Hosting with Umbraco Cloud: Cloud vs. Self-Hosted
A quick overview of how Umbraco Cloud provides secure, scalable, and fully managed hosting.
Umbraco Cloud offers fully managed hosting for your Umbraco projects, leveraging Microsoft Azure. This means you don’t have to worry about setting up infrastructure, servers, or deployment pipelines. Everything is included and optimized for running Umbraco projects at scale.
Whether you're launching a new site or migrating an existing one, choosing between Umbraco Cloud and self-hosted Umbraco depends on your project's requirements, team setup, and compliance needs. Here's a breakdown to help you make a decision.
Hosting infrastructure
Managed by Umbraco on Azure
Managed by you (Azure, AWS, on-prem, etc.)
Setup Time
Minimal, creates a project in minutes
Manual configuration is required
Upgrades (CMS + Deploy)
Automated and guided
Manual updates needed
Deployments
Built-in workflows via Umbraco Deploy
Custom pipeline setup needed
Upgrades and Backups
Automatic and included
Manual or via custom setup
CI/CD Support
Built-in automated deployments
Custom pipelines (e.g., Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions)
Monitoring and logging
Integrated dashboards and logs
Must integrate with external tools
Security and Compliance
WAF, HTTPS, MFA, ISO-certified hosting
Your responsibility
Support
Included with selected plans
Community or third-party support
Shared vs. Dedicated Hosting
Umbraco Cloud offers:
Shared Hosting (default): Your site runs in an isolated environment on shared infrastructure that is optimized for performance and security.
Dedicated Resources: Available for high-traffic or security-sensitive projects with full tenant isolation. For a full overview of configuration and pricing, refer to the Dedicated Resources page
For plan-level details, see the Umbraco Cloud Plans.
When to Choose Umbraco Cloud
Choose Umbraco Cloud if you want to:
Launch quickly with minimal infrastructure setup.
Automate deployments, upgrades, and backups.
Focus on building solutions, not managing servers.
Collaborate smoothly across teams with built-in workflows.
Receive support and platform updates directly from Umbraco HQ.
Align with best practices for security, scaling, and deployment.
Ideal for
Digital agencies
Internal development teams
MVPs and large-scale web projects needing quick iteration and long-term stability
When to Choose Self-Hosted Umbraco
Choose self-hosted Umbraco if you:
Require complete control over your hosting and stack.
Must adhere to specific security, legal, or compliance requirements.
Have in-house DevOps expertise and want to tailor CI/CD workflows.
Need integration with private networks or legacy systems.
Prefer a different cloud provider or on-premises setup.
Ideal for
Enterprises with strict governance
Custom architecture requirements
Projects with highly specialized hosting needs
Resources
Last updated
Was this helpful?