Umbraco Cloud
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  • What is Umbraco Cloud?
  • Frequently asked questions
  • Security
    • Web Application Firewall
  • Sustainability Best Practices
  • Getting Started
    • Explore Umbraco Cloud
    • The Cloud Portal
      • Organizations
      • Sustainability Dashboard
    • Project Overview
    • Environments
    • Flexible Environments (beta)
    • Baselines
      • Baseline Merge Conflicts
      • Break Reference between Baseline and Child Project
      • Handling configuration files
      • Pushing Upgrades to a Child Project
    • Plans
    • Migrate to Umbraco Cloud
    • Repositories in a Cloud Project
    • Best Practice for Working in Teams
    • Migrate between regions
  • Set up
    • Ready to Set Up Your Project?
    • Working with a Local Clone
      • Legacy Umbraco Visual Studio Setup
    • Manage Environments
    • Project Settings
      • Managing Transport Security
      • CDN Caching and Optimizations
      • Dedicated Resources
      • Upgrade your Plan
      • Public Access
      • Managing Hostnames
        • New Certificate Authority for custom hostnames
        • Rewrite rules
        • Custom Certificates
      • Management API Security
      • Umbraco CI/CD Flow
        • Cloud API For CI/CD Flow
        • Configuring a CI/CD pipeline
          • Azure DevOps
          • GitHub Actions
        • Troubleshooting
        • Known Limitations and Considerations
      • External Services
      • Usage
        • Bandwidth
      • Availability and Performance
      • Team Members
        • Technical Contact
      • Secrets Management
      • Project History
    • Private NuGet Feed on Umbraco Cloud
    • Going Live
    • Media
    • External Login Providers
    • Azure Blob Storage
      • Connect to Azure Storage Explorer to upload files manually
      • Connect and Upload Files Programmatically to Azure Blob Storage
    • Users
    • Multi-Factor Authentication
    • Application Insights
    • Config Transforms
    • SMTP Settings
    • Payments
      • Subscription migration information and FAQ
    • Power Tools (Kudu)
      • View the Files on your Cloud Environments
      • Generate UDA files
      • Manually run Extractions on your Cloud Environments
  • Deployments
    • Deployment
    • Deploying between environments
    • Transferring Content, Media, Members, and Forms
    • Deploying Deletions
    • Deployment Webhook
    • Deploying Changes
    • Umbraco Forms on Cloud
    • Deploy Dashboard
    • Hotfixes
      • Apply hotfix by manually moving files
      • Apply hotfix by using Git
    • Restoring Content
      • Partial Restores
  • Databases
    • Keep Your Data Secure and Accessible
    • Working with databases
    • Database backups
    • Database
      • Connecting to the Database on Mac
    • Working with a Cloud database locally
  • Product Upgrades
    • Stay Up to Date with Umbraco Cloud
    • Product Upgrades
    • Major Upgrades
    • Minor Upgrades
    • Version Specific Upgrades
      • Migrate from Umbraco 8 to the latest version
      • Migrate from Umbraco 7 to Umbraco 8 on Umbraco Cloud
    • Upgrade your projects manually
      • Manual upgrade of Umbraco CMS
      • Manual upgrade of Umbraco Deploy
    • Dependencies on Umbraco Cloud
  • Troubleshooting
    • Resolve Issues Quickly and Efficiently
    • Troubleshooting FAQ
    • Log files
    • The Umbraco Backoffice
    • The Frontend
    • The Umbraco Cloud Portal
    • Site Performance checklist
    • Troubleshooting deployments
      • Extraction error: Config transforms failing
      • Extraction error: Data Type collisions
      • Dependency Exception
      • Merge Conflicts on Flexible Environments
      • Troubleshooting deployments failing with no error message
      • Troubleshooting duplicate dictionary items
      • Troubleshooting language mismatches
      • Path too long Exception
      • Schema Mismatches
      • How to resolve collision errors
      • Extraction error: "Type not found! "
    • Cloud Errors
  • Release Notes
    • Overview 2025
      • April 2025
      • March 2025
      • February 2025
      • January 2025
    • Overview 2024
      • December 2024
      • November 2024
      • October 2024
      • September 2024
      • August 2024
      • July 2024
      • May 2024
      • April 2024
      • March 2024
      • February 2024
      • January 2024
    • Overview 2023
      • December 2023
      • October 2023
      • September 2023
      • August 2023
      • June 2023
      • May 2023
      • April 2023
      • March 2023
      • February 2023
      • January 2023
    • Overview 2022
      • December 2022
      • November 2022
      • September 2022
      • August 2022
      • June 2022
      • May 2022
      • April 2022
      • March 2022
      • February 2022
      • January 2022
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  • Mainline Environments
  • Flexible Environments
  • Plans and availability
  • Environment Components
  • Site and Git Repository
  • Configuration files
  • Team Members
  • SQL Database
  • Power Tools (Kudu)
  • Environment History

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  1. Getting Started

Environments

Environments are a core part of your Umbraco Cloud project. This is where you develop, write, build, and eventually publish your website.

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Last updated 1 month ago

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An Umbraco Cloud environment is defined as a workspace and is also a Git repository. When you have more than one environments on your project, these environments act as branches of the main repository.

Umbraco Cloud uses a deployment model that relies on Git and other core technology. This gives you the option to move both content and structure files from one environment to another. Learn more in the .

You can have multiple environments in your Umbraco Cloud project, with two types available: Mainline Environments and Flexible Environments.

The image below shows a Cloud setup including two mainline environments and one flexible environment connected to the left-most mainline environment.

Mainline Environments

The left-most mainline environment is where you can connect to your local machine using Git. This environment is often called the Development environment.

The right-most mainline environment is your live website, often called the Live or Production environment.

Each mainline environment can have one or more flexible environments branching off from it.

Flexible Environments

A flexible environment is an environment that branches off a mainline environment. It is positioned vertically from the mainline deployment flow.

Changes made on a flexible environment can only be pushed to the next designated Mainline Environment in the pipeline.

Technically, the flexible environment is connected only to its mainline environment using a Git remote. This ensures that changes follow a structured path while allowing flexibility in development workflows.

Plans and availability

Plan
Mainline Environments
Flexible Environments

Starter

2

Standard

3

Professional

4

Environment Components

Site and Git Repository

Each environment on Umbraco Cloud has both a Git repository and a folder with your actual live site. The Git repository is what you clone down when you work with the project locally, and it's where your changes are pushed to.

The live site (/site/wwwroot/) contains the files used to show your website to the world. When pushing changes from your local machine, they are pushed to the Git repository (/site/repository/). When this finishes successfully, the changes are copied into the live site.

Configuration files

An appSettings.json file holds all configurations for the Umbraco CMS project within the Cloud project. This file follows ASP.NET standards as they are tied to the Umbraco CMS installation.

It is possible to set up specific configurations for each environment:

  1. Clone the appSettings.json file.

  2. Rename it by adding the environment name: appSettings.{EnvironmentAlias}.json.

Team Members

All the team members you add through the Umbraco Cloud Portal will also be added as backoffice users in your environments. You can also add users directly in the backoffice of your Umbraco Cloud environments. If you do this, the user will not have the option to deploy changes between the environments.

SQL Database

Each of your Umbraco Cloud environments has its own SQL Azure database. You have full access to the databases, and you can create custom tables as you'd expect from any other hosting provider.

Power Tools (Kudu)

Aside from viewing the files when cloning down the project to your local machine, you also have access to Kudu (Power Tools).

Kudu is a dashboard that allows you to browse, view, and edit all the files in your environments. We recommend using the tool only when you are following one of our guides.

Environment History

Each of your Umbraco Cloud environments has a Git repository and therefore also a Git history. We've made a simplified view of this Git history in the Cloud Portal. The History is found via the action menu available on each environment in the environments overview on your project.

In the History view, you'll be able to see what file changes have been made in the environment.

A mainline environment serves as the root deployment pipeline, responsible for managing code and content flow. Each mainline environment is a part of the .

Learn more about how this works in the article.

The EnvironmentAlias is fetched from the Environment variable named DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT. This variable can be found in the Environment Variables section of Kudu on the environment. You can read more about ASP.NET Configuration in the official .

Make sure that when you start up the Umbraco Application, you load the correct JSON file as per the ASP.NET Configuration in the official .

Read more about this and team member roles in the article.

Learn more about how to connect to your Umbraco Cloud databases in the article.

In the article, you can read more about how to access the dashboard, and how we recommend using it.

left-to-right deployment workflow
Flexible Environments
Microsoft documentation
Microsoft documentation
Team Members
Database
Power Tools
Deployment section
A Cloud setup including 2 mainline environments and 1 flexible environment connected to the left-most mainline environment
Umbraco Cloud Environment Technical Overview