Headless Umbraco Development
Keep Umbraco as the editorial backoffice your team already knows, and put a fast Next.js front end in front of it — without buying a second CMS.
Most teams asking for "headless Umbraco" are asking for one of four different products, and the difference between them is tens of thousands of euros a year. The free, MIT-licensed CMS already ships a headless API and webhooks. Heartcore is a separate SaaS headless product. Compose is a content-orchestration platform that starts at €12,000 a year and meters ingestions. Umbraco Cloud is managed hosting for the CMS, with a delivery-API availability target on its Standard tier and above.
For a bilingual marketing site, the answer is almost always the free CMS with a Next.js front end — self-hosted or on Umbraco Cloud. We will tell you if your case is one of the exceptions rather than selling you up.
What decoupling genuinely costs you
Two things get harder, and any agency that does not mention them is not being straight with you.
- Preview. Umbraco's backoffice previews Umbraco's own templates. Against a separate front end there is no click-to-edit experience — the preview path is something we build, and it is real work rather than a checkbox.
- Block layout. Block-level culture variance only arrived in Umbraco 15, and block structure stays invariant across languages, so reordering blocks in English reorders them in Arabic. That shapes how we model bilingual pages from the start.
One more, specific to Arabic: Umbraco's backoffice has no right-to-left layout and ships no Arabic culture file. Front-end Arabic is fine; Arabic-first editors will be working in a left-to-right English admin. Worth knowing before you promise otherwise internally.
Where this sits next to our other work
If you want Umbraco rendering the site itself, that is Umbraco development. If you are moving off WordPress onto Umbraco, that is WordPress to Umbraco migration. This service is specifically for keeping Umbraco as the editorial backend while a separate front end renders the site.
If you are still choosing a platform, our three-year cost comparison prices Umbraco against a headless SaaS CMS with the sources shown.
Umbraco's open-source CMS already exposes a headless API and webhooks at no licence cost. That means most teams who want a decoupled front end do not need Heartcore, Compose or any additional product — they need the free CMS configured properly, a front end built against it, and an honest plan for the things decoupling takes away. We build exactly that, and we tell you up front which parts get harder.
What we do
Content model first
Document types, compositions and block structures designed for API consumption rather than for one page template — so the same content serves a website, an app and whatever comes next.
Next.js front end
A typed, performance-first front end consuming Umbraco over its delivery API, with caching and revalidation wired so editors see changes quickly without hammering the backend.
Bilingual EN/AR
Culture variants mapped onto locale-prefixed routing, with right-to-left handled in the front end using logical CSS rather than mirrored stylesheets.
Editor preview
Umbraco previews its own templates, not your decoupled front end. We build the preview path so editors can still see unpublished work on the real site before it goes live.
Upgrade and support
Landing you on a long-term-support release rather than a version that expires in twelve months, plus patching across the CMS, the .NET runtime and the front end.
Migration from coupled Umbraco
Taking an existing Razor-rendered Umbraco site decoupled in stages, with redirects and search rankings protected throughout.
How it runs
The same transparent shape every engagement follows — you always know where you are and what it costs.
Discover
A short, fixed-price sprint: audit, stakeholder interviews and the questions that decide the shape of the work.
Define
Scope, architecture and a fixed estimate — you know what's being built, why, and what it costs before we start.
Deliver
Tight design-build loops with weekly preview releases. You watch it become real on a URL, not in a deck.
Grow
Launch is the midpoint. Measurement, iteration and support keep the work earning after day one.
Fair questions
Do we need Heartcore to run Umbraco headless?
Usually not. The free, MIT-licensed Umbraco CMS lists headless APIs and webhooks among its included features, so a decoupled front end can consume it without buying a second product. Heartcore is a separate managed SaaS offering and Compose is a content-orchestration platform priced from €12,000 a year — different products for different problems.
Can editors still preview unpublished content?
Yes, but it has to be built. Umbraco's backoffice preview renders Umbraco's own templates, which is no use when a separate front end renders the site. We wire a preview path so editors can view unpublished content on the real front end. What Umbraco does not offer is click-to-edit visual editing against an external front end.
Does headless Umbraco work for bilingual English and Arabic sites?
Yes, with two caveats we plan around. Block-level culture variance only exists from Umbraco 15, and block structure stays invariant across languages — so reordering blocks in English reorders them in Arabic. And the backoffice itself has no right-to-left layout and no Arabic culture file, so Arabic-first editors author in an English admin interface. Front-end Arabic and RTL rendering are unaffected.
Which Umbraco version should a new headless build target?
Umbraco 17, the current long-term-support release, with security coverage to 27 November 2028. Non-LTS majors receive roughly twelve months, so landing on one means repeating the upgrade next year. Umbraco 13 is not a candidate for anything new: its security patches end on 14 December 2026, and the .NET 8 runtime beneath it loses Microsoft support on 10 November 2026.
Can you take our existing Umbraco site headless without losing rankings?
That is the normal shape of this work. The front end changes while the content and URLs stay put, which is a much safer replatform than changing CMS. We inventory every URL first, port the redirect map, and verify status codes and structured data before cutover.