
5. Assess hosting, environments and deployment
We’ll review whether the existing infrastructure and deployment process can support the upgraded website.
What we’ll do
- Examine the current hosting arrangement and relevant runtime requirements.
- Review development, test, staging and production environments.
- Assess deployment pipelines, configuration management and access arrangements.
- Review relevant database, media storage, caching and background-processing dependencies.
- Examine backup, recovery, monitoring and logging arrangements at an architectural level.
- Identify infrastructure changes required for the upgrade.
- Outline the release sequence, launch checks and rollback approach.
What you’ll receive
A hosting and deployment recommendation covering required changes, environment needs and an outline launch plan.
Why it matters
A reliable migration depends on being able to rehearse the release, identify failures and recover safely. Infrastructure requirements also need to be reflected in the budget and programme.
6. Define how SEO and critical journeys will be protected
We’ll identify the behaviours and measures that need to remain intact through the upgrade.
What we’ll do
- Review URL structures, redirects, metadata, canonical tags and sitemap behaviour.
- Identify important landing pages and conversion journeys with your team.
- Review analytics and consent dependencies relevant to the migration.
- Identify representative functionality for regression testing, including forms, search and member access where applicable.
- Agree the appropriate pre-launch and post-launch checks.
- Highlight areas requiring specialist testing or a separate audit.
What you’ll receive
A proposed test and acceptance framework covering functional behaviour, content, SEO continuity, analytics and business-critical journeys.
Why it matters
The upgrade must support the outcomes your website already delivers. Explicit acceptance criteria give your team a practical basis for deciding whether the new platform is ready to launch.
7. Recommend the delivery approach
We’ll bring the findings together into a recommended route forward.
What we’ll do
- Assess whether an upgrade, selective redevelopment or broader rebuild best meets the agreed requirements.
- Identify where extended support may be needed to bridge the delivery period.
- Separate essential migration work from optional enhancements.
- Define the main delivery workstreams, dependencies and decision points.
- Prepare an indicative effort estimate, budget range and programme.
- Explain the assumptions and unresolved questions affecting those estimates.
What you’ll receive
A recommended approach and an outline delivery scope that can be used for internal approval and subsequent project planning.
Why it matters
You can make an informed investment decision with a clear understanding of what the proposed work achieves and what remains uncertain.
What will we receive at the end of the assessment?
Absurd will provide a written assessment containing:
| Deliverable | What it contains | How you can use it |
|---|---|---|
| Executive recommendation | The proposed route and the reasons for choosing it. | Secure stakeholder agreement on the next step. |
| Current-platform review | Key findings across code, content, packages, integrations and infrastructure. | Understand the condition and dependencies of the existing website. |
| Compatibility and action register | Components to retain, update, replace or investigate. | Establish the technical work required. |
| Risk and dependency register | Material risks, proposed mitigations, external dependencies and decisions required. | Plan responsibilities and address potential delays. |
| Outline delivery scope | Workstreams, anticipated tasks, assumptions and exclusions. | Form the basis of a delivery statement of work. |
| Indicative budget and programme | Estimated investment, delivery stages and factors affecting timing or cost. | Support budgeting and resource planning. |
| Migration and acceptance outline | Content migration, testing, launch and rollback considerations. | Agree how delivery success will be evaluated. |
We’ll also run a findings workshop with your stakeholders to explain the recommendation, discuss trade-offs and agree the actions needed to progress.
What will you need from us?
To complete the assessment, we’ll typically need:
- Read-only access to the source-code repository.
- Access to an appropriate non-production environment and the Umbraco backoffice.
- A representative database and media copy, with sensitive information removed or protected as agreed.
- Details of hosting, deployment processes, installed packages and licences.
- Available documentation for integrations and custom functionality.
- Relevant analytics or performance information, where available.
- Time with your website owner and the people responsible for key connected systems.
We’ll confirm the access requirements at the start. Where information is unavailable, we’ll record the limitation and explain its effect on the findings or estimate.
Does the assessment include carrying out the upgrade?
The assessment is a discovery and planning engagement. It does not include production changes, full migration execution or implementation of the recommended work.
Unless separately agreed, it also excludes penetration testing, a full accessibility audit, comprehensive SEO auditing, content rewriting and redesign.
If a specific uncertainty requires hands-on investigation, we’ll define a focused technical investigation and agree its scope before proceeding.
How will the assessment be delivered?
The engagement follows four stages:
- Kick-off and access: confirm scope, priorities, stakeholders and available evidence.
- Technical review: examine the implementation and discuss questions with the relevant teams.
- Analysis and planning: develop the recommendation, work breakdown, risks and estimates.
- Report and walkthrough: present the findings and record agreed next steps.
The assessment fee and timetable will be agreed once the number of websites, integrations and custom components is understood. The timetable will depend on access being available and key stakeholders being able to respond to questions.
Will the assessment provide a fixed upgrade price?
The assessment provides an indicative delivery budget supported by a defined scope and explicit assumptions.
Where the review resolves the material uncertainties, it can support a subsequent fixed-price delivery proposal. Where uncertainties remain, we’ll explain what needs to be investigated or agreed before that commitment can be made.
Can Absurd assess a website built by another agency?
Yes. We can review an existing Umbraco implementation developed by another agency, provided the necessary access and permissions are available.
We’ll document what we find and give you a recommendation you can use to plan the next stage, whether delivered by Absurd, your internal team or another supplier.
How do we get started?
Share your website address, current Umbraco version and a brief description of your hosting and integrations.
We’ll arrange an initial discussion, confirm the assessment scope and provide a proposal.