The Real Cost of Staying on Sitecore XP in 2026
The Question More Sitecore Customers Are Starting to Ask
For many organisations, Sitecore XP has been the foundation of their digital platform for years. It is a powerful enterprise platform capable of supporting complex digital experiences.
But across the industry a quiet shift is starting to happen.
More digital leaders are asking a simple question:
If we were choosing our CMS today, would we choose the same platform again?
This question is not driven by dissatisfaction alone. It is being driven by economics, complexity, and tthe realities of managing versioned platform lifecycles over time.
While Sitecore Experience Platform continues to be supported and developed, support is version-specific, with each release following a defined lifecycle. For example, Sitecore XP 10.4 moves out of mainstream support in 2027, with extended support continuing beyond that.
For many organisations, the real conversation is no longer just about upgrades. It is about total cost of ownership.
What does it actually cost to stay on Sitecore?
What Is the Real Cost of Sitecore XP?
The cost of running Sitecore XP goes far beyond licensing fees.
Most organisations must also account for:
- specialist developer resources
- infrastructure and hosting
- upgrade and maintenance cycles
- operational complexity
- slower content and marketing workflows
When these factors are included, the total cost of ownership for Sitecore XP can be significantly higher than the initial licensing cost alone.
It’s also worth noting that Sitecore has introduced modern SaaS and composable offerings such as Sitecore XM Cloud. However, for organisations currently running Sitecore XP, moving to these newer architectures is typically a replatforming exercise rather than a simple upgrade.
This is why many organisations are starting to evaluate their platform options as part of broader digital platform lifecycle planning.
“When you factor in operational overhead, specialist resources, and upgrade complexity, the real cost of staying on Sitecore can be significantly higher than the licence itself. This is why organisations need to start evaluating options now.”
– Nick Durrant, Managing Director at Bluegrass Digital
The Costs Everyone Sees
The most obvious costs are the ones that appear in budgets and contracts.
These typically include:
- licensing fees
- infrastructure and hosting
- ongoing support agreements
These costs are usually well understood and planned for. But they are often only part of the story.
The Hidden Costs
The real cost of running an enterprise CMS often sits in areas that are harder to quantify.
Many organisations running Sitecore experience:
- specialist developer dependency
- complex upgrade projects
- infrastructure overhead
- long development cycles for relatively simple changes
Over time, these factors can significantly increase the operational cost of the platform, particularly as organisations work to remain aligned with supported version lifecycles.
In many cases development teams spend more time maintaining the CMS than improving the digital experience itself. Marketing teams rely on IT for simple content changes, slowing campaign execution.
The Feature Utilisation Gap
Sitecore was built as a full digital experience platform.
In practice, however, many organisations only use a subset of those features.
It is not unusual for digital teams to rely primarily on Sitecore as a content management system while paying for a much broader experience platform.
This creates a common question for digital leaders:
Are we paying for a platform that exceeds our actual needs?
What we see often is a high operational cost, low feature utilisation, and increasing pressure on teams to justify ongoing investment.
Why 2026 Is Becoming a Decision Year
Sitecore XP 10.4 follows a defined lifecycle, with mainstream support extending to 2027 before transitioning into extended support phases. This is prompting many organisations to reassess their platform strategy as part of long-term planning.
Each new version introduces another upgrade decision requiring planning, budget, and technical resources to implement effectively. Over time, this creates an ongoing cycle of upgrade decisions.
Evaluating alternatives, securing budget, planning a migration, and executing it can easily take 12–18 months.
The question organisations face: continue investing in Sitecore or use this moment to rethink their digital platform?
While extended support provides continued security updates and stability, it typically focuses on maintenance rather than ongoing innovation. This creates a natural decision point for organisations to consider whether to continue investing in their current platform or explore more modern approaches.
A Strategic Moment for Digital Leaders
For organisations re-evaluating their digital platforms, the focus is not just cost reduction. It is about finding the right balance between capability, complexity, and long-term sustainability.
Many teams are prioritising:
- Simplifying infrastructure and reducing operational overhead
- Enabling content teams to work with greater autonomy
- Improving speed of delivery and iteration
- Reducing dependency on specialist development resources
The outcome is a shift towards platforms that better support agility and efficiency in day-to-day operations, rather than accumulating unused capability and ongoing maintenance overhead.
This is why many organisations are exploring more flexible CMS approaches, including modern headless and composable architectures, as well as open-source platforms such as Umbraco.
Where to Go From Here
If this reflects conversations happening inside your organisation, the next step is not necessarily to make immediate changes, but to step back and assess where your CMS is creating friction versus enabling speed.
That usually starts with a simple set of questions around usage, cost, and operational dependency, as well as whether your current platform is still aligned to how your teams actually work today.
If you’re beginning to evaluate what the next phase of your digital platform might look like, our team would be happy to share insights from organisations that have already gone through this process. Get in touch to start the conversation.
