Your Umbraco Site's in Trouble. We'll Get It Working Again.
Slow pages, backoffice errors, a build nobody trusts any more. If your Umbraco website's broken and you need it fixed properly, not patched, we can help, usually faster than you'd expect.
For Marketing Leads, IT Managers & Business Owners Firefighting a Broken Site
You didn't build it, but you're the one who has to explain it.
Whether you inherited this site, you're the only person who half-understands how it works, or you're the one fielding "is the website down again?" from your own board, the priority's the same: stop the bleeding, then work out what actually went wrong.
We start by finding out exactly what's failing and why, not guessing. Then we fix it, stabilise it, and leave you with a site (and a plan) you can actually rely on, without pretending the original build was the problem all along. We work directly inside the Umbraco CMS itself, not around it, so nothing gets papered over.
Why Teams come to us?
“Half the site's fine, half of it crawls.”
We trace slowdowns to the specific templates, queries or media causing them, rather than throwing generic hosting fixes at a problem that isn't actually about hosting.
“Our editors are scared to touch the backoffice.”
We fix the usability friction causing publishing mistakes and hesitation, so your team can update the site confidently instead of avoiding it.
“Every deploy feels like a gamble.”
We get underneath the undocumented fixes and unreviewed dependencies causing that nervousness, and make changes something you can trust again, not dread.
“Nobody knows what's actually broken any more.”
We run a proper diagnostic first, code, hosting, content model, third-party scripts, so you get a specific answer instead of another vague theory.
The Gecko Way™
Our approach to successful projects
When a site's already broken, gathering isn't a leisurely discovery workshop, it's triage. We start by getting a clear picture of what's actually failing, from your side and from inside the platform: which pages are slow, what errors editors are hitting, what's changed recently, what's been "temporarily" patched and never revisited. We look at hosting, code, content model and third-party scripts together, because a rescue that only looks at one of those usually misses the real cause. You're not expected to have the technical answer already, that's the point of this stage. We just need the honest picture, warts and all, so nothing gets fixed twice or fixed in the wrong place. Our Umbraco developers lead this stage, but we'll always talk to whoever knows the current setup best on your side too.
Once we know what's actually wrong, we work out whether it's structural or situational, a distinction that matters more than it sounds. Situational issues, unoptimised media, uncached queries, scripts nobody's reviewed in years, respond well to a focused rescue. Structural issues, a content model that fights your editors, a platform version that can't support what the business needs next, sometimes point somewhere else entirely. We'll tell you plainly which one you're dealing with, including the honest answer if rescue isn't the right call and a phased rebuild would serve you better long term.
This is where the actual fixing happens: performance issues resolved at the source rather than masked with a caching band-aid, backoffice usability problems sorted so editors stop working around the platform instead of with it, security and version risk brought back under control. We work through issues in the order that reduces your risk fastest, not the order that's easiest for us, and we keep you updated as things move rather than disappearing until it's "done."
A rescue that leaves you exactly as dependent as before hasn't really fixed anything. We document what we changed, why, and how to spot it again if it starts to recur, in plain language, not a developer changelog you'll never open. If you're the only person who understands this site, part of our job is making sure that's less true by the time we're finished, not more. Where it's relevant, we'll also bring things in line with current best practices as we document them, not leave that for another day.
Once the site's stable, we make sure it stays that way. That might mean handing you a clear list of what to keep an eye on, or moving into ongoing support so someone's actively watching for the next issue before it becomes a crisis. Either way, you leave this stage with a site you trust again, and a straight answer about whether rescue was the end of the story or the first step toward a bigger rebuild down the line. Our Umbraco Support team can take that on from here, so today's rescue doesn't quietly become tomorrow's crisis.
What's Included in an Umbraco Website Rescue
Diagnostic & Triage
Before anything gets fixed, we find out precisely what's wrong. That means looking at server logs, slow query patterns, backoffice error reports, hosting configuration and the content model itself, not just the symptoms you've noticed from the front end.
We separate isolated issues from systemic ones, and structural problems from situational neglect, because the two need completely different fixes. You get a clear, specific list of what's actually causing the pain, in order of how much risk or disruption each one is creating, rather than a vague "the site needs work" verdict that leaves you no further forward than before you called us.
That covers everything from a spike in 404 errors after a migration to backoffice crashes that only happen for one editor, or API errors nobody's had time to chase down. Whether the root cause is inside the Umbraco CMS itself or somewhere else entirely, you'll know before we start fixing anything.
Performance & Speed Fixes
Slow Umbraco sites are almost never slow because Umbraco itself is slow. Usually it's oversized, unresized media, inefficient database queries, missing or misconfigured caching, or JavaScript and fonts loading in a way that tanks Core Web Vitals.
We go after the actual cause rather than the easiest lever to pull, whether that's cleaning up a media library that's grown feral over the years, rewriting queries that don't scale under real traffic, or fixing the caching layer so performance holds up at your busiest moments, not just in a quiet test environment. Website performance issues rarely have one single cause, which is why we look at the whole chain rather than the first thing that looks suspicious.
We also check response time under real traffic conditions, not just how the site performs when nobody else is on it. Slow pages are a user experience problem as much as a technical one, and we treat them that way.
Security & Version Support
Older, unpatched Umbraco versions and unreviewed third-party packages are a genuine security risk, not just a maintenance inconvenience. We assess where your platform and its dependencies sit against current support, patch what's exposed, and get you back onto a version that's actually being maintained where that's the safer route.
If the platform version itself is holding the business back, rather than just needing a patch, we'll say so honestly rather than quietly working around it. That can mean anything from applying a routine security update to closing the door on something more serious, like an exposed path to SQL injection or a site vulnerable to denial of service. Where a specific Umbraco security advisory applies to your version, we'll patch it as a priority, not add it to a backlog.
We keep an eye on official Umbraco patches too, so you're not relying on us to remember what's outstanding. We'll also check the basics that get overlooked under pressure, like SSL certificates that are about to lapse or already have, and bring the site up to current Umbraco best practices as we go, not just patch the specific thing that broke.
Backoffice & Editor Experience
If your editors are scared to publish, second-guessing every save, or working around the CMS instead of with it, that's costing you time and creating mistakes you don't see until they're live. We fix the specific usability friction causing that hesitation, whether it's a content model that's fighting the way your team actually works, confusing structures, or backoffice performance that makes every edit feel like a risk.
The goal is a team that trusts the tools they're using every day, not one that's learned to avoid them. A confusing user experience in the backoffice is one of the most common reasons content editors lose confidence in a CMS altogether, and it's rarely a difficult fix once we know where it's coming from.
Media, Content & Third-Party Clean-up
A lot of Umbraco performance problems trace back to accumulated mess rather than anything wrong with the platform itself: unoptimised images, duplicate or orphaned content, tracking tags and widgets nobody remembers adding, integrations that were "temporary" five years ago. We clean this up properly, resizing and optimising media, removing what's no longer needed, reviewing every third-party script still firing on your pages, so the site's carrying only what it actually needs to.
That often includes Umbraco Forms setups built for a specific campaign years ago and never reviewed since, and pop-up banners or promotional scripts left running long after the campaign ended. We also check media file content across the library for anything oversized, broken, or simply no longer needed.
Rescue-to-Rebuild Planning
Sometimes a rescue is genuinely the whole answer. Sometimes it's the sensible first step before a bigger, better-controlled rebuild, stabilising things now so you're not making that decision from a position of panic later. If your site's problems turn out to be structural rather than situational, we'll set out honestly what a rebuild would involve, what it would cost against doing nothing, and how to sequence it so you're never left without a working site in the meantime.
That includes being straight about the likely return on investment, not just the price tag. Umbraco developers who've seen a lot of legacy builds will usually spot the pattern quickly, and we'll share that read with you honestly rather than talking round it.
What's Included in an Umbraco Website Rescue
Diagnostic & Triage
Before anything gets fixed, we find out precisely what's wrong. That means looking at server logs, slow query patterns, backoffice error reports, hosting configuration and the content model itself, not just the symptoms you've noticed from the front end.
We separate isolated issues from systemic ones, and structural problems from situational neglect, because the two need completely different fixes. You get a clear, specific list of what's actually causing the pain, in order of how much risk or disruption each one is creating, rather than a vague "the site needs work" verdict that leaves you no further forward than before you called us.
That covers everything from a spike in 404 errors after a migration to backoffice crashes that only happen for one editor, or API errors nobody's had time to chase down. Whether the root cause is inside the Umbraco CMS itself or somewhere else entirely, you'll know before we start fixing anything.
Performance & Speed Fixes
Slow Umbraco sites are almost never slow because Umbraco itself is slow. Usually it's oversized, unresized media, inefficient database queries, missing or misconfigured caching, or JavaScript and fonts loading in a way that tanks Core Web Vitals.
We go after the actual cause rather than the easiest lever to pull, whether that's cleaning up a media library that's grown feral over the years, rewriting queries that don't scale under real traffic, or fixing the caching layer so performance holds up at your busiest moments, not just in a quiet test environment. Website performance issues rarely have one single cause, which is why we look at the whole chain rather than the first thing that looks suspicious.
We also check response time under real traffic conditions, not just how the site performs when nobody else is on it. Slow pages are a user experience problem as much as a technical one, and we treat them that way.
Security & Version Support
Older, unpatched Umbraco versions and unreviewed third-party packages are a genuine security risk, not just a maintenance inconvenience. We assess where your platform and its dependencies sit against current support, patch what's exposed, and get you back onto a version that's actually being maintained where that's the safer route.
If the platform version itself is holding the business back, rather than just needing a patch, we'll say so honestly rather than quietly working around it. That can mean anything from applying a routine security update to closing the door on something more serious, like an exposed path to SQL injection or a site vulnerable to denial of service. Where a specific Umbraco security advisory applies to your version, we'll patch it as a priority, not add it to a backlog.
We keep an eye on official Umbraco patches too, so you're not relying on us to remember what's outstanding. We'll also check the basics that get overlooked under pressure, like SSL certificates that are about to lapse or already have, and bring the site up to current Umbraco best practices as we go, not just patch the specific thing that broke.
Backoffice & Editor Experience
If your editors are scared to publish, second-guessing every save, or working around the CMS instead of with it, that's costing you time and creating mistakes you don't see until they're live. We fix the specific usability friction causing that hesitation, whether it's a content model that's fighting the way your team actually works, confusing structures, or backoffice performance that makes every edit feel like a risk.
The goal is a team that trusts the tools they're using every day, not one that's learned to avoid them. A confusing user experience in the backoffice is one of the most common reasons content editors lose confidence in a CMS altogether, and it's rarely a difficult fix once we know where it's coming from.
Media, Content & Third-Party Clean-up
A lot of Umbraco performance problems trace back to accumulated mess rather than anything wrong with the platform itself: unoptimised images, duplicate or orphaned content, tracking tags and widgets nobody remembers adding, integrations that were "temporary" five years ago. We clean this up properly, resizing and optimising media, removing what's no longer needed, reviewing every third-party script still firing on your pages, so the site's carrying only what it actually needs to.
That often includes Umbraco Forms setups built for a specific campaign years ago and never reviewed since, and pop-up banners or promotional scripts left running long after the campaign ended. We also check media file content across the library for anything oversized, broken, or simply no longer needed.
Rescue-to-Rebuild Planning
Sometimes a rescue is genuinely the whole answer. Sometimes it's the sensible first step before a bigger, better-controlled rebuild, stabilising things now so you're not making that decision from a position of panic later. If your site's problems turn out to be structural rather than situational, we'll set out honestly what a rebuild would involve, what it would cost against doing nothing, and how to sequence it so you're never left without a working site in the meantime.
That includes being straight about the likely return on investment, not just the price tag. Umbraco developers who've seen a lot of legacy builds will usually spot the pattern quickly, and we'll share that read with you honestly rather than talking round it.
"After a rescue, the thing I notice first is how quiet the support inbox goes, that's when I know the client's team trusts the site again."
Dave Nicklen, Support Manager at Gecko
Umbraco Website Rescue Case Study
[Placeholder: paragraph, key metric and case study name to be added once a confirmed Umbraco Website Rescue project is available to reference. Do not publish as-is.]
No, not inherently. Umbraco's performance depends almost entirely on how it's been implemented, hosted and maintained, not on the platform itself. We regularly see well-built Umbraco sites handling serious traffic without issue, and poorly maintained ones struggling at a fraction of that load. If your site's slow, the cause is almost always something specific and fixable: unoptimised media, missing caching, inefficient queries or an overloaded plugin, rather than a limitation you're stuck with.
Yes, that's exactly what the diagnostic stage is for. You don't need to arrive with a technical diagnosis already worked out, most people don't, and that's normal. Tell us what you're seeing, slow pages, backoffice errors, editors avoiding the CMS, whatever it is, and we'll get underneath it to find the actual cause before we start fixing anything. This is one of the most common situations website owners come to us with, and there's no shame in not having the technical answer already. That could be anything from a wave of 404 errors after a migration to editors just not trusting the platform any more.
It can help with hosting consistency and deployment, but it won't fix oversized media, messy integrations or a content model that's fighting your editors on its own. Cloud solves infrastructure-shaped problems. If your issues sit somewhere else, in code, content or third-party scripts, you'll want those addressed directly rather than hoping a platform move fixes them by accident.
The honest answer depends on whether your problems are situational or structural. Situational issues, accumulated neglect, unoptimised media, unreviewed scripts, respond well to a focused rescue. Structural issues, a content model that's fundamentally misaligned with how your business now works, or a platform version that can't support where you're heading next, sometimes point to a rebuild instead. We'll tell you plainly which one applies, including a middle option worth knowing about: rescue first to stabilise things, then a properly planned rebuild later, rather than rebuilding from a position of panic.
Yes. Page speed and Core Web Vitals are a genuine ranking factor, and a slow or unreliable site also tends to have worse engagement, which compounds the problem. If your Umbraco site's underperforming technically, it's very likely costing you more than the obvious frustration of a slow load, it may well be costing you visibility too.
Sometimes a mix of all three. A rescue looks at the whole picture, performance, code quality, hosting, editor experience and maintainability, and often includes bringing an outdated version back up to something properly supported as part of the process. If your site's actively broken or badly underperforming right now, start with a rescue conversation and we'll tell you honestly if support or an upgrade is really what you need instead.
No, and we know that's the real fear behind this question. We prioritise stabilising the most urgent issues first, so you're not choosing between "broken now" and "offline for a month" while a full fix gets planned. Anything that needs more significant work gets sequenced carefully, with a working site throughout wherever that's possible.
We'll tell you honestly what we find, but a rescue isn't about assigning blame. Sites accumulate problems for all sorts of reasons: changing requirements, staff turnover, packages that were fine when installed and unsupported five years later, budget or time pressure at the time. What matters now is getting it working properly, not relitigating who built what.
It depends on how urgent the issue is and what our current workload looks like, but genuine emergencies get prioritised. Get in touch and tell us what's happening, and we'll give you a straight answer on timing rather than a vague "we'll be in touch." For anything less urgent, we'll always give you a realistic resolution time upfront, rather than an open-ended "we'll see."
You'll have a clear picture of what was wrong, what we changed, and how to spot the same issue again if it recurs. Some clients move into ongoing support so we're actively watching for the next problem before it becomes a crisis, others just want the fix and a clean handover. If ongoing Umbraco Support makes sense for you, we'll set that up as part of the handover, no hard sell either way. Either way works, book a consultation and we'll talk through what makes sense for you.
