Umbraco publishes Impact Report

Odense, Denmark, 3^rd April 2025, open-source content management system (CMS) company, Umbraco, has published its third report measuring the company’s impact on community, people and the planet.

2025 marks the 20^th anniversary since the Umbraco CMS software became open-source. During that time, Umbraco’s thriving open-source community has grown to more than 250,000 contributors, with hundreds of digital agency partners building solutions on the CMS platform.  One professional site is built on Umbraco every hour. It is estimated that more than a million websites have been built on the open-source Umbraco CMS since 2005.

In September 2024, Umbraco appointed a new CEO, Mats Persson, to extend the company’s international growth. Commenting on his first six months in the role, Mats says, “The strategic foundation laid before my tenure has continued to guide our growth, which reached 38% last year. I have focused on strengthening our strategic direction, enhancing Umbraco’s product portfolio, and refining our operations, with a clear emphasis on our partners and direct clients. We’re continuing to do what we do best, and raising the bar.”

To support partners’ evolving business requirements, Umbraco launched three major products over the past twelve months:

• Umbraco 14 launched with a re-architected back-office, in May 2024
• Umbraco Engage personalisation, A/B testing, and analytics add-on, launched in early November, following Umbraco’s acquisition of uMarketing Suite in August 2024
• Umbraco 15 launched in late November, built on the latest Microsoft .NET 9 core, which includes HybridCache for highly-efficient content handling for large enterprise websites.

Commenting on the product impact, Umbraco CTO, Filip Bech-Larsen states, “Our commitment to flexibility, openness, and innovation ensures that businesses, developers, and content teams can build the digital experiences they need, without being locked into predefined solutions.

Rather than dictating how innovation happens, we’re building a platform for innovation, where new technologies can be explored, integrated, and adapted as they mature. This approach is guided by four key areas of focus: Generative AI, Search, Personalisation, and Orchestration.”

Two years ago Umbraco committed to adopting five specific United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: 5, 9, 12, 1, and 17. The Impact Report details the company’s progress towards achieving those goals.

Umbraco CEO, Mats Persson, asserts that the open-source community is a major asset for helping to achieve the UN goals, commenting, “Umbraco’s open-source community is our superpower. Beyond code contributions, members are helping to shape the future of Umbraco by championing sustainability, diversity, and accessibility: ensuring that the Umbraco CMS platform evolves in a way that benefits everyone.”

Umbraco publicly recognises the top contributors with Most Valuable Person (MVP) status. Last year the number climbed to 100, with 23 new MVPs awarded and 77 renewed following their ongoing contributions.

Notable contributions included the Umbraco community Sustainability Team’s publication of Best Practices for Sustainable Web Development, and the development of the Sustainability Dashboard for calculating and minimising the CO2 generated from running Umbraco Cloud projects.

Umbraco regularly meets with its open-source community, with meetups in 60 countries and major events held in the UK, USA, Australia, Denmark, and Sweden. The annual Codegarden business summit and developer conference in Odense, Denmark, attracted 832 attendees: the highest number in 20 years. Umbraco is offsetting the CO2 emissions associated with people flying to the event and provides the option to participate online.

Instead of sending company merchandise, Umbraco gives contributors the choice to have a tree planted. Last year 10,384 trees were planted in recognition of each community contribution.

Anyone can use and contribute to open-source software, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, learning differences, or socio-economic status. This promotes inclusion of people who are under-represented in the IT industry.

To help address the IT industry’s gender imbalance, 54% of Umbraco’s new hires in 2024 were female and 41% of the Codegarden 2024 speakers were female.

To encourage this diversity within the company and community, Umbraco continues to participate in the following initiatives:

• Platinum partner, Luminary, provided Umbraco Fundamentals training to 25 students at St Benedict’s college, Sri Lanka in January 2024 [in support of UN Sustainable Development Goal 9.5]
• Umbraco’s Coding Class educates local schoolchildren and encourages the next generation of coders by providing an opportunity to present their ideas to professional developers, and gain constructive feedback
• Cloud Club meetups are supported to provide a platform for students and professionals to deepen their understanding of IT
• Umbraco runs the Femme Fatale professional network for women working in the Danish IT industry
• In 2024, Umbraco hosted nine interns to help them to fulfil their academic requirements
• Up-and-coming developers are sponsored to attend Codegarden.

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The Umbraco Impact Report 2024 is available at: https://umbraco.com