There was a time when the Umbraco Cloud conversation was fairly simple.
Do you want Umbraco hosted and maintained for you, or do you want to manage the infrastructure yourself?
That question is still there. But Umbraco Cloud has changed enough that the answer deserves another look.
Dedicated resources are more accessible. Managed Redis is available. Load balancing went live in July 2026. The Cloud Portal gives teams more information about traffic and application behaviour. Scheduled Upgrades are coming next, followed by Artifact Deployments and Rolling Updates on the current roadmap.
A recent Umbraco session, From Running Projects to Growing Portfolios, brought those changes together in a useful way. The discussion was not simply about hosting another website. It looked at what happens when a team is responsible for ten, twenty or hundreds of Umbraco projects, each with environments, upgrades, monitoring, security settings and infrastructure to look after.
That is a much more interesting question.
What is Umbraco Cloud?
Umbraco Cloud is Umbraco's managed platform for hosting and operating Umbraco CMS projects on Microsoft Azure. Umbraco manages much of the platform layer, including hosting infrastructure, platform maintenance, backups, monitoring and deployment tooling. The development team remains responsible for the application itself: architecture, code, integrations, testing and performance.
That division of responsibility is worth understanding before comparing Cloud with a self-managed setup.
The decision is not only about where the application is hosted.
It is also about what your developers should spend their time operating.
The bigger the Umbraco estate, the more that question matters
Running one website can hide a lot of infrastructure effort.
Across a larger estate, it becomes easier to see.
Every application has environments to maintain. Certificates expire. Platforms need patching. CMS versions reach end of support. Deployment processes need care. Traffic needs watching. Security settings need maintaining.
None of these jobs is unusual.
Repeating them across dozens of websites is where the cost starts to add up.
This was one of the strongest themes in Umbraco's recent Cloud discussion. The session itself was framed around agencies managing growing portfolios and the time spent maintaining environments, compliance, uptime, firewall rules and upgrade cycles.
For an enterprise with several brands, markets or digital services, the same thinking applies.
The question becomes less about the monthly hosting invoice and more about the operating model behind the whole estate.
Choose the infrastructure after you understand the project
One part of the webinar discussion that stood out was ClerksWell's experience.
An earlier approach had been to begin with the hosting budget and fit the project into the available tier.
Their thinking developed in the other direction: understand traffic, bandwidth and technical requirements first, then choose the infrastructure that can support them.
It sounds obvious when written down.
It is also easy to get wrong.
Hosting can end up being discussed near the end of a website project, almost as though the application has already answered the infrastructure question for us.
It has not.
A national campaign platform and a small corporate website may both run Umbraco, but their infrastructure needs can be very different.
Before selecting an Umbraco Cloud plan, the team should know the expected traffic pattern, peak demand, availability requirements, caching needs, integration dependencies, deployment expectations, internal security policies and who is expected to operate the infrastructure after launch.
Once those answers are clear, Cloud sizing becomes a technical decision rather than a pricing exercise.
Umbraco Cloud can now scale much further
This is probably the most important change for teams that assessed Umbraco Cloud several years ago.
Umbraco Cloud now offers dedicated compute resources in several sizes. Redis Cache can be added as a managed cache layer, and Professional and Enterprise projects can use load balancing across multiple dedicated resources.
Load balancing was released on July 1, 2026. Umbraco says it can distribute traffic across multiple instances of the same environment, giving larger projects additional throughput and resilience if one instance becomes unavailable.
That changes the architecture conversation for high-traffic Umbraco projects.
Previously, a project that needed horizontal scale might have led quickly to a custom Azure setup.
Today there are more options inside Umbraco Cloud itself.
That does not mean every large project belongs there.
It does mean an assessment made several years ago may no longer describe the platform available today.
Why Redis matters
Redis can sound like one more infrastructure feature on a product sheet.
Its value becomes clearer in a scaled environment.
Umbraco Cloud's managed Redis service can provide a dedicated cache layer and shared state when several application resources are working together. It is also included in load-balanced configurations.
For a development team, that removes another piece of infrastructure that would otherwise need to be provisioned, configured and maintained separately.
The webinar also covered sticky sessions and readiness checks for load-balanced applications. These can help when an older application was not originally written for several application instances.
That is useful, especially for established Umbraco estates.
But it is not a shortcut around architecture.
Session handling, caching, local storage, integrations and application state should still be reviewed before changing the hosting model.
More capacity cannot fix inefficient software
This point is easy to lose in a Cloud conversation.
More CPU helps.
More memory helps.
Redis can help.
Another application instance can help.
None of those things makes inefficient application code disappear.
Database queries, third-party calls, caching behaviour, media delivery and application architecture still determine how well an Umbraco site performs.
Umbraco Cloud can take care of more of the platform underneath the application.
The engineering team still needs to understand what it has built.
That is a healthy boundary between managed infrastructure and good software engineering.
Umbraco Cloud gives teams more information after launch
There is another change that is less dramatic than load balancing but important for teams running a portfolio.
The Cloud Portal now provides more operational information.
Traffic and Performance Insights can help teams examine traffic patterns, response behaviour and resource use. Hostname Monitoring provides availability history and can also monitor sites that are hosted outside Umbraco Cloud.
That matters when there are many websites to look after.
Instead of waiting until someone reports a problem, engineering teams have more information available about how applications and infrastructure have behaved over time.
It can also make infrastructure conversations easier.
If CPU usage is increasing, there is data to examine.
If traffic has changed, there is data to examine.
If availability has been questioned, there is history to examine.
For larger digital estates, that visibility is part of the value of a managed platform.
Sustainability reporting is now part of the Cloud Portal too
Umbraco Cloud also includes sustainability reporting for hosting infrastructure.
The dashboard provides estimated emissions information and historical comparisons that organisations can use alongside wider reporting. Umbraco describes the feature as infrastructure-level sustainability data rather than a complete assessment of the environmental impact of a digital service.
That distinction matters.
A website's environmental impact cannot be reduced to one hosting number.
Even so, organisations with ESG reporting requirements increasingly need infrastructure data from suppliers. Having it available inside the platform gives procurement and digital teams another measurable input to work with.
The next Umbraco Cloud changes are about control
Several of the more interesting Cloud changes are still on the roadmap.
That wording matters.
They should not be described as available features until they ship.
Scheduled Upgrades
Scheduled Upgrades are currently targeted for October 2026.
The planned feature lets teams specify a timeframe for automatic upgrades to Umbraco CMS, Forms and Deploy.
Automatic updates are useful.
Larger organisations also need to know when changes will happen.
There may be release calendars, campaign dates, testing windows or support arrangements around a production platform.
Giving teams a defined update window keeps the benefit of managed upgrades while making them easier to fit into a wider engineering process.
Artifact Deployments
Artifact Deployments are currently targeted for Q4 2026.
The idea is familiar to .NET teams: use the organisation's existing CI/CD tooling to build a finished application artifact and send that artifact to Umbraco Cloud. Umbraco then handles deployment and the infrastructure beneath it.
The build process stays with the development team.
The Cloud platform receives the output.
That also helps with an important deployment principle: the application package that was tested should be the application package that is deployed.
Umbraco has already invited webinar registrants to apply for early access to Artifact Deployments.
Rolling Updates
Rolling Updates are planned alongside Artifact Deployments, also for Q4 2026.
The new version will be staged alongside the live environment before traffic is transferred across. The aim is to make application deployments possible without taking the live site offline during the changeover.
For organisations with important public websites or international audiences, that is worth watching.
Again, it is roadmap work today.
Do not design today's production architecture around an unreleased capability.
Umbraco 13 makes this discussion timely
There is another date that matters in 2026.
Umbraco 13 reaches End of Life on December 14, 2026.
After that date, standard security patches and support from Umbraco HQ end. Organisations that need additional time can use Umbraco 13 XLTS, while Umbraco recommends upgrading or rebuilding on version 17 LTS or above.
Umbraco 17 is the current LTS release and is supported until November 27, 2028.
For teams already planning an Umbraco 13 upgrade, this is a good time to examine more than the CMS version.
Look at how the application is hosted.
Look at deployments.
Look at monitoring.
Look at the number of websites the team maintains.
Look at how much engineering time goes into the platform around those websites.
A CMS upgrade is a useful point to ask whether infrastructure decisions made several years ago should automatically follow the application into its next version.
Sometimes they should.
Sometimes they should not.
Umbraco Cloud vs Azure: which is better?
Neither option wins every project.
Self-hosted Azure gives an organisation greater control over its infrastructure.
That can matter where there are custom networking requirements, established Azure governance, private infrastructure dependencies or internal policies requiring direct ownership of the hosting environment.
Umbraco Cloud takes responsibility for more of that platform layer.
Umbraco manages infrastructure, platform maintenance, monitoring, backups, security updates and Cloud tooling. The customer and implementation team continue to own the application architecture, code, integrations, testing and application performance.
So the better question is not:
Is Umbraco Cloud better than Azure?
It is:
Which responsibilities does the organisation want to keep?
That answer will often make the hosting decision clearer than a feature-by-feature comparison.
Can Umbraco Cloud handle high-traffic websites?
Yes, Umbraco Cloud can support high-traffic websites when the application and Cloud resources are sized appropriately.
Professional and Enterprise projects can use dedicated compute resources, managed Redis and load balancing across several application instances.
Traffic volume alone is not enough to choose the setup.
Peak patterns, caching, database activity, media delivery, integrations and application design all influence the infrastructure required.
Is Umbraco Cloud suitable for enterprise websites?
Yes, Umbraco Cloud can suit enterprise websites, but suitability should be decided from the architecture and operating requirements rather than the word “enterprise.”
Umbraco positions its Enterprise Cloud offering around dedicated infrastructure, load balancing, Azure and Cloudflare infrastructure, monitoring, support and ISO 27001 certification.
A global marketing estate may fit comfortably.
Another enterprise application may have private networking or infrastructure requirements that make a separately managed Azure architecture more appropriate.
Both can be valid decisions.
Does Umbraco Cloud support load balancing?
Yes. Umbraco Cloud load balancing has been available since July 1, 2026.
It is available for Professional and Enterprise projects and distributes traffic across multiple dedicated resources. Managed Redis is part of the load-balanced setup.
Manual scaling is available today. Umbraco has said dynamic scaling will follow.
Is Umbraco Cloud worth looking at again in 2026?
For organisations that assessed it a few years ago, yes.
Not because every Umbraco website should be moved to Cloud.
The Umbraco ecosystem has always benefited from allowing teams to choose how they build and host their projects.
What has changed is the range of projects that can reasonably be considered for Umbraco Cloud.
Dedicated resources are available.
Managed Redis is available.
Load balancing is live.
Monitoring has improved.
More control over upgrade timing is coming.
Artifact-based deployments and rolling updates are being built.
Taken together, those changes narrow some of the gaps that once sent larger Umbraco projects straight towards separately managed infrastructure.
That is the part worth paying attention to.
Not whether Cloud has more features.
Whether the operating model now makes sense for projects that previously sat outside it.
For an organisation planning an Umbraco upgrade, migration or new platform in 2026, the sensible approach is to assess the Umbraco Cloud that exists today rather than the one the team remembers from several years ago.
Before deciding on Umbraco Cloud
Start with the application and the wider estate.
Document current CMS versions, traffic patterns, peak periods, integrations, availability expectations, deployment processes, internal cloud policies, support expectations and the infrastructure work currently handled by developers.
Then compare the options.
That may lead to Umbraco Cloud.
It may lead to a self-managed Azure architecture.
For some estates, it may lead to both.
The value is in making that choice with the current platform, current requirements and the people who will have to run it for the next several years in mind.
Phases works with organisations on Umbraco development, Cloud, upgrades, migrations and multi-site platforms. If you are reviewing an existing Umbraco estate, our engineers can assess the application and infrastructure with your team before a hosting or migration decision is made.