What is Kentico CMS? A guide to Kentico websites and development

Discovering the Power of Kentico Software for Your Web Solutions

Are you navigating the complex landscape of content management systems and wondering which CMS to deploy for your marketing needs?

Or are you familiar with Kentico and wondering how to approach your transition to Xperience by Kentico?

Then this article is for you...

For organisations comparing content management systems, that description raises almost as many questions as it answers. What is Kentico CMS in practical terms? What does a Kentico developer actually build? What is the difference between Kentico Xperience 13 and Xperience by Kentico? And how do you choose a Kentico web agency that can deliver and support the result?

This guide answers those questions from the perspective of DDSN Interactive, an Australian Kentico development agency that has worked with the platform since 2017. We have used Kentico software for public websites, authenticated portals, fundraising systems and large searchable content libraries, and we support both organisations planning new projects and those moving from earlier Kentico versions.

 

What is Kentico CMS?

A Comprehensive Web Development Solution

Kentico CMS is a content management system for creating, publishing and governing website content. Over time, the product expanded beyond traditional page management into a digital experience platform, or DXP. The current Kentico platform can manage reusable content, websites, microsites, emails and other digital channels while connecting that content with marketing, customer data, personalisation and commerce.

The important distinction is that Kentico is the software company and Xperience by Kentico is its current CMS and DXP product. People still search for “Kentico CMS” because that was the product's long-standing name and remains the clearest description of its central job: helping organisations manage websites and digital content.

Unlike a basic website builder, Kentico separates the content-management environment from the code and presentation layer used to deliver the live experience. Editors receive visual tools for creating and arranging content, while developers can build custom designs, components, integrations and business functions around it.

That combination makes Kentico particularly suitable for organisations whose website needs to do more than publish a collection of pages. It can provide a governed foundation for multiple websites, member or student services, complex search, personalised journeys, campaigns and integrations with the systems an organisation already uses.

Kentico software today: Kentico Xperience 13 and Xperience by Kentico

The names can be confusing because two generations of Kentico software are still encountered in the market.

Platform	What it is	What organisations should know
Kentico Xperience 13	The previous generation of the platform, used by many established websites and digital systems.	It reaches the end of vendor support on 31 December 2026. Existing sites need a supported upgrade, migration or carefully planned transition.
Xperience by Kentico	Kentico's current, evergreen digital experience platform, built on ASP.NET Core.	It receives regular security and feature updates and is the destination for new Kentico development and KX13 upgrades.

Xperience by Kentico is no longer simply a future roadmap or a content-only product. It now unifies content management, digital marketing, commerce and AI-assisted capabilities. Its Content Hub supports structured, reusable material across websites, emails, mobile applications and headless channels. Marketing functions include campaigns, segmentation, personalisation, automation and customer journeys.

For developers, the platform uses ASP.NET Core and modern frameworks, with a modular architecture and APIs that support custom applications and integrations. Kentico describes it as an evergreen platform, with security patches and feature releases delivered continuously rather than accumulated into another disruptive major-version upgrade.

If your organisation is still using KX13, read our guide to CMS end-of-support dates and migration planning. The live site will not suddenly stop working at the deadline, but security patches and vendor fixes do stop, and the risk and cost of remaining on the unsupported platform increase from there.

What is Kentico web development?

Kentico web development is the work required to turn the underlying CMS or DXP into a website, portal or connected digital service that meets an organisation's particular needs. Installing the software is only the starting point.

A well-run Kentico website development project usually includes:

• digital strategy, user research and definition of measurable goals;
• information architecture and content modelling;
• accessible user-experience and visual design;
• development of templates, Page Builder widgets and reusable components;
• integration with CRM, ERP, identity, learning, payment or marketing systems;
• migration and quality assurance of existing content;
• search, analytics, SEO and performance configuration;
• security testing, deployment and hosting; and
• training, support and continuous improvement after launch.

The quality of Kentico CMS development depends heavily on decisions made before the first component is coded. A weak content model can force authors to duplicate material. An over-engineered design system can slow down routine publishing. An under-engineered one can produce hundreds of inconsistent pages. Good Kentico development finds the useful middle: enough structure to protect quality, with enough freedom for marketers and content teams to work without raising a development request every time something changes.

Traditional, headless and hybrid delivery

Xperience by Kentico is described as hybrid headless, read our full blog article on understanding hybrid and headless CMS. That means the same platform can support visually managed websites and structured content delivered to other channels through APIs. An organisation might use Page Builder for its main website, reuse selected content in a mobile app, and deliver another content set to a separate campaign or microsite.

The question is not whether headless is fashionable. It is whether a channel needs independently delivered structured content. A good Kentico web developer chooses the simplest delivery model that meets the real requirement rather than turning every website into a distributed-systems exercise.

What does a Kentico developer do?

A Kentico developer is a .NET web developer who specialises in building, extending, integrating and maintaining digital platforms using Kentico software. Their work can include content models, custom components, APIs, authentication, migrations, performance optimisation, security and deployment.

On an Xperience by Kentico project, a developer may:

• configure website and content channels;
• create reusable content types and taxonomies;
• build Page Builder sections and widgets;
• develop forms and multi-step transactions;
• connect customer data and marketing automation;
• integrate CRM, membership, student, finance or identity platforms;
• implement single sign-on and role-based access;
• develop search, filtering and content recommendations;
• establish automated builds and controlled deployments; and
• diagnose and improve security, accessibility and performance.

A Kentico web developer should understand more than the API. They need to know how an author will maintain what they build, how a feature will behave on small screens and with assistive technology, what data it exposes, how it will be tested and how it will remain supportable as the platform changes.

For a small technical task, one experienced Kentico developer may be sufficient. A website redesign, migration or connected platform normally needs a broader team: strategy, UX, visual design, content, accessibility, development, testing, DevOps and project management. That is where a Kentico development company or multidisciplinary agency becomes valuable.

What can Kentico CMS websites do?

Kentico CMS websites range from straightforward marketing sites to complex digital platforms. The system is especially useful where several of the following requirements must work together:

Websites, microsites and multiple brands

Teams can manage a principal website alongside campaign sites, regional sites or additional brands. Shared content and components reduce duplication while governance rules protect brand and publishing standards.

Structured and reusable content

Content can be stored independently of any one page, then reused across pages, websites, emails, applications and headless channels. This is useful for organisations publishing courses, services, people, locations, projects, policies or other information that appears in several contexts.

Personalisation and marketing automation

Content and communications can respond to audience segments, behaviour and journey stage. Marketing teams can coordinate campaigns, emails and personalised website experiences without assembling a separate tool for every part of the journey.

Portals and authenticated services

Kentico can support logins, gated resources and custom services for members, students, staff, customers or professional subscribers. Authentication can connect with established identity and membership systems rather than creating another disconnected account database.

Commerce, donations and transactions

The platform can support products, payments and experience-led commerce. Custom Kentico development can also deliver donations, registrations, event bookings, applications and other workflows that do not fit a conventional online shop.

Search and large content libraries

Structured fields and taxonomies provide a strong base for filtered and faceted search. This matters for education, government, associations and professional resources, where users often arrive with a task and a set of criteria rather than the title of a page.

Examples of Kentico CMS websites built in Australia

Features are more useful when you can see what they solve. These Australian Kentico website development projects show four different uses of the platform.

Acumen Practice Notes: 1,200 pages migrated in five weeks

Acumen Practice Notes is a 60-year-old professional resource maintained by the Australian Institute of Architects and used by more than 14,000 architects globally. Its previous platform had reached end of life, while its 1,200-plus pages, distributed authoring model and mixed public and member-only content made a rushed replacement risky.

DDSN rebuilt the resource on Xperience by Kentico using our Leaping Llama accelerator. The solution includes structured content, advanced filtering, iMIS member authentication, Microsoft Entra staff sign-on and mixed access within individual pages so public material can remain visible to search engines while premium guidance is protected. The site reached WCAG 2.1 AA and launched five weeks after commencement.

Read the Acumen Practice Notes Kentico case study

The Gordon: turning platform risk into a stronger education website

The Gordon Institute of TAFE needed to move away from an end-of-life platform without sacrificing the course discovery and operational integrations used by prospective students and staff. DDSN used the migration to establish a faster, safer and more scalable CMS foundation that could support continuous improvement.

The result received a Kentico Site of the Year 2025 honourable mention in the Education and Careers category. Its strength is not a decorative effect that fits neatly in an awards screenshot; it is the way complex course information, audience journeys and integrations work together for people deciding what to study.

Read The Gordon platform migration case study

Trinity College: a long-term Kentico digital platform

Trinity College at the University of Melbourne serves several distinct student cohorts and maintains a large body of public and student-facing information. DDSN has supported its digital environment since 2015 through three replatforming projects, two UX projects, two visual redesigns and ongoing improvement.

The public website moved to Kentico Portal Engine in 2018 and Kentico Xperience 13 MVC in 2023. A subsequent UX and visual redesign addressed a site that had grown beyond 900 pages, improving navigation and content presentation while retaining the College's established identity.

Explore the Trinity College digital platform

The Kids' Cancer Project: fundraising inside the main website

The Kids' Cancer Project wanted to consolidate campaign activity that had been spread across microsites and third-party platforms. DDSN used Kentico to bring the Future Cure corporate fundraising experience into the main website, strengthening the organisation's search authority and giving potential donors a connected journey.

The four-week delivery included donation workflows, a fundraising thermometer, partner recognition and interactive presentation of supported research projects. A later brand implementation helped place the science and purpose of the organisation more clearly at the centre of the website; a major donation from a new web-based source followed within two weeks of launch.

See the Kentico fundraising tools and the subsequent brand implementation.

How to choose a Kentico web agency or development company

The right provider depends on the nature of the work. An experienced freelance Kentico developer may be suitable for a defined technical change. A new website, migration or connected digital platform usually needs a broader Kentico development company with strategy, design, content, accessibility, integration, testing, hosting and long-term support capabilities.

Start with certified developers and marketers

Ask whether the people assigned to your project hold current Kentico certifications—not simply whether the agency employs someone who was certified several years ago.

Certified Kentico developers demonstrate technical knowledge of the platform’s architecture, content modelling, components, integrations and recommended development practices. Certified marketers understand how its content, personalisation, email, automation and customer-experience capabilities should be configured and used.

Both perspectives matter. A technically sound platform can still fail if authors find it difficult to operate, while an attractive marketing concept can become expensive or fragile if it is poorly engineered.

Ask prospective agencies:

• How many certified Kentico developers and marketers will work on the project?
• Are their certifications relevant to Xperience by Kentico or only an earlier Kentico version?
• Who will make the architectural decisions?
• Who will design the authoring experience?
• Will the certified team remain involved after launch?

Check the agency’s Kentico partner badges

Kentico partner badges provide independent evidence in several areas that can otherwise be difficult to assess before a project begins.

• Gold Partner: indicates an established Kentico practice supported by certified people, completed projects and ongoing engagement with the platform.
• Quality Expert: recognises demonstrated attention to implementation quality and recommended development practices.
• Hosting Partner: indicates experience operating and supporting Kentico websites, not merely building them and handing them over.
• Accelerator Partner: confirms that the agency can deliver suitable Xperience by Kentico projects through Kentico’s structured Accelerator Program.

These badges are useful shortcuts through due diligence, but they are not substitutes for it. They tell you that Kentico has reviewed relevant aspects of the agency’s capability. They do not tell you whether its approach, team or delivery model is right for your organisation.

Look beyond the badges to the evidence

Ask every Kentico web agency or development company to demonstrate:

• recent Xperience by Kentico projects;
• successful migrations from earlier Kentico versions or other platforms;
• relevant live websites and detailed case studies;
• experience with integrations similar to yours;
• accessible design and testing practices;
• content migration and SEO-retention processes;
• author training and documentation;
• hosting, monitoring, backup and incident-response arrangements; and
• a practical continuous-improvement model after launch.

Kentico development services from DDSN

DDSN provides end-to-end Kentico development services for organisations building a new platform, improving an existing one or moving away from Kentico Xperience 13.

• digital strategy, discovery and platform selection;
• user research, information architecture and content strategy;
• accessible website and interaction design;
• new Xperience by Kentico implementations;
• Kentico Xperience 13 upgrades and migrations;
• custom Page Builder components, modules and applications;
• CRM, ERP, SSO, membership, learning and payment integrations;
• content migration, SEO retention and quality assurance;
• Australian Kentico CMS hosting and managed deployment;
• training, technical support and continuous improvement.

Our Leaping Llama accelerator provides a tested starting point for Xperience by Kentico, including common content structures, components, forms and digital functions. This lets suitable projects spend more of their budget on the needs that make the organisation distinctive rather than rebuilding routine platform plumbing.

An accelerated launch is not right for every project. Large migrations, deep integrations, extensive custom design and complex business rules deserve a properly scoped build. We deliver both models and will tell you which one we would choose in your position.

Kentico development in Australia

DDSN is a Melbourne-based Kentico web agency working with organisations throughout Australia. We provide Kentico development for Melbourne, Sydney and nationally distributed teams, with Australian support hours and local accountability across strategy, development, hosting and ongoing service.

Location is not a substitute for expertise, but it can matter when a project involves local privacy expectations, data residency, procurement, accessibility obligations, face-to-face workshops or rapid coordination between a client's team and its developers. Our customers include education providers, charities, professional associations and organisations operating regulated or business-critical digital services.

If you are seeking a Kentico developer in Australia, assess the team against the work you actually need. A Sydney organisation does not necessarily need a developer sitting in Sydney; it needs a delivery and support arrangement that removes distance as a problem.

---

Kentico CMS hosting options

Xperience by Kentico provides managed SaaS and private-cloud deployment options, including private-cloud infrastructure such as Microsoft Azure, AWS or an on-premises environment. The underlying product remains the same, but responsibility for infrastructure and operations differs.

Hosting model	Best suited to	Considerations
Kentico SaaS	Organisations that want Kentico to operate the core platform infrastructure and deployment environment.	Simplifies platform operations and evergreen updates; confirm available regions, environment requirements and responsibilities for connected services.
Private cloud	Organisations needing greater infrastructure control, a particular cloud provider, Australian hosting or a specialised security arrangement.	The organisation or its partner owns more operational responsibility, including monitoring, backup, recovery and deployment practices.
Existing KX13 hosting	Organisations maintaining KX13 during a planned transition.	Hosting can keep the application running but cannot replace security fixes after vendor support ends.

DDSN provides managed Kentico CMS hosting in Australia, including development, staging and production environments, monitoring, backups, managed upgrades, security services and a single point of support across the application and infrastructure. The right arrangement depends on data residency, risk, internal capability, procurement and the wider systems connected to the website.

---

Kentico vs Drupal: which CMS is the better fit?

Kentico and Drupal can both support large, structured and highly customised websites. The important difference is not that one is universally better. It is the operating model each creates around licensing, development, marketing capability and maintenance.

Consideration	Kentico	Drupal
Product model	Commercial CMS and DXP from a single vendor.	Open-source CMS supported by a global community and commercial ecosystem.
Primary development stack	ASP.NET Core and the Microsoft development ecosystem.	PHP, commonly deployed on Linux with Apache or Nginx.
Marketing capabilities	Content, customer data, personalisation, campaigns, automation and commerce are available within the connected platform.	A strong content-management foundation that can be extended through contributed modules and integrations selected for the project.
Governance	A unified vendor roadmap, support model and regular platform refreshes.	Core and contributed projects can have distinct maintainers, versions and support cycles.
Typical reason to shortlist	You want an integrated commercial platform and work within the .NET ecosystem.	You prioritise open-source control, a broad community ecosystem and PHP capability.

Licensing cost alone is not a useful comparison. Drupal has no commercial core licence, but both platforms require design, development, hosting, maintenance and governance. Kentico's licence may replace some separate marketing products; Drupal's modular ecosystem may offer greater choice. Compare the total operating model over several years, including the internal team required to manage it.

Choose Kentico when an integrated content and marketing platform, a vendor-backed roadmap and Microsoft development capability align with your organisation. Choose Drupal when open-source governance and the ability to assemble a tailored PHP-based ecosystem are more important. In either case, the quality of the implementation will matter at least as much as the name on the CMS.

Frequently asked questions