If you're unhappy with your Umbraco agency, chasing replies or bracing for another missed deadline, changing doesn't have to mean rebuilding everything from scratch.
Maybe your current agency's gone quiet. Maybe nobody there really knows Umbraco anymore, or you're the only person left who understands how your own site works. Whatever's brought you here, you're not wrong to be looking.
We start by finding out what's actually going on with your site, not what we assume is wrong with it. No rebuild pitch before we've even logged into your back office, no guesswork dressed up as a quote. We're a UK based digital agency, and whether your site sits on Umbraco as a straightforward content management system or something more customised, we start from what's actually there.
Our approach to successful projects
Before we recommend anything, we get access sorted: hosting, back office, source control, DNS, licence accounts, whatever's relevant. If your current agency's been slow to hand things over, we'll help you request it properly and calmly, no need for it to turn into a stand-off. We also ask for any existing documentation, even if it's patchy or years out of date. If there isn't any, that's fine, it just tells us we'll be writing some as we go rather than relying on it existing already. This stage is about understanding what you actually have, not what your last contract said you should have. Umbraco CMS itself is built on an open-source architecture, so nothing about how it works is hidden away in a black box we control instead of you.
We run a proper technical audit: what version of Umbraco you're on, how far it sits from the nearest supported release, what packages and integrations are in play, and whether any of it's a security risk sitting quietly in the background. An older version can still work fine day to day and still be genuinely risky to leave unpatched. We're not looking for reasons to recommend a rebuild, we're looking for the honest state of things, good and bad, so any decision from here is based on evidence rather than a hunch. This is also where Long-term support versions come into play, since staying on or moving to one gives you a longer runway of security patches and security updates before the next upgrade's needed. We check third-party tools and integrations are still supported at the same time, not just the core Umbraco codebase.
Whatever needs fixing gets prioritised by what actually matters to your business, not what's easiest for us to tackle first. Forms, checkout, bookings and any CRM integrations get protected and tested before anything cosmetic. If a version upgrade's needed, we plan the route through the nearest supported release rather than jumping straight to the latest one and hoping for the best. Everything gets built and tested on a staging environment first. Your live site doesn't become the place we find out something's broken. Where a short content freeze is the safest way to protect what's live during the move, we'll say so plainly rather than pretending it isn't happening.
We don't just hand you a finished site and disappear. We walk your editors through how things actually work day to day, not just the developers who'll be maintaining the back end. If something in your content tree or templates has always confused your team, that's exactly the kind of thing we want flagged during handover, not discovered six months later when someone needs to update a page and can't. This is where content teams and content editors get looked after properly, not just handed a login and left to work it out.
Your hosting, licences, domains and analytics stay in your name, not locked into ours. That's true from day one, not just something we say when a client asks. If you ever want to move on from us too, you should be able to, without a fight to get your own accounts back. We'd rather earn the right to keep working with you than make it awkward to leave.
Before anything else, we go through your site properly: content tree, templates, custom code, third-party packages and how content actually gets deployed. We're checking what's solid, what's fragile and what's just confusing, rather than assuming the worst because you've had a bad experience with your last agency. You'll get a plain-English readout of what we found, not a technical report designed to make us look clever.
If there's genuinely nothing wrong beyond a slow-to-respond agency, we'll tell you that too. That includes a proper look at your content modelling, information architecture and any custom document types, components or component library in play, plus your version control setup, so we understand how the site's actually built, not just what's live on it.
If things have grown into more custom territory, a customised build, a headless architecture running separate web applications, or deployment pipelines worth understanding, we call this a proper code audit rather than a courtesy glance.
We help you get proper control of your own hosting, back office, DNS, SSL, analytics and any licence accounts, ideally sorted early rather than left until the final week of a messy handover. If your outgoing agency owns any of these accounts, we'll help you work out what needs transferring and what needs setting up fresh in your name.
The goal is straightforward: you should never be locked out of your own website by whoever built it. This covers cloud hosting and your hosting setup generally, domain name records, and role-based access control for your back office, so the right people have the right level of access from day one. It also covers any licensing tied to the site itself, an Umbraco Forms license, a Deploy agency license, or a license key sitting under someone else's account, along with whether you're on monthly or yearly plans and what your actual hosting costs should look like.
We also check your analytics are set up correctly, since analytics accuracy matters more once you're making a case for budget from them.
We check exactly where your Umbraco installation sits, including how far it is from the nearest supported version, and what that means practically for security and support. Major version jumps in Umbraco usually mean a .NET version change too, so we map the actual route through, rather than promising a same-day leap to the latest release.
Every package and integration gets checked for compatibility before we touch anything, so nothing quietly breaks mid-upgrade. As part of this we look for security vulnerabilities that might be sitting quietly in outdated code, alongside performance tuning and a check against basic accessibility standards, since all three tend to get missed when a site's been left to drift.
Anything that touches revenue or leads gets looked at first: contact forms, bookings, checkout, CRM integrations, anything a broken migration would actually cost you money to lose. We flag and prioritise these ahead of anything purely cosmetic.
Nothing gets changed on your live environment untested. We build and check everything on staging, confirm your backups genuinely restore (not just that they exist), and only then plan the move to live. Whether that's e-commerce solutions handling real transactions, CRM solutions feeding your sales team, or simply protecting the user experience your customers are used to, these are the parts of the digital platform we test hardest before anything goes live.
We write down what we find as we go, so the knowledge doesn't live only in one developer's head, yours or ours. Just as importantly, we sit down with the people who actually use the site day to day, not only the technical team, because editors usually know exactly where the day-to-day friction is.
Their frustrations are often the fastest wins available during a handover, and they get missed if a switch is treated as a purely technical exercise. That includes documenting how content creation actually works day to day, not just how the back end is structured.
Once the switch is done, we agree what happens next together: response times, how support requests get raised, and whether you need us reactively for fixes or want something more strategic, roadmapping, planning ahead for the next Umbraco upgrade before it becomes urgent.
Either way, you'll know exactly who to contact and how quickly you'll hear back, in writing, not left to hope it's better than last time. You'll have a proper support team behind you, not a single point of contact who disappears on holiday, with performance monitoring in place so issues get caught before your customers notice them.
Before anything else, we go through your site properly: content tree, templates, custom code, third-party packages and how content actually gets deployed. We're checking what's solid, what's fragile and what's just confusing, rather than assuming the worst because you've had a bad experience with your last agency. You'll get a plain-English readout of what we found, not a technical report designed to make us look clever.
If there's genuinely nothing wrong beyond a slow-to-respond agency, we'll tell you that too. That includes a proper look at your content modelling, information architecture and any custom document types, components or component library in play, plus your version control setup, so we understand how the site's actually built, not just what's live on it.
If things have grown into more custom territory, a customised build, a headless architecture running separate web applications, or deployment pipelines worth understanding, we call this a proper code audit rather than a courtesy glance.
We help you get proper control of your own hosting, back office, DNS, SSL, analytics and any licence accounts, ideally sorted early rather than left until the final week of a messy handover. If your outgoing agency owns any of these accounts, we'll help you work out what needs transferring and what needs setting up fresh in your name.
The goal is straightforward: you should never be locked out of your own website by whoever built it. This covers cloud hosting and your hosting setup generally, domain name records, and role-based access control for your back office, so the right people have the right level of access from day one. It also covers any licensing tied to the site itself, an Umbraco Forms license, a Deploy agency license, or a license key sitting under someone else's account, along with whether you're on monthly or yearly plans and what your actual hosting costs should look like.
We also check your analytics are set up correctly, since analytics accuracy matters more once you're making a case for budget from them.
We check exactly where your Umbraco installation sits, including how far it is from the nearest supported version, and what that means practically for security and support. Major version jumps in Umbraco usually mean a .NET version change too, so we map the actual route through, rather than promising a same-day leap to the latest release.
Every package and integration gets checked for compatibility before we touch anything, so nothing quietly breaks mid-upgrade. As part of this we look for security vulnerabilities that might be sitting quietly in outdated code, alongside performance tuning and a check against basic accessibility standards, since all three tend to get missed when a site's been left to drift.
Anything that touches revenue or leads gets looked at first: contact forms, bookings, checkout, CRM integrations, anything a broken migration would actually cost you money to lose. We flag and prioritise these ahead of anything purely cosmetic.
Nothing gets changed on your live environment untested. We build and check everything on staging, confirm your backups genuinely restore (not just that they exist), and only then plan the move to live. Whether that's e-commerce solutions handling real transactions, CRM solutions feeding your sales team, or simply protecting the user experience your customers are used to, these are the parts of the digital platform we test hardest before anything goes live.
We write down what we find as we go, so the knowledge doesn't live only in one developer's head, yours or ours. Just as importantly, we sit down with the people who actually use the site day to day, not only the technical team, because editors usually know exactly where the day-to-day friction is.
Their frustrations are often the fastest wins available during a handover, and they get missed if a switch is treated as a purely technical exercise. That includes documenting how content creation actually works day to day, not just how the back end is structured.
Once the switch is done, we agree what happens next together: response times, how support requests get raised, and whether you need us reactively for fixes or want something more strategic, roadmapping, planning ahead for the next Umbraco upgrade before it becomes urgent.
Either way, you'll know exactly who to contact and how quickly you'll hear back, in writing, not left to hope it's better than last time. You'll have a proper support team behind you, not a single point of contact who disappears on holiday, with performance monitoring in place so issues get caught before your customers notice them.
Craig Oliphant, Full Stack Developer at Gecko
[PLACEHOLDER, awaiting a confirmed case study for this specific scenario]
When [CLIENT NAME] came to us, they'd been [waiting/chasing] their previous agency for [X weeks] with no clear answers about their own site's Umbraco version. We ran a full technical audit inside the first fortnight, protected their [booking system/checkout] throughout, and moved them onto supported infrastructure without a single hour of unplanned downtime. [X months] on, their team can update the site themselves for the first time in years.
Not necessarily, and we won't assume it does before we've actually looked. Plenty of sites we take on are perfectly solid underneath, just poorly supported by whoever built or maintained them. We run a proper technical audit first and only recommend rebuilding what genuinely needs it. If a full rebuild does make sense, we'll show you exactly why, rather than treating it as the default answer to every handover.
Yes, in most cases. Missing access slows a handover down, it doesn't usually stop it. We'll help you work out what you genuinely need (hosting, back office, DNS, licence accounts) and how to request it properly from your current agency. Where something can't be recovered, we can usually set it up fresh in your name instead.
There shouldn't be, if hosting, DNS and deployment changes are planned properly rather than rushed. We test everything on a staging environment first and only move to your live site once we're confident it works, including confirming your backups actually restore, not just that they exist. Downtime is usually a sign of a switch that wasn't planned, not an inevitable part of changing agency.
It shouldn't be, provided metadata, redirects and indexation are handled properly as part of the move rather than as an afterthought. We check this as standard during any migration or version upgrade, not just when a client specifically asks about it. That means redirect mapping done properly, metadata preservation across every page that moves, and keeping an eye on search rankings before and after the switch, not just crossing our fingers.
This is what we'd call an Umbraco project rescue, picking up a project that's stalled, over budget or missing deadlines, and working out what's actually salvageable versus what needs a fresh approach. We'll be honest with you early on about which one you're dealing with, rather than telling you what's easiest for us to say. This applies just as much if you're running e-commerce platforms as it does a straightforward marketing site, since a stalled web development project usually needs the same honest triage either way.
None. We work with sites on older versions regularly, that's often exactly why people are looking to switch in the first place. Umbraco upgrades typically move through the nearest supported release rather than jumping straight to the latest version, and we'll map that route out for you as part of the initial audit rather than assuming you need to upgrade before we'll even start.
It helps, but it's not essential. If documentation doesn't exist or it's badly out of date, we'll build it as we go during onboarding instead of just quietly inheriting the mystery. Most sites we take on don't come with much written down, so this is a normal part of the process, not a red flag.
It depends on what we find during the audit, but a straightforward handover with reasonable access to your current site usually takes a few weeks from first conversation to being fully set up with us. Sites needing a version upgrade or with business-critical integrations to protect take longer, and we'll give you a realistic timeline once we've actually looked, not before.
Yes. We can start the discovery and audit work in parallel with your notice period, so you're not left in limbo waiting for one relationship to end before the next one can begin. We'll keep communication factual and calm throughout, even if things have soured with your current provider.
Book a no-pressure chat and tell us what's going on with your current site and your current agency. No pitch, no pressure to decide anything on the call. Get in touch to talk it through.
