Kentico Xperience 13 reaches end of support on December 31, 2026. Every organization still running it faces a forced choice between a full replatform onto Xperience by Kentico or a migration to something else.
The December 2026 Deadline
Kentico published its official product lifecycle timeline for Kentico Xperience 13, and the dates are not ambiguous. From January 1, 2026 through December 31, 2026, the platform receives security hotfixes only. No bug fixes. No feature improvements. No enhancements. From January 1, 2027, support stops entirely. No patches of any kind. Any vulnerabilities discovered after that date are your problem to solve without vendor assistance.
This matters more than a typical EOL announcement because Kentico Xperience 13 has a documented history of critical vulnerabilities. According to the DXP Scorecard (April 2026), the platform carries CVSS 9.8 severity CISA KEV-listed security flaws. Running it unsupported after December 2026 is not a theoretical risk. It is an open exposure on a platform with a known vulnerability record.
The clock is not running slowly. Major migrations from Kentico typically take six to twelve months when done properly. Organizations that have not started planning are already behind the timeline required to exit before the deadline.
The Cost of Staying on Kentico
Even before the EOL deadline, Kentico has been an expensive platform to run. License costs for Kentico Xperience 13 ran from approximately $12,500 per year for the Business tier to $22,300 per year for the Enterprise tier, with annual maintenance renewal adding roughly 30% on top of the license fee. That is before infrastructure, development, and the cost of finding and retaining developers who know the platform.
The upgrade to Xperience by Kentico is not a version bump. It is a full replatforming. Kentico itself describes it as a “controlled replatforming, not an upgrade.” All widgets, macros, custom modules, and event handlers built on Kentico Xperience 13 must be rewritten. The .NET Framework 4.8 / ASP.NET Web Forms architecture of Kentico 13 is non-portable. Content can be exported and imported. Code cannot. A migration assessment from Bitsorchestra (March 2026) put the cost of a small, lightly customized Kentico site migration at between $10,000 and $25,000 at minimum.
Surprise upgrade fees, being locked into using expensive agencies, and other factors are causing frustration with platforms like Kentico. Many organizations are deciding to move away for several reasons: high operational costs, difficulty finding developers, and limited design options compared to open source platforms.
Web Experts, Why Companies Are Running Away From Kentico, February 2026
Kentico clients also face significant expenses with upgrades and migrations. With each migration, Kentico customers often incur expenses related to infrastructure upgrades, custom development, and third-party integrations.
rtCamp, Kentico vs WordPress Lifetime Cost Analysis, November 2025
What Kentico Developers Actually Cost
Kentico is a .NET CMS. Every meaningful customization, theme development task, custom module build, and API integration requires a developer fluent in C#, ASP.NET, and the Kentico MVC or Web Forms framework. That developer pool is smaller than the pool for WordPress, where millions of developers work, agencies are available everywhere, and freelancers are abundant and competitively priced.
Marketing teams want more control, development teams want more flexibility, and leadership wants lower running costs without losing enterprise-grade reliability. Difficulty finding qualified and affordable developers is one of the top reasons the C-suite is reassessing Kentico.
rtCamp, Why CTOs and CMOs Are Moving Away from Kentico, March 2026
Marketing and content teams often feel locked out, relying on IT for routine updates. Limited agility is one of the primary reasons organizations choose to migrate from Kentico to WordPress.
Itineris, Kentico to WordPress Migration Guide, October 2025
On WordPress, a content editor can publish a page, create a landing page, update navigation, and add a media gallery without opening a development ticket. On Kentico, those same tasks routinely require developer involvement. The productivity cost of that dependency compounds over years of operation.
Kentico Modules and Their WordPress Equivalents
Every piece of functionality in Kentico is built on custom Page Types, Widgets, and Modules tied to the .NET framework. None of it can be ported. Each component must be mapped to a WordPress equivalent. The table below covers the most commonly used Kentico features and their counterparts, including the community feature that requires the most careful migration: Kentico Forum moving to wpForo 360° AI.
| Kentico Feature | What It Does | WordPress Equivalent | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Page Types (custom content types) | Structured content with typed fields and view templates | Custom Post Types + ACF Pro custom fields | Free + Pro |
| Kentico Widgets (MVC) | Drag-and-drop page layout components | Gutenberg Block Editor + ACF Blocks | Free + Pro |
| Form Builder | Web forms with submissions, workflow, and email alerts | Gravity Forms / WPForms / Fluent Forms | Free tiers |
| E-commerce (Store module) | Products, cart, checkout, and order management | WooCommerce (8M+ active installs) | Free core |
| Kentico Forum | Built-in community discussion boards | wpForo 360° AI (full forum with AI features) | Free + Pro |
| Contact Groups and Activities | CRM-lite: visitor tracking, contact segmentation | FluentCRM / HubSpot for WP | Free tiers |
| Campaign Monitor / Email | Built-in newsletter and campaign management | Mailchimp / Mailpoet / ActiveCampaign | Free tiers |
| Document Library / Media | Centralized file and media management | WordPress Media Library (built in) | Built in |
| Staging module | Push content from staging to production environments | WP Staging / Duplicator Pro | Free tiers |
| Custom Modules | Bespoke .NET CMS modules for specific functionality | Custom Post Types + ACF Pro + custom plugins | Custom dev |
| Membership module | User registration, profiles, and access control | MemberPress / Ultimate Member | Free core |
| Taxonomy | Hierarchical content classification | WordPress Categories + Tags + custom taxonomies | Built in |
| Kentico MVC Views | Razor/C# view templates controlling front-end output | Custom WordPress PHP theme | Custom dev |
A note on the forum migration. Kentico includes a built-in Forum module that stores discussion topics and replies in the CMS database. gConverter migrates this content directly into wpForo 360° AI, mapping forum categories to wpForo categories, topics to wpForo threads, and replies with full author and timestamp data preserved. The result is a properly featured community forum with AI moderation, member ranks, and subscriptions that the Kentico forum never supported.
What a Proper Kentico Migration Involves
A Kentico website stores its content in a SQL Server database using a proprietary schema tied to the .NET CMS framework. Content objects, page type definitions, relationships, URL aliases, and user data are all in tables that do not map directly to any other platform. A proper migration reads the source database directly rather than crawling the rendered pages, and handles each content layer explicitly.
Page types and content objects
Kentico Page Types define the structure of each content item. Each Page Type is stored in the Kentico database with its field definitions and associated page templates. A proper migration reads every content item per Page Type, maps the field values to their ACF Pro equivalents in WordPress, and creates posts or custom post types that replicate the original content structure. All content field values including rich text, images, dates, related items, and custom field types are preserved. No field is silently dropped.
Widgets and page layouts
Kentico MVC Widgets define reusable page components that editors drag onto page zones. Each Widget has a Razor view template and a C# controller. These cannot be ported. A proper migration builds Gutenberg blocks in WordPress that replicate the visual output of each Widget, and rebuilds any page that used a multi-widget zone layout as a Gutenberg block-structured page with the matching visual output.
Forum content to wpForo
Kentico Forum data is stored in the CMS database in forum-specific tables. Forum categories become wpForo 360° AI categories. Topics are migrated as wpForo threads with original poster attribution and timestamps. All replies are nested correctly under their parent topics. Member data is cross-referenced with the Kentico user system to preserve authorship throughout the forum history.
Users, membership, and contact records
Kentico users are stored in the CMS_User table with extended profile data in CMS_UserSettings. Contact records from the Contact Management module are in OM_Contact. All registered users are imported to WordPress with role mapping. User profile field data is imported as WordPress user meta. Contact activity records are exported to a structured format compatible with FluentCRM or HubSpot for WordPress. Passwords use different hashing between the two systems, so users receive a secure reset link on first login.
MVC views to WordPress theme
Kentico MVC Razor templates (`.cshtml` files) cannot be ported to WordPress. A proper migration delivers a custom WordPress theme that replicates the visual output of the original Kentico site exactly: every header and footer variant, every page template, every widget zone layout, and every content type view. The result is visually identical to the original site with no dependency on the Kentico template engine or .NET rendering stack.
URLs, Smart Search, and SEO
Kentico generates friendly URLs from the page tree path. Where these can be replicated in WordPress permalink settings, they are preserved exactly. Where the structure must change, 301 redirects are created for every affected URL using the Redirection plugin. Smart Search index configuration is migrated to SearchWP. SEO titles and meta descriptions stored in Kentico page meta settings are imported to Yoast SEO. No page goes live without its URL and SEO data intact.
What Bad Kentico Migrations Look Like
- Page Type fields silently lost. Generic migration tools crawl the rendered HTML of each page but miss all the structured field values stored in Kentico‘s database tables. Product specs, event dates, custom metadata, and related item references all disappear. Only the body content arrives.
- Widgets not rebuilt. Pages built with multiple Widget zones in Kentico have no direct equivalent in WordPress. Generic tools flatten the layout into a single content column, destroying the original page structure. Multi-column layouts, sidebars, and zone-based components must all be rebuilt correctly as Gutenberg blocks.
- Forum content abandoned. Kentico Forum data stored in CMS-specific tables is not handled by any standard WordPress importer. Years of community discussion are simply not migrated.
- Contact and activity records dropped. The Kentico Contact Management module stores valuable CRM data. Generic migrations ignore it entirely because it has no WordPress equivalent in the default schema. This data is often the most commercially valuable asset in the database.
- No URL redirects. Kentico page tree URLs are replaced by default WordPress slugs with no redirects. All inbound links, search rankings, and bookmarks break at launch.
- Razor templates copy-pasted. Some providers attempt to translate Razor templates to PHP line by line. The result is brittle, unmaintainable, and fails on any page type that uses C# logic in the view layer.
GDPR and Your Data
A Kentico database contains significant personal data. The CMS_User and CMS_UserSettings tables hold every registered user’s email address, hashed password, and profile data. The Contact Management module in OM_Contact and OM_Activity tables stores visitor interaction records that may include email addresses, IP addresses, and behavioral data. Form submission data is in BizFormData tables. For organizations using Kentico in regulated sectors (healthcare, finance, government), this data is subject to GDPR and sector-specific data protection rules.
Migrating this to WordPress requires a Data Processing Agreement before any provider touches your database. gConverter is US-registered with full EU GDPR compliance. We sign a DPA before any access, store credentials in AES-256 encrypted vaults, transfer over TLS 1.3, and permanently delete all customer data within 30 days. Read the full GDPR documentation →
What Clients Say
Went FAR above and beyond to help us work through this project. We are thrilled with the final result and they were professional, great to work with, and responsive every step of the way. Would highly recommend.
Anna P., Wilmington NC – Customer Lobby, January 2026
Very few conversion issues on the first pass, and they cleaned it right. Very Impressive.
Stacy C., Katy TX – Customer Lobby, November 2025
The Bottom Line
Kentico Xperience 13 is a capable platform, and for organizations deeply embedded in the Microsoft .NET stack with dedicated development teams it served a real purpose. But December 31, 2026 is a hard stop. After that date, every security vulnerability is your responsibility to manage without vendor assistance. Every organization running Kentico 13 is already in the window where planning a migration is not optional.
The question is not whether to migrate. It is where to go. Xperience by Kentico requires a full rebuild with the same cost and complexity overhead as Kentico. WordPress is where the developer talent is abundant, where the plugin ecosystem covers every use case, and where content teams can work without raising a ticket. Every Kentico page, every form, every forum thread, and every user account can be migrated cleanly.