Umbraco 17 is ready: Why waiting with your upgrade is a waste (and your editors will be very happy about it)

At ZAAKS we have secretly already circled the date in red in the calendar. Umbraco 17 is here! For us that means: feasting on the newest .NET techniques and cleaner code. But what's in it for you? To be fair: your visitors may not see a difference on the front end. But your editors, your marketing team and Google will definitely notice this difference. And you can boast that you already have the latest version!

Why do we advise not to wait too long with the switch?
Well, because of this.

Speed is (still) a thing.  Under the hood Umbraco 17 runs on the very latest version of .NET. In human language: your website becomes faster. Much faster. Google loves fast load times (hello better SEO score!) and your visitors drop off less quickly. An upgrade is therefore actually the cheapest way to give your conversion a nudge.

A party for the Content Editors Are you still working with an older version? Then this is a feast! (. The backoffice – the place where you or your team manage the texts and pages – has become fully mature in version 17.

• No more load times: The CMS clicks just as fast as an app on your phone.
• Cleaner design: Fewer buttons you don't use, more focus on your content.
• Drag & Drop: Moving blocks and building pages has never felt so smooth.

Ready for AI 
At ZAAKS! we are crazy about AI. Umbraco 17 is built so that it talks seamlessly with external systems. Do you want to integrate that smart ZAAKS Chatbot? Or do you want AI to automatically write metadata and summaries in your CMS? In version 17 we lay those connections more easily and more stably than ever. You therefore make your site future-proof. We have already made valuable AI additions.

Is Umbraco 17 secure? Short answer: Yes, of course!. Long answer: Older versions of Umbraco (especially v7 and v8) no longer receive security updates. With Umbraco 17 you are back in the front row when it comes to security patches. In a time when data leaks are the order of the day, this is not a luxury, but a necessity. 

An upgrade often sounds like a hassle, but at ZAAKS we make a sport of doing this painlessly. Do you have an existing site and do you want to move to v17? Or are you unsure whether it is necessary? Give us a call, then we'll look at what the smartest step is for your situation.