Umbraco releases its third annual Impact Report for 2024

Umbraco has released its third annual Impact Report assessing the company's influence on community, people, and the environment.

This comes as Umbraco celebrates two decades since its CMS software became open-source, with a community now exceeding 250,000 contributors. Over a million websites have utilised the CMS since 2005, with sites being built at an average rate of one per hour.

In September 2024, Mats Persson was appointed CEO of Umbraco. Reflecting on his initial months, Persson stated: "The strategic foundation laid before my tenure has continued to guide our growth, which reached 38% last year. I have focused on strengthening our strategic direction, enhancing Umbraco's product portfolio, and refining our operations, with a clear emphasis on our partners and direct clients. We're continuing to do what we do best, and raising the bar."

Umbraco introduced three significant products over the past year to support the varying needs of its partners. May 2024 saw the launch of Umbraco 14, featuring a re-architected back-office. In November, Umbraco Engage, an add-on for personalisation, A/B testing, and analytics, became available following the acquisition of uMarketing Suite in August. The same month, Umbraco 15 was released, built on Microsoft .NET 9 core, and features HybridCache for efficient content management on large enterprise websites.

Filip Bech-Larsen, Chief Technology Officer of Umbraco, remarked on the product impact: "Our commitment to flexibility, openness, and innovation ensures that businesses, developers, and content teams can build the digital experiences they need, without being locked into predefined solutions. Rather than dictating how innovation happens, we're building a platform for innovation, where new technologies can be explored, integrated, and adapted as they mature. This approach is guided by four key areas of focus: Generative AI, Search, Personalisation, and Orchestration."

Umbraco's Impact Report outlines strides towards five United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Persson highlighted the importance of the open-source community in achieving these objectives, saying: "Umbraco's open-source community is our superpower. Beyond code contributions, members are helping to shape the future of Umbraco by championing sustainability, diversity, and accessibility: ensuring that the Umbraco CMS platform evolves in a way that benefits everyone."

The report emphasizes community sustainability efforts, including Best Practices for Sustainable Web Development and a Sustainability Dashboard to manage Umbraco Cloud project emissions. To acknowledge community contributions, MVP status was conferred on 100 individuals last year.

Umbraco engages with its open-source community through meetups in 60 countries, alongside major events in countries such as the UK, USA, Australia, and Denmark. The annual Codegarden conference in Odense, Denmark, drew 832 participants in 2024, and Umbraco is offsetting the event's travel emissions while offering online participation.

Instead of distributing merchandise, Umbraco plants a tree for each contribution. In the past year, this initiative led to the planting of 10,384 trees.

Promoting inclusion and diversity within the industry, 54% of Umbraco's new hires last year were female, and 41% of Codegarden speakers were female. "We are committed to addressing the IT industry's gender imbalance and increasing diversity within Umbraco and the wider community," a spokesperson noted.

Initiatives include training provided to 25 students in Sri Lanka in partnership with Luminary, Umbraco's Coding Class for local children, Cloud Club meetups for students, and the Femme Fatale network in Denmark. Additionally, in 2024, nine interns were hosted to help fulfil their academic requirements, and emerging developers were sponsored to attend Codegarden.