Gold Partner, Accelerator certified

Partner badges are easy to collect and easy to ignore. So when Kentico confirmed DDSN as a Gold Partner and a certified partner in its Accelerator Program, we thought the useful thing to write was not a celebration but an explanation: what these two designations measure, what they change for organisations planning a project on Xperience by Kentico, and where their limits are. Talk to us about your next Kentico project.

What Does Gold Partner Status Actually Measure?

Kentico's partner program has tiers, and Gold sits at the top of it. The tier is not bought and it is not a sponsorship. It reflects certified developers and marketers on staff, sites delivered and verified on the platform, and sustained engagement with Kentico's product team as the platform evolves. In other words, it measures the thing you actually care about when you shortlist an agency: whether the team has done this before, recently, and well.

For DDSN the tier sits on top of more than 25 years of building for the web, four Kentico Site of the Month awards, and delivered platforms such as Acumen Practice Notes for the Australian Institute of Architects, which Kentico itself features as a customer story. Alongside the Gold tier we hold Kentico's Quality Expert and Hosting Partner certifications, which cover how we build and where we run what we build.

A fair question is why any of this matters to you rather than to us. The honest answer is that plenty of capable agencies exist outside partner programs. What the tier gives you is a shortcut through due diligence: an independent party with full visibility of our project history has already checked the claims we would otherwise be asking you to take on trust.

What Is the Kentico Accelerator Program?

The Accelerator Program is newer and more interesting than the tier system, because it certifies a specific way of delivering a project rather than an agency in general. Accelerator partners are certified to deliver fixed-scope launches of Xperience by Kentico sites on a proven delivery model, with sites able to go live in as little as six weeks.

The traditional agency build runs on a different clock. Discovery, design, build, revise, migrate, launch: six to nine months is common, and the budget moves with the timeline. That model exists for good reasons on complex projects. But a large share of organisations do not have a complex project. They have an ageing site, a capable content team, and a need to be on a modern, supported platform without a year of their attention going to the rebuild.

An Accelerator engagement answers that case with a deliberately constrained scope: foundational site architecture, branded templates and widgets, content modelling, analytics and SEO configuration, and training for your team, delivered on a defined timeline at a defined price. The constraint is the point. It is what makes six weeks honest rather than optimistic.

Where Leaping Llama Fits

DDSN's certification in the program is not an aspiration; the tooling already exists. Leaping Llama is our accelerator for Xperience by Kentico: a full front-end starting point with a flexible Page Builder widget library, forms, shopping carts, event ticketing, and the content structures most organisations need on day one. Rather than starting each project from a blank platform, we start from a tested foundation and spend the project's weeks on what makes your site yours.

An accelerator is not a template you are stuck with. It is the boring 70 per cent of every build, done once, tested properly, and maintained, so the project budget goes to the 30 per cent that is actually about your organisation.

More detail about Leaping Llama

Is a Six-Week Launch Right for Every Project?

No, and we would rather say so here than in week three. Accelerator engagements deliberately exclude extensive custom design, large content migrations, complex third-party integrations, and multi-phase transformation programs. If your project involves a member portal with deep CRM integration, a heavily customised legacy site, or a full accessibility remediation, it belongs in a scoped build where those needs get the time they require. We deliver both kinds of project, and part of what the certifications buy you is a partner with no incentive to squeeze the wrong project into the fast lane.

The practical test is simple. If your content team could rebuild your site's pages themselves given good templates and a modern editor, an Accelerator launch will likely serve you well. If your site is your business logic, plan a full build.

What This Means for Associations and Education Providers

Most of DDSN's Kentico work is for associations, professional bodies, and education providers, and both designations land differently there. These organisations rarely fail at ambition; they fail at timelines, because internal approval cycles are long and project fatigue is real. A certified six-week path onto a modern platform changes the conversation with a board or committee: the request is no longer a year of disruption, it is a quarter with a defined end. And because every launch ships with training and handover documentation, the site returns to your team rather than remaining dependent on ours. Our Hypercare support, with unlimited training and technical calls, is there for what comes after, not to hold the keys.

Badges Are Proof, Not the Product

We opened by saying partner badges are easy to ignore, and that remains true. The Gold tier and the Accelerator certification do not make a website good. What they do is let you verify, before you sign anything, that the team you are considering has delivered on this platform repeatedly and has been independently checked on how. That is what they are for. Use them that way, on us and on anyone else you shortlist.

Frequently Asked Questions