Umbraco Cloud is a fully managed, flexible, and scalable way to build and host Umbraco websites, all in one place. Built on the open-source Umbraco CMS and hosted on Microsoft Azure, it provides everything developers and teams need for fast, secure digital experiences.

Umbraco Cloud takes care of installation, infrastructure, and security. You will also get the tools to work with your project in the Cloud or locally. Local development starts with cloning the project down to your PC or Linux/macOS.

When you are ready to show your work to the world, Umbraco Cloud provides a safe deployment mechanism that lets you publish to the web. When you have changes or updates to your site, Umbraco Cloud follows the process of moving, testing, and deploying your changes to your public site.

Why Use Umbraco Cloud?

• Fully managed hosting: Hosted on Microsoft Azure with automatic backups, global Content Delivery Network (CDN), HTTPS, and scaling built in.

• Out-of-the-box DevOps: Use Git-based workflows, built-in CI/CD, and structured environments (Development, Staging, Live) to deliver with confidence.

• Seamless collaboration: Invite team members, manage access, and deploy content and code with ease, all from Cloud Portal.

• Security and reliability: Backed by secure infrastructure, automated Transport Layer Security (TLS), point-in-time restores, and Cloudflare protection for performance and safety.

• Built for growth: Start small and scale as needed, with flexible environments, external integrations, and support for custom workflows and packages.

Umbraco Cloud Plans

Umbraco Cloud offers shared hosting in 3 different plans:

• Starter

• Standard

• Professional

Learn more about the quotas put in place to ensure the stability of your website.

What’s Included?

• Umbraco CMS: The core editor-friendly, open-source CMS.

• Cloud Portal: A user-friendly dashboard for managing projects, environments, users, and settings.

• Umbraco Deploy: Effortlessly synchronize content and structure across environments, ensuring smooth collaboration between development and live environments.

• Umbraco Forms: Build and manage forms seamlessly, enhancing user engagement and collecting valuable insights without additional costs.

• Umbraco UI Builder (In selected plans): Accelerate content creation and management by building intuitive, customized interfaces that enhance editorial workflows.

• Support Plans: Umbraco Cloud Support ensures you're never alone. Known for being helpful and knowledgeable, they're dedicated to your Cloud success.

Different ways to start an Umbraco Cloud project

Umbraco Training

Umbraco HQ offers a full-day training course covering best practices for developing with Umbraco Cloud. The course targets frontend and backend developers who currently work or plan to work with Umbraco Cloud.

Explore the Umbraco Cloud Developer Training Course to learn more about the topics covered and how they can enhance your Umbraco development skills.

The Umbraco Cloud documentation is structured to follow the user journey rather than only listing features. This change acknowledges that building and managing a project involves real-life steps. It begins with your initial login and continues through the go-live phase and beyond.

Whether you're new to Umbraco Cloud or a seasoned user, this hub is your essential resource for understanding and mastering Umbraco Cloud.

Explore by Phase: Your Umbraco Cloud Journey

The documentation is structured to match your journey. From discovery to going live and beyond. Each phase is designed to help you learn, implement, and grow with confidence.

Quick Links

New to Umbraco Cloud?

Start with the tour of the Umbraco Cloud Portal or try a free trial project to explore without commitment.

This includes everything that is added to the Media library through the Umbraco backoffice, like images, PDFs, and other document formats.

In some cases, you might want to store other files in the Blob Storage than Media files.

Below are two articles describing how to connect to your environment Blob Storage, and upload files either through Azure Storage Explorer or programmatically.

• Connect to Azure Storage Explorer

• Connect and Upload Files Programmatically to Azure Blob Storage

You can learn more about Azure Blob Storage in the Microsoft Documentation.

The zip package you are deploying needs to contain all things that are normally present in an Umbraco Cloud environment repository.

Every new Umbraco Cloud project contains a readme.md file which explains the structure and how you can adapt it to suit your needs.

The sample scripts on GitHub include a way to package the zip. As the scripts are samples, they show a universal way to do this, which works well for most people. But not all projects are alike, and you may not want to use that particular approach.

Do not include .NET Binaries

Don’t include any binary build artifacts coming from the .NET build/publish process.

The general deployment process on Umbraco Cloud needs the source code, and the system will rebuild it once it is pushed back to the environment.

Do not include the .git directory

The folder will be ignored in the isolated instance, including the extra megabytes will slow down the deployment process.

Also, consider the artifact size limitation below.

Do include the finished frontend assets

If you are using modern frontend build tools, only include the finished frontend assets that are needed. There is no need to include JavaScript or TypeScript source files if you need to build the frontend.

Keep the Artifact as small as possible

It is good practice to keep the zipped artifact as small as possible.

• Large files will slow down the underlying git operations and, therefore, also the deployment process.

  • Do not include large files like pictures and PDFs in the artifact.

  • Large files need to be uploaded to the blob storage connected to your environment.

• Remove old and leftover code from the artifact.

  • Orphaned .csproj files with outdated package references are a common cause for issues in the deployment process.

Size limitations to consider:

• The version 1 endpoints will allow file sizes up to 128 MB.

• In version 2 endpoints, the size limit is increased to 256 MB.

Unlock powerful features and extend your Umbraco Cloud projects with advanced integrations and tools. Whether you want to manage your own packages, connect with external services, or add form capabilities, you are covered.

Once your project is created, it's time to configure it to match your requirements. From access control and settings to managing connections and database structure, this section helps you establish a strong foundation for your Umbraco Cloud solution.

Whether you're preparing for collaboration, going live, or expanding functionality — the right setup ensures a secure and scalable environment.

A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is a security solution designed to protect web applications by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between them and the Internet. By acting as a shield between the web application and potential threats, it helps mitigate common attacks. This could be attacks like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and file inclusion.

Umbraco Cloud WAF

Umbraco Cloud uses which include pre-configured rules that provide immediate protection against a wide range of threats. These managed rulesets are regularly updated to defend against the latest vulnerabilities and attack techniques. The rulesets include protections against:

• Zero-day vulnerabilities: Newly discovered vulnerabilities that have not yet been patched.

• Top-10 attack techniques (logging only): Common attack methods identified by security organizations like Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP).

WAF is enabled by default on each custom hostname. It is not available for the internal Cloud hostnames.

Impact on your website

Performance

A WAF helps maintain optimal performance by blocking malicious traffic before it reaches your web application. This means that your server resources are not wasted on processing harmful requests, which can slow down your website. Additionally, by preventing attacks that could exploit vulnerabilities, WAF helps ensure the website remains available and responsive to legitimate users.

Security

A WAF enhances the security of your web applications by providing a robust defense against different types of attacks. It protects your website from data breaches, defacement, and other security incidents by filtering out malicious traffic. This helps not only safeguard sensitive data but also maintain the trust and confidence of your users.

Requirements

The custom hostname(s) must be pointing to the Umbraco Cloud entry point CNAME record pointing to dns.umbraco.io or A records.

Learn more about this in the article on .

Enable WAF on custom hostnames

The following steps outline enabling WAF on your custom hostname(s).

1. Open the Cloud project in the Umbraco Cloud Portal.

2. Navigate to Transport Security under Security.

3. Enable WAF for all future hostnames added to the project.

4. Enable WAF on your custom hostname(s).

When working with Umbraco Cloud, the way you work with databases might differ from what you're used to. One important aspect of Umbraco Cloud is that you always work isolated to avoid interfering with colleagues or a running website. This includes the database as well.

In this article you can read more about working with the Cloud Database.

This article will tell you all you need to know to work locally with your Cloud Database.

Here you can learn more about taking backups of your Cloud Database.

In some cases, Umbraco Cloud might not be the only service you are working with. You might need to work with other services as well. This could be either internal or third-party services. In either case, it will be serviced externally to Umbraco Cloud.

If an external service behind a firewall needs to communicate with your Umbraco Cloud project, allow Umbraco Cloud Server IPs to bypass the firewall.

For example, to retrieve information from an external service that is located behind a firewall, you must grant access to your Umbraco Cloud project. To do this, add the IP addresses used by Umbraco Cloud servers to an allowlist.

Enabling static outbound IP addresses

For projects on a Standard, Professional, and Enterprise plan you can enable static outbound IP addresses.

On the Advanced page of your project, you can turn on the static outbound IP address feature to ensure persistent communication. This opt-in feature can be switched on for Standard, Professional, and Enterprise Cloud projects.

The static outbound IP ranges vary per region. Below are the values per region in a notation. The expanded IP ranges can be calculated by using .

West Europe

UK South

US East

Australia East

If you need to use a CIDR Range for the IPs: 40.113.173.32/28

This article will look at some of the best practices and recommendations when you are working in teams on your Umbraco Cloud projects.

Working with Git in Teams

Always start by making a pull request from your project before you push anything back up to Cloud. This way you ensure that you do not accidentally overwrite the work that someone else in your team has worked with.

Create branches locally

Umbraco Cloud is built on top of Git which means that you can create branches locally as either a feature or developer branch. You can then work on the project and test out the new features before merging it into the master branch. The branch can then be pushed up to your cloud environments.

Working with Environments in a team

It is recommended to use multiple environments when you are working in teams. With additional environments, members of a team can work locally, pushing up changes to the Cloud environment for testing.

Having multiple environments enables developers to continue developing, while content editors can focus on creating content in a separate environment.

Flexible Environments

When you need to work on a new feature, using a flexible environment ensures that the regular workflow isn't affected. The flexible environment is connected to a single mainline environment and isn't part of the left-to-right deployment workflow.

Learn more about how this works in the Flexible Environments article.

Team development workflow On Cloud

For a more in-depth example of how to work in teams, our Gold Partner ProWorks has written an article on Team development workflows.

This article serves as inspiration if you looking into setting up a bigger project where multiple people will be working on Umbraco Cloud.

This article covers how you can connect to the database of your local project and how you can work with custom tables on Umbraco Cloud.

Connecting to your local Umbraco installation

When cloning down your project to work locally you might want to have a look in your database every now and then.

Since Umbraco 10, SQL CE is no longer supported, instead, Umbraco now comes with SQLite out of the box.

When cloning down your Umbraco project and restoring its content, it will create a Umbraco.sqlite.db file in ~/umbraco/Data/Umbraco.sqlite.db.

To view your local SQLite database, you need to use software that supports reading that type of database:

• A program like DB Browser for SQLite

• A Visual Studio extension like SQLite and SQL Server Compact Toolbox

You can also configure your project to prefer SQL Server LocalDb when it's available on your local machine by enabling the Deploy PreferLocalDbConnectionString setting.

To configure your database, you can add the connection string in the 'appsettings.json' file. For more information, see the Configure your database section in the Unattended Installs article.

Using Custom Tables with Umbraco Cloud

Umbraco Cloud ensures that your Umbraco-related data is always up to date, but it won't know anything about data in custom tables. This is like any other host when it comes to non-Umbraco data.

However, you have full access to the SQL Azure databases running on Umbraco Cloud. You can create custom tables like you'd expect on any other hosting provider. The easiest way to do this is to connect using SQL Management Studio.

The recommended way of making sure custom tables are present is to use Migrations. This is to ensure that the tables will be created or altered when starting your site.

Migrations will ensure if you add environments to your Umbraco Cloud site, the tables in the newly created databases will automatically be created for you.

Check the Creating a Custom Database table for an example of how to create and use Migrations.

The following changes in CAA used to issue certificates for all Umbraco Cloud sites' for new and existing custom hostnames.

Certificates for new custom hostnames

Starting September 26, 2022, certificates are issued by Google Trust Services instead of DigiCert. The validity period of certificates has been reduced from one year to 90 days.

Certificates for existing custom hostnames

From October 31, 2022, certificate renewals will no longer use 'DigiCert' as the issuing CA. The renewed certificate will instead be issued by 'Google Trust Services', and certificate validity will be decreased from 1 year to 90 days.

No action is required unless you set a Certificate Authority Authorization (CAA) record on your domain.

From October 31, 2022, Certificate renewals will no longer use 'DigiCert' as the issuing CA. This means that you need to update your CAA record to allow 'Google Trust Services' issuing certificates for your domain.

The CAA record should be changed from:

example.com. IN CAA 0 issue "digicert.com"

to

example.com. IN CAA 0 issue "pki.goog"

As we continue to gather insights from our users, there are some known limitations and considerations to be aware of.

Potential Limitations and Considerations

Format Restrictions

• The packaged artifact from your CI/CD pipeline must adhere to the Umbraco Cloud API's required format, which is a zip source file. This could necessitate changes to your existing build and packaging scripts.

Workflow considerations

• To ensure smooth execution of the CI/CD Flow, it is recommended to make schema changes in the left-most mainline environment. For example, the local development environment. Schema changes include changes made to Document Types, Data Types, Templates, and the like. The intention behind this principle is to prevent conflicts that could potentially arise due to simultaneous modifications made in different environments.

Additional Build Step

• The flow feature adds an extra build to the deployment process. As a result, it takes longer to post to Umbraco Cloud using Umbraco CI/CD Flow compared to standard deployments.

Conflict Management

• Given the necessity to avoid changes in other environments, the lack of strict coordination among multiple teams or individuals working on the same project elevates the risk of conflicts.

Key Points to Consider

• Direct Commits to Umbraco Git Repos: Any commits made directly to the Umbraco-git-repos will cause the process to fail.

• Remote Build/Test Options: It is currently not possible to skip the first build step before committing.

• Incomplete API:

  • The promotion endpoint for transitioning between environments is not fully functional yet.

• Hotfix Deployments: Direct deployments to a specific environment are not supported at this time.

• Lack of Predefined Tasks: There are no Umbraco-provided Azure DevOps tasks or GitHub Actions available.

• No Webhooks: Currently, there's no webhook support for real-time feedback to the pipeline; polling is the only option.

• Casing Conflicts: Be cautious of casing issues, such as having a README.md file created by Azure DevOps and a Readme.md file from the default Umbraco Cloud, as this can cause conflicts in the cloud Git repository.

Installing Application Insight

To install Application Insight on your Umbraco Cloud project read the Application Insights for ASP.NET Core applications article in the Microsoft documentation.

Limitations on Umbraco Cloud

Microsoft Documentation

For more information about Application Insight, check out Microsoft's documentation on Application Insights

In this article, you will be able to find information on the following:

• How to manage your subscriptions.

• How to download and pay invoices.

• How to change your credit card for payments.

Manage Subscriptions

To manage your subscription on Umbraco Cloud, go to the menu in the top right corner and select "Organization".

You will see an overview of your organization on Umbraco Cloud. From here you can see the information about the organization.

Payment methods

To change your payment method on Umbraco Cloud, go to your organization and select "Payment Methods" in the left side menu.

On this page, you can see the credit cards you have already added or you can add a new one.

Once a credit card has been added it will show up in a drop-down when creating new projects. You can also change the payment method for a specific project from here.

Changing and removing payment methods

In some cases, you might need to change the credit card information on the Umbraco Cloud Organization.

If you add multiple cards, you can choose which one will be billed on the 1st of the month. To do this, click the Set as primary button on the card you want to use.

To remove an expired or unused card, click the trash can icon next to that card.

Payment and Invoices

On Umbraco Cloud, we are sending out one single invoice with all the projects that you are paying for via email every month.

You can view the invoices for your projects under your organization in the Payment History section. You can see the following information for each invoice:

• The invoice ID

• The total amount paid

• When the invoice was created

• The due date

• The status of the invoice

• An option to download the invoice

When downloaded for a given month, the invoice will contain all the projects that you were paying for during the month.

Umbraco Cloud Projects are made of three major components: Environments, Team Members/Invite Users, and Settings.

Environments

The number of Environments in your project is dependent on which plan you are on:

To get a technical overview of your Cloud environments, see the Environments article. For more information on how to add or remove environments, see the Manage Environments article.

Team Members/Invite Users

Another major component of your Umbraco Cloud project is Team Members. When you add team members to a project, they will automatically be added as backoffice users in all the environments. Team members can be added as Admins, Writers, or Readers. Refer to the Team Members article to learn more about these roles.

Settings

There are many different settings available for you to configure your project for your needs. Learn more about the settings in the Project Settings article.

Flexible Environments allow users to create and manage environments outside the regular left-to-right deployment flow. This enhancement provides flexibility in orchestrating code and content workflows, empowering developers and content editors to work in a way that best suits their needs.

While the mainline environments use a horizontal deployment flow, flexible environments work differently. A flexible environment is added to an existing mainline environment and only deploys to and from that environment. Get an overview of the different types of environments in the Environments article.

The image above shows a project setup including two mainline environments and one flexible environment attached to the left-most mainline environment.

With Flexible Environments, teams can create environments as needed, allowing for more efficient and tailored workflows.

This feature enables:

• Parallel development and testing: Developers can create isolated environments for different features, bug fixes, or client-specific work without impacting the main development branch.

• Custom workflow orchestration: Teams can define custom flows of code and content deployment rather than being restricted to a linear left-to-right approach.

• Easier hotfixes and feature releases: Urgent fixes can be deployed directly without being blocked by unfinished work in other environments.

• Improved Content Management: Content editors can create, test, and validate content changes without depending on a specific environment.

How it Works

• A flexible environment is added and connected to a single mainline environment.

• Developers can develop and build features in the flexible environment without affecting the mainline environment.

• Once a feature is complete, it can be merged back into the mainline environment and become part of regular deployment flow.

• When changes are made to the mainline environment, they must be pulled into the flexible environment before changes can be pushed.

Learn more about the deployment process in the Deployments section.

Learn more about handling merge Conflicts in Flexible Environments in the Troubleshooting section.

Project Prerequisites

Before you can add a Flexible environment to your project, the following prerequisites must be met:

• Uses Umbraco Version 10 or greater.

• Uses Deploy Version Greater than 10.4.1, 13.3.0, 14.2.0 or greater.

Limitations

• Only one flexible environment is available.

• Flexible environments are available only for projects paid by credit cards, invoices, or credits.

• Flexible Environments are not available for Heartcore projects.

• Learn more about pricing for Flexible Environments on the Umbraco Pricing page.

Plans and Availability

For more information on environment limits and pricing, visit the Umbraco Pricing page.

On Umbraco Cloud, you can add Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for your Umbraco Cloud account.

It is also possible on the organizational level to enforce Multi-Factor Authentication for the members.

You can use Email, Phone, or an Authenticator App when logging in to the Umbraco Cloud Portal or the Umbraco Backoffice.

Enabling MFA

MFA can be enabled when editing your Umbraco Cloud profile.

To enable MFA, follow these steps:

1. Go to your Profile on Umbraco Cloud.

2. Click Edit Profile in the Profile Settings section.

3. Select the desired Multifactor Authentication Method from the drop-down list.

4. Follow the steps shown below to enable MFA.

Email Authentication

You will get an email with a code that you need to enter when logging in through the Umbraco Cloud portal or the backoffice.

Authenticator App

You have the option to use an Authenticator App when logging in to the Umbraco Cloud Portal or the Umbraco Backoffice.

You can use the Microsoft Authenticator App for both iOS and Android or any other authenticator app of your choice.

In case you want to reset the authenticator app settings for your user, an administrator in your Umbraco Cloud organization can do this. It may be relevant if you want to use another authenticator app on your current phone or transfer the authentication process to another device.

Phone Authentication

You have the option to use your phone when you log in to the Umbraco Cloud portal or the Umbraco Backoffice. You can choose to receive a text message with a code or a call to log you in.

Disabling MFA

You can always disable MFA from your profile.

To disable MFA for your user, you will need to use the authentication method that you had enabled to disable it again.

If you had phone authentication enabled, it will then need to be used to disable it again.

The same is the case for email authentication.

This article is about team members that are added via the Invite User button in the Umbraco Cloud Portal. If you are looking for more information about Users in the Backoffice, see Users. Users added through the backoffice do not have access to the Umbraco Cloud Portal.

Team members are users that you add to your project via the Invite User button in the Umbraco Cloud Portal. They are automatically added as users in the Backoffice of all environments for the project. These users can clone down the project locally and log in using the same credentials they use for Umbraco Cloud.

When adding a user, the default permission is Read for each environment. You can assign backoffice user groups to the user for each environment.

Team Member User Permissions

User Permissions for each environment can be set in the Edit Team page available from the Settings dropdown. User Permissions can be set per environment. For example, a user can have Write access on the left-most mainline environment and Read access on the Live environment.

• Admin: Has access to everything on a project. An admin can delete a project and edit the team. An admin can deploy changes between environments in the Project Portal and has access to git, as well as the Power Tools Kudu.

• Read: A team member with Read permissions can only view the project in the portal as well as the backoffice. They are not able to deploy or change anything on the project itself. They can clone down the project, but cannot push changes they have made locally. By default, they are added as an admin in the backoffice so they can make changes in the backoffice. If you want to change this, see Team Member Permissions in the Umbraco Backoffice below.

• Write: A team member with Write permissions can do everything on a project except delete it and edit the team. A user with Write permissions can deploy changes between environments through the portal. They have access to the git repositories and can push local changes to the environment.

• No Access: A team member with No access permissions cannot restart the environment, deploy changes between environments, check error logs or log files, or access Kudo in the Project Portal. They can view the project in the portal and access the backoffice.

Backoffice User Groups for Team Members

You can view the user group memberships of the project’s backoffice users. Currently, you can manage the backoffice user groups of a user through the Umbraco backoffice. A backoffice user is only created once the user logs into the backoffice of the project for the first time.

Team Members Pending Invitation

Find invitation details in the Member(s) who still needs to accept the project invitation section of the Edit Team page. You have the following options:

• View the team member's name and email.

• See the expiration date of the invitation.

• Check the status of the invitation.

• Copy the invitation link.

• Resend the invitation.

• Delete the invitation.

Technical Contacts

To ensure information about server maintenance reaches the correct person, add/update the technical contact to your Umbraco Cloud project.

One of the biggest benefits of having a Umbraco Cloud project is that you do not need to worry about the hosting. We handle it for you.

When we do maintenance on our Umbraco Cloud servers, we send out information to all our Umbraco Cloud customers. For us to reach out to the correct person, you need to add a Technical Contact to your project.

When you create a New Project, the user used to create the project will automatically be added as the technical contact. To update the technical contact or add more than one technical contact, do the following:

1. Go to the Project in the Umbraco Cloud Portal.

2. Go to Edit Team in the Overview menu tab.

3. Click Add Technical Contact in the Technical Contacts section.

1. Enter the Name, Email, and Telephone Number in the Add New Technical Contact window.

1. Click Confirm.

Public Access lets you deny access to your Umbraco Cloud project.

When enabled only team members on the project and users whose IPs have been allowed, can access the frontend of the project.

All environments on Umbraco Cloud projects can be protected by Public access. It requires you to enter your Cloud credentials in order to view the frontend.

How to enable Basic Authentication and allow IPs

1. Go to Public Access in the project settings tab

2. Enable Basic Authentication on the project

1. Once enabled Add IPs for users that need access to the project

Once Basic Authentication has been enabled, users not on the project or with IPs not added to the allowlist will be prompted to log in.

CMS Basic Authentication

The Public Access feature in Umbraco Cloud is built on top of the Basic Authentication implementation in CMS core. This means that the appsettings related to Basic Authentication are controlled by Umbraco Cloud, and your Cloud Environment has access to them.

This setup allows you to configure an HttpClient that can do a loop back request without being blocked, by adding the Shared Secret Header if needed.

// Setup http client that does loop back requests
var basicAuthEnabled = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("UMBRACO__CMS__BASICAUTH__ENABLED") == "True";
if (basicAuthEnabled) {
    var headerName = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("UMBRACO__CMS__BASICAUTH__SHAREDSECRET__HEADERNAME");
    var headerValue = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("UMBRACO__CMS__BASICAUTH__SHAREDSECRET__VALUE");
    
    loopbackHttpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add(headerName, headerValue));
}

For more information, see the following links:

• CMS Configuration: Reading Configuration in Code

• CMS Configuration Options: Basic Authentication Settings

Umbraco Cloud enables you to develop, test, and deploy your projects through a structured and flexible environment setup. With built-in support for deployments, local development, and media synchronization, you can confidently make changes and collaborate with your teams.

This section covers working with environments, deployments, and CI/CD pipelines, giving you full control over how your changes are deployed from development to production.

Also in this Section

This article provides the steps you need, to connect to your Azure Blob Storage containers using Azure Storage Explorer.

Getting the credentials

The first thing to sort out, if you want to connect to the Azure Blob Storage container of your environment is the credentials.

To find the connection details for your environment's Blob Storage, follow the steps below:

1. Go to your project on Umbraco Cloud.

2. Go to Configuration in the side menu.

3. Go to Connections.

4. Scroll down to Blob Storage Connection Details

5. Copy down the credentials needed for connecting to Azure Blob Storage.

Installing Azure Storage Explorer

The next step is to have Azure Storage Explorer installed on your local computer. Download the storage explorer, and run through the installer.

Configuring the Connection to your Azure Blob Storage

Let's use the information you have gathered, and connect Azure Storage Explorer to the Blob storage container:

1. Click the Open Connect Dialog button to get the Connect dialogue.

1. Select the Blob container in the first prompt.

1. Select Shared Access Signature (SAS) URL in the second prompt.

1. Input the information you have gathered earlier in the following format [Endpoint][ContainerName][SharedAccessSignature], in the URI field. See below for an example.

https://ucmediastoragewelive.blob.core.windows.net/92f27eee-eb18-445e-b9e4-c7a98bd209c0?sv=2019-07-07&sr=c&si=umbraco&sig=U92YZXOdzhp7JFLzj6MH%2BeugDgEelgzpB56o1XfD1%2BU%3D&spr=https

1. Ensure that the credentials are correctly set in the Connection Summary prompt.

2. Select Connect.

You are now connected to the blob storage for your environment and you can upload your files to Azure Blob Storage through the explorer.

Enhance your Umbraco Cloud projects with powerful built-in tools and custom package management designed to help you build more flexible, feature-rich websites. Cloud Extensions provide seamless ways to extend functionality without leaving the Cloud environment.

Whether you're fine-tuning global delivery or preparing for high-traffic scenarios, you can find tools to make your project perform at its best.

With a combination of global content delivery, smart caching, and flexible hosting regions, ensure your users always get the fastest and most responsive experience.

Umbraco Cloud plans - Starter, Standard, and Professional - run on shared infrastructure, referred to as pools. To ensure consistent performance and prevent resource exhaustion within a pool, each website is assigned a resource quota based on its plan. Resource usage is continuously monitored to maintain stability across all sites.

The shared resources used by Umbraco Cloud websites include:

• Central Processing Unit (CPU)

• Random Access Memory (RAM)/Memory

• Disk space

• Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections

Currently, all available Umbraco Cloud plans utilize P1V3 Azure App Service Plans as their underlying infrastructure. A P1V3 Azure App Service Plan provides:

• 2 CPU Cores

• 8GB of RAM

• 250 GB of Disk space

• 1,920 TCP connections

To ensure stable performance for all websites hosted on Umbraco Cloud shared plans, both soft and hard quotas are in place. Quotas per site and the number of sites in each pool vary by Umbraco Cloud Plan.

Plan quotas for shared Umbraco Cloud Plans

Each plan has specific resource quotas. If a CPU or memory quota is exceeded, the application will restart to maintain stability for all adjacent sites on the app service plan. Exceeding the disk space quota will result in errors when performing write operations.

While there are no per-site limits for TCP connections, the total available TCP connections for all sites in the pool is 1,920. Once this limit is reached, any additional connection attempts will result in errors.

Umbraco Cloud Starter plan

• CPU - 20% (120 seconds of CPU time within a 5-minute period)

• Memory - 1,500 MB (private bytes)

• Disk - 7,800 MB

Umbraco Cloud Standard plan

• CPU - 35% (210 seconds of CPU time within a 5-minute period)

• Memory - 1,800 MB (private bytes)

• Disk - 9,600 MB

Umbraco Cloud Professional plan

• CPU - 50% (300 seconds of CPU time within a 5-minute period)

• Memory - 2,000 MB (private bytes)

• Disk - 10,400 MB

These quotas are hard limits and cannot be exceeded for more than a 5-minute interval. If an application surpasses the CPU or memory limits defined by the plan quota, the app service hosting the application will automatically restart. If multiple restarts occur, we will relocate the application to a dedicated instance to prevent negative impacts on other tenants within the shared pool.

For more details on pricing, plans, and features, visit the page.

Umbraco Cloud is a fully managed, scalable platform built to simplify and enhance the experience of building, deploying, and maintaining Umbraco websites.

Umbraco Cloud enables developers, agencies, and enterprise teams to work faster, collaborate seamlessly, and maintain security using modern best practices.

This article highlights the most valuable features and benefits of Umbraco Cloud.

Fully Managed Hosting on Microsoft Azure

Umbraco Cloud hosts your projects on trusted Microsoft Azure infrastructure, ensuring:

• High availability and performance

• Data privacy and security

• Azure-backed reliability and global scalability

Smooth Deployments & Built-In CI/CD Workflows

Deploy faster and safer with a modern, built-in developer experience:

• Git-based deployments with environment-aware configuration

• Content and media transfers/restores between environments

• Built-in CI/CD pipeline support for GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps

For more information, see the , , and articles.

Faster Project Setup with Baselines

Umbraco Baselines allows you to use a base project as a template for creating more projects. This is ideal if you're planning on building multiple similar websites. For more information, see the articles.

Automated Upgrades and Hotfixes

Stay secure and up to date with automated CMS upgrades, including:

• Automatic minor and patch updates

• Security fixes and latest feature rollouts

• Upgrade notifications and version history

For more information, see the article.

Security by Default

Umbraco Cloud includes multiple layers of security so your team doesn’t have to manage patches or infrastructure hardening manually:

• HTTPS is enabled by default

• Optional basic authentication per environment

• Environment-specific hostname settings

• Secrets management

• Support for external login providers (for example, Microsoft Entra ID, Auth0, Google, and so on)

For more information, see the article.

Multi-Environment Workflow

Every project comes with mainline and flexible environments (based on the plan), so you can:

• Deploy between mainline and flexible environments

• Test safely before going live

For more information, read the and articles.

Insights and Performance Monitoring

Get visibility into site health and performance:

• Application Insights for performance and logging

• Usage statistics via the Cloud Portal

• Alerts on downtime or performance issues

For more information, see the article.

Unlimited Team Collaboration

Umbraco Cloud is designed for modern teams and agencies:

• Role-based permissions

• Organization and project-level user management

• Environment-specific access control

For more information, see the article.

And that’s only the beginning. Explore even more features, benefits, and capabilities on the and the page.

Each Umbraco Cloud project can have multiple environments: Mainline and Flexible Environments. Each environment has its own git repository that is hosted on Umbraco’s Cloud platform.

Ideally, your Umbraco Cloud setup should look like this:

A source control repository with your own code

Source control is a way to control changes to files and directories. You can keep a record of changes and revert to specific versions of a file in the event you need to revert to an earlier time. A source control repository is used as the single source of truth that has the latest version of your project source code.

There are different source code management tools that you can use such as GitHub, Git, GitLab, Apache Subversion (SVN), Mercurial, etc.

A source control repository with the locally cloned Umbraco project

It is recommended to create a Cloud project with at least two environments: a Live environment including one extra mainline environment. Work with a local copy of the site by cloning down the left-most environment. This repository is different from your source control repository.

Once you're happy with the results or wish to see how your website has progressed, you push the changes back to the Cloud. If everything is working as expected, deploy your changes to the Live environment.

Prerequisite

• An Umbraco Cloud project

• on Umbraco Cloud

Connecting to the Database

Follow the steps below to connect and work with your Umbraco Cloud Database on a Mac.

1. Go to SQL Connection Details in the Configuration menu on Umbraco Cloud.

2. Note down the Server name, Login, Password, and Database.

1. Open Azure Data Studio.

2. Click "Create a connection" on the welcome page in Azure Data Studio.

1. Change the Authentication type to SQL Login and enter the following information in the Connection details dialog:

   1. Add the Server name.

   2. Add the Login.

   3. Add the Password.

   4. Add the Database.

1. Click Connect once the connection details have been filled out.

You have now connected to your database. You can work with the databases on Umbraco Cloud like you could on any other host. Remember to let Umbraco Cloud do the work when it comes to the Umbraco-related tables (Umbraco* and CMS* tables).

In some cases, you might not want to restore the entire content tree but only the parts that you need. Partial restore is a feature that allows for restoring specific parts of your content instead of restoring everything.

You can use Partial Restore on:

• - Requires Umbraco Deploy 3.3+.

Empty Environment

In this scenario, the Cloud environment is cloned to your local machine or a new Cloud environment has been created. In both cases, the new environment will have an empty Content section as well as an empty Media section.

To partially restore the parts you need:

1. Go to the Content section of the Umbraco backoffice on your new environment (local or Cloud).

2. Right-click the Content tree or click the three dots and select Do something else.

3. Choose Partial Restore.

4. Select the environment that you would like to restore the content from.

5. Select content to restore to open a dialog with a preview of the content tree.

6. Select the content node you would like to restore.

7. Enable Including all items below if you want to restore any child nodes below the selected node.

8. Click Restore.

9. Right-click the Content tree and select Reload once the restore is complete.

Partial Restores on empty environments are helpful when not all content or media is necessary for the tasks to be performed on the new environment. Instead of having to restore everything, doing a partial restore can be used to only restore the parts you need. This will ensure that you can quickly get on your way with the task at hand.

Environment with existing Content or Media

It is possible to use the Partial Restore feature in environments where you already have content in the Content tree.

1. Go to the Content section of your Umbraco backoffice.

2. Right-click the content node which you know contains updates.

3. Choose Partial Restore.

4. Select the environment that you would like to restore the content from.

5. Enable Including all items below if you want to restore any child nodes below the selected node.

6. Click Restore.

7. Right-click the Content tree and select Reload once the restore is complete.

In this article, you can learn more about deploying your code changes and metadata from a local instance to your Cloud environment.

Local changes in your Umbraco Cloud project are automatically detected and synced with your Git client for seamless collaboration.

There are two ways this can be done. You can push the changes using a Git UI or your terminal. This guide will show how you can use both ways to deploy your local changes to Umbraco Cloud.

Prerequisites

• A clone of your Cloud project.

• A or a Terminal.

• Created some Document Types and Data Types with corresponding .uda files.

  • The files are located in the /umbraco/Deploy/Revision folder.

Deploying using a Git UI

Once you have created some Documents and Data types, follow the steps below to deploy your local changes using a Git UI. The guide will use as the Git UI, however you can use your own preferred Git UI.

1. Go to your Git UI.

2. Check for local changes in your UI.

1. Prepare changes, so they are ready to be committed.

2. Write a commit subject

3. Write a description of the commit.

4. Commit the files.

1. Push the files to your cloud project in the UI.

The deployment will kick in and the new Documents and Data Types you have created locally are now automatically created on the remote environment.

After deploying changes locally to your Cloud environment, use the Umbraco Cloud portal's 'Deploy changes to ..' button for subsequent deployments to other environments. For more information, see the article.

Deploying local changes using the terminal

To deploy your local changes from local to Umbraco Cloud using a terminal follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to your local projects folder using the cd YourProjectName command in the terminal.

2. Check for pending changes in your project with git status.

3. Add the pending changes with git add -.

4. Commit the staged files using git commit -m "Adding updated schema changes".

5. Push the changes to Umbraco Cloud using git push.

   1. Do a git pull if the push is rejected.

If you have to pull down, make sure to see if any of these commits contain changes to the schema (anything in umbraco/Deploy/Revision/).

To validate your local site and ensure compatibility with the updated schema, use the in the Settings section of the Umbraco backoffice.

Here, you can see the status of ongoing or completed deployment processes. The status will show whether an operation has been triggered and is in progress has been completed, or has failed.

The dashboard will show the status based on the marker files on the disk, for example, deploy-progress. From the Deploy Dashboard, it is also possible to trigger different processes.

When you are working in your Cloud environment, changes made through the Backoffice are automatically detected and committed to the site's Git repository. This includes Umbraco-specific items like Document Types and Templates. These changes are also referred to as metadata.

Deploying between Mainline Environments

Changes made in your Cloud environments will appear in the Umbraco Cloud portal. You can see what files have been added or changed and who made the changes.

To deploy metadata changes from one Cloud environment to another, click the Deploy changes button on the environment where the changes were made.

The deployment starts, and you can follow the progress in the Overview section of your project.

Once complete, the changes are deployed to the next Cloud environment in the deployment flow. If you have additional environments, repeat this process to deploy the changes through each environment.

Syncing Changes Between Mainline and Flexible Environment

When working with a flexible environment alongside your mainline environments, it's important to keep them aligned to avoid conflicts and ensure consistent deployments.

If any changes have been made in a mainline environment those changes must be pulled into the flexible environment before pushing updates back. The changes can be updated Document Types, content, or other schema changes.

If what you've been working on in the flexible environment has also been changed in the mainline, a merge conflict will occur. These conflicts need to be resolved before you can continue with the deployment. For information on how to resolve them, see the article.

Once you’ve completed your feature or update in the flexible environment and it’s synced with the latest mainline changes:

• Push your changes from the flexible environment to the mainline environment.

• From there, the changes become part of the regular deployment flow.

Important Notes

When you deploy, for example, from your left-most mainline environment to your Live environment, changes are made to the Live environment. These changes will then be merged back into the left-most mainline environment.

Here are the automatic steps Umbraco Cloud goes through when you hit the "Deploy changes" button:

• Before pushing your changes from the source environment, the engine running Umbraco Cloud - Umbraco Deploy - looks for changes in the repository on the target environment

• If changes are found, Umbraco Deploy merges the changes from the target environment into the repository on the source environment.

• After the merge, the changes from the source environment are pushed to the repository on the target environment.

• Finally, the changes pushed to the target repository are extracted to the site, and you will now see your changes reflected in the Backoffice and on the Frontend.

It is recommended that you only make changes to metadata on the left-most mainline environment or a flexible environment. Making changes directly on other mainline environments can cause merge conflicts when you deploy.

Refer to our troubleshooting documentation about , if you should run into issues while deploying between your Umbraco Cloud environments.

The number of environments available on your project is dependent on which plan you are on:

.

Configuring Environments

Clicking Configure environments from the project overview gives you access to environment management options. From here, you can:

• Rename an existing environment.

• Create a new environment.

• Delete an environment you no longer need.

These options help keep your deployment pipeline organized and aligned with your team's workflow.

Adding or Removing Environments

Most Umbraco Cloud plans give you the flexibility to work with multiple environments. You can decide how many to add and how to organize them as flexible or mainline environments. For more information on environment types, see the article.

The following sections provide guidance on managing your Cloud environments.

Adding an Environment

Before adding an environment, ensure there are no local changes that haven’t been pushed to Live. Adding an environment will push all changes in the current deployment chain.

To add an environment:

1. Click Configure environments.

1. Click Create environment.

1. Choose an Environment name.

2. Click Confirm.

After adding a new left-most mainline environment or a flexible environment, you need to clone this environment instead. The current local clone will be set up to push to Live, while the fresh clone will push to the new environment.

Removing an Environment

To remove an environment:

1. Navigate to the environment you want to delete.

2. Click on the three dots.

3. Click Delete.

It may take a few minutes for Cloud to set up the changes after adding or removing an environment.

Keeping your Umbraco Cloud project up to date ensures security, performance, and access to the latest features. This section guides you through upgrading your project, from minor updates to major version upgrades, including handling dependencies.

To manually upload your certificate on the Umbraco Cloud Portal and assign it to one of the hostnames you've added:

1. Go to your project on the Umbraco Cloud portal.

2. Click Settings -> Certificates. The Manual Certificates window opens.

Your certificates need to be:

1. In .pfx format.

2. Must use a password.

3. Cannot be expired.

4. Signature algorithm must be SHA256WithRSA, SHA1WithRSA or ECDSAWithSHA256

The .pfx file can only contain one certificate. Each certificate can then be bound to a hostname you have already added to your site. Make sure you use the hostname you will bind the certificate to as the Common Name (CN) when generating the certificate.

Add Manual certificate

1. Click Add New Certificate.

2. Select Choose file in the Certificate (.pfx file) field and upload your certificate from your local machine.

3. Enter the Password for your certificate.
4. Click Add.

Bind Certificate to a Hostname

1. Click Add new binding.

2. Choose your hostname from the Hostname dropdown.

3. Choose your newly uploaded certificate from the Certificate dropdown.

4. Click Add.

You've now successfully added your certificate to the Cloud project.

From Custom Certificate to Automatic TLS (HTTPS)

In some cases, you might want to switch from using your custom certificate to using the ones provided by the Umbraco Cloud service.

By removing your certificate from your Cloud project, the Umbraco Cloud service will automatically assign a new TLS (HTTPS) certificate to the hostname.

Read more

When you are about to go live with your website on Umbraco Cloud, there are a few things you might want to consider beforehand.

Below are a few suggestions that you might want to look into:

While you get a lot of fantastic features with Umbraco Cloud, SMTP server is not something that is available. There are many reasons for setting up an SMTP service on your Cloud project. For example, if you are working with Umbraco Forms.

Working with Umbraco Forms, allows you to set up email workflows that enable you to send emails through Forms - This requires an SMTP service. Another great use of SMTP service is if you want to add users to your project's Backoffice. The service requires SMTP to send the invitation from the project to the new user. This also applies to sending emails to users who have requested a password reset.

When you create a project on Umbraco Cloud, the generated project URL is based on the project's name. You have the option to a custom hostname.

The last step before your website goes live and is accessible to the public is to deploy it to the Live environment. When everything has been tested in the left-most mainline environment or locally, you are ready to deploy the site to your live environment and make it public.

When managing an Umbraco Cloud project with multiple environments, you might need to push a hotfix to your Live environment. There might be a possibility that you have pending changes in other environments that are not ready for deployment.

Scenario

Imagine you have two environments: Live and Development. You are currently working on some changes in your local clone of the Development environment. These changes will not be ready for the Live environment for a couple of weeks. However, you need to apply a minor change to your Live environment – a hotfix.

Standard Workflow

Typically, you would make the hotfix locally, push it to the Development environment, and then deploy it to Live. In this scenario, that process is not possible as you do not want to deploy the other pending changes you are still working on.

Best Practices

Following Umbraco Cloud's workflow, you should never make changes directly to the Live environment unless it is the only environment you have. For more information about environments on Umbraco Cloud, see the article.

Applying Hotfixes

It is possible to apply specific changes to your Live environment without breaking Umbraco Cloud workflow. Here are two approaches:

Clone the Development environment and use Git to push the selected changes to the Live environment. The advantage of using this approach is that your Git history is more accurate and you only work with one local repository. This method requires Git knowledge, but a Git client can simplify the process. You should only go with this guide if you feel comfortable working with Git.

For more information, see the article.

Clone both your Development and Live environment to your local machine. Copy the updated files from the cloned Development environment to the cloned Live environment. Push the files to the Live environment on Umbraco Cloud. This allows you to test the changes on a cloned Live environment before pushing it to the Cloud.

For more information, see the article.

Dependencies on Umbraco Cloud

This article gives an overview of the dependencies between the products on Umbraco Cloud.

The products are:

• Umbraco CMS

• Umbraco Forms

• Umbraco Deploy

In the table below, you can see which version of Umbraco Forms and Deploy you should be running on your Umbraco Cloud project. Those depend on which version of Umbraco CMS you are running.

Quick Links

This article provides an overview of any version-specific steps that might be necessary when upgrading your Umbraco Cloud project to a new version.

As there might also be version-specific notes for the specific products involved in the upgrade it is recommend giving those a look as well.

Specific notes for major upgrades on Cloud

Overview

Umbraco Cloud is built on a modern, cloud-native technology stack designed to simplify your development workflow, automate deployment, and ensure reliable, scalable hosting. This section provides a comprehensive overview of the key technologies that power your Cloud projects. From version control and cloud infrastructure to deployment automation and developer tools.

Version Control with Git

At the core of every Umbraco Cloud project is a Git repository, which securely tracks your changes. When you create a project, a Git repo is automatically set up, enabling you to:

• Collaborate safely with your team through branching and merging.

• Roll back to previous versions if needed.

• Trigger automatic deployments when changes are pushed.

For more information, see the Repositories in a Cloud Project article.

Cloud Infrastructure

Umbraco Cloud is hosted on Microsoft Azure, providing scalable, secure, and resilient infrastructure. This means your projects benefit from the same robust platform trusted by enterprises worldwide, without the burden of managing servers or manual configurations.

What infrastructure powers Umbraco Cloud?

Umbraco Cloud runs on Microsoft Azure and uses Cloudflare for optimization and security. It includes:

• Automatic backups with point-in-time restore for data safety.

• TLS certificates for secure HTTPS connections.

• Built-in firewalls and network-level security.

• Environment-level access controls, allowing staging or development to be blocked from public access.

For more information, see the Project Settings article.

Automated Deployments and Continuous Integration

Umbraco Cloud includes an integrated CI/CD pipeline that automates the deployment of your site whenever you push changes to Git. This means:

• Each commit triggers a build and deployment to your project’s environments (Development, Staging, Production).

• Deployments are fast, reliable, and consistent, reducing manual errors.

• You can promote changes through environments, ensuring quality control before going live.

For more information, see the Umbraco CI/CD Flow article.

Developer Tools: Power Tools (Kudu) and Diagnostics

To help you manage and troubleshoot your Cloud projects, Umbraco Cloud integrates Power Tools powered by Kudu, an advanced Azure service. With these tools, you can:

• Inspect deployment logs and diagnose failed builds.

• Access your environment’s file system and process information.

• Run scripts and commands remotely.

For more information, see the Power Tools (Kudu) article.

Performance Enhancements: CDN Caching and Optimization Settings

Umbraco Cloud ensures exceptional performance and stability, whether it’s business as usual or during high-demand periods. With built-in caching, scalable resources, and seamless integrations, your digital experiences remain responsive and reliable under any circumstances.

For more information, see the CDN Caching and Optimization Settings article.

A private NuGet feed is a package repository that is only accessible to a specific group of users, rather than being publicly available.

Private feeds are often used to host internal libraries or proprietary software within an organization.

NuGet is a package manager for the Microsoft development platform, including .NET. It gives you the ability to add, remove, and update libraries and tools in Visual Studio projects.

In this tutorial, we'll be covering how to set up a private NuGet feed with Umbraco Cloud.

Prerequisite

To follow along with this tutorial, you'll need the following tools:

1. Visual Studio

2. A NuGet server such as MyGet

3. An Umbraco Cloud project on a standard plan or higher

Step 1: Create a NuGet package

The first part of this tutorial is to create and publish a NuGet package using Visual Studio.

To create and publish a NuGet package with Visual Studio, you will need to follow the Microsoft Documentation.

Step 2: Create your own MyGet feed

Once the first step is completed, we need to create our own MyGet feed.

To create the MyGet feed, follow the MyGet documentation.

When you create the MyGet feed, it needs to be created as private.

Step 3: Publish your NuGet package

We will publish our NuGet package to your MyGet feed in the third step.

There are two ways to do so:

• Go directly to your MyGet feed and upload the NuGet package.

• Follow the Microsoft Documentation.

Step 4: Add private MyGet feed on Umbraco Cloud

In the last step, we will add the private feed to our Umbraco cloud project.

To add the private feed to your Cloud project, follow the steps below:

1. Access the cloud Secrets Management.

2. Add your MyGet credentials as a Shared Secret.

3. Clone down your Umbraco Cloud project.

4. Open the project locally and build/spin up the site.

5. Go to your NuGet.config file in the root of your project.

6. Add the below configuration to the file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <packageSources>
    <add key="nuget.org" value="https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json" />
	<add key="MyGet" value="https://www.myget.org/F/YourMyGetFeed/api/v3/index.json" />
  </packageSources>

	<packageSourceCredentials>
		<MyGet>
			<add key="Username" value="YourUsername" />
			<add key="ClearTextPassword" value="%MYGET_PASSWORD%" />
		</MyGet>
	</packageSourceCredentials>

  <activePackageSource>
    <add key="All" value="(Aggregate source)" />
  </activePackageSource>
  
</configuration>

In the above code example, you can see that we are using the Key: "MYGET_PASSWORD" that we created in the previous step. We did that by using the Cloud Secrets Management feature on Umbraco Cloud.

1. Push the changes to your Umbraco Cloud project.

Congratulations, you've successfully set up a private NuGet feed with Umbraco Cloud using the cloud secrets management feature!

You can now use this feed to host and manage your own internal libraries or proprietary software. If you want to learn more about NuGet and how to use it, check out the official NuGet documentation.

In some cases, you might need to upgrade your Umbraco Cloud project manually. It's similar to how you would upgrade any other Umbraco project but includes a few extra and important steps.

Umbraco Cloud project uses Umbraco Forms and Umbraco Deploy. This means there are some dependencies you need to consider when upgrading your Umbraco Cloud project manually.

Why and when would you do a manual upgrade?

By default, all Umbraco Cloud projects are automatically upgraded when we release new patches (like 8.8.1) to the Umbraco CMS. This also goes for Umbraco Forms and Umbraco Deploy.

When a new minor version (like 8.8) is released, the upgrade is applied to the Umbraco Cloud engine, and not to the individual projects. The same goes for the release of new major versions (like 10.0).

For minor and major versions, there will be an option on your left-most mainline environment to apply the upgrade. The Umbraco Cloud engine will take care of the entire process, and you only need to ensure everything works when upgrade is complete.

It is recommended to use the automatic and semi-automatic upgrade options provided to you as part of your Umbraco Cloud project. It's also possible to upgrade your Umbraco Cloud project manually. This can be done with both patches and minor and major versions.

Manually upgrading your Cloud project allows you to test out new features and functionality on your local machine before applying them to your Cloud environments.

Product dependencies

When manually upgrading a Umbraco Cloud project, it is important to consider the dependencies that exist between the products on Umbraco Cloud. To fully benefit from Umbraco Cloud, be sure to check for these dependencies before upgrading to a new minor or major version of Umbraco CMS.

Upgrade order

When you are manually upgrading your Umbraco Cloud project and need to upgrade two or more products, follow this order:

1. Umbraco CMS

2. Umbraco Forms

3. Umbraco Deploy

Learn more about the product dependencies on Umbraco Cloud

How to upgrade Umbraco CMS manually

Make sure to follow the steps carefully when upgrading your Umbraco Cloud project to the newest version of Umbraco CMS.

How to upgrade Umbraco Forms manually

There are no Umbraco Cloud-related files to be aware of when upgrading Umbraco Forms. Therefore you can follow the general Umbraco Forms upgrade notes. When upgrading Umbraco Forms, be sure to also consult the version specific upgrade notes to learn about potential breaking changes and common pitfalls.

How to upgrade Umbraco Deploy manually

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.

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:

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

For plan-level details, see the .

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

Starting your journey with Umbraco Cloud begins with creating your first project. A streamlined process designed to get you up and running quickly with all the power of Umbraco and the cloud, without complex setup.

You can either create a or a project from the . Both provide access to the core Umbraco Cloud experience, but there are key differences to keep in mind depending on your goals.

Umbraco Cloud Trial Project

A trial project provides an opportunity to explore the Cloud platform without any commitment.

The easiest way to start with an Umbraco Cloud project is to take a . The project is automatically created, and you are ready to start within a few minutes.

Since everything is already set up for you, it is recommended that you get to know your project before you start building.

You can either work directly in the backoffice on the Cloud environment or .

Can I convert a Trial Project to a Paid Project?

Yes. You can upgrade to a paid project within the 14-day trial period without losing your work. You can upgrade your trial to a paid plan within the Umbraco Cloud portal.

Umbraco Cloud provides a seamless transition from a trial to a paid plan. You can adjust your plan or resources as your project evolves.

Creating a Project from the Umbraco Cloud Portal

You can create a paid project from the Cloud Portal, which offers the latest features and full control.

To create a project from the Umbraco Cloud Portal:

1. Log in to the with your credentials.

2. Click Create Project.

1. Click Select Cloud Project from the list of projects.

2. Choose a Plan Selection as per your choice.

3. Choose the Umbraco version for your project.

4. Enter the Project Name.

5. Choose a Region.

6. Choose a Project Owner.

7. Add a Technical Contact to your project.

8. Click Continue.

9. Verify that everything looks correct in the Summary page.

10. Select I have read and agree to the terms and conditions and the Data Processing Agreement.

11. Click Create Project.

Comparison between Trial v/s Paid Projects

* It is not possible to publish a website with a Trial project.

Naming a Project

When you create a Trial project a unique project name will be generated for you.

When you create a new Project from the Umbraco Cloud Portal you must give the project a name.

All project names are unique.

Project Overview

Once a project is created, you can get an overview of it from the Umbraco Cloud Portal:

1. Log in to the .

2. Select your Project from the Projects dashboard.

3. Click on Overview from the left side menu.

The Overview menu consists of:

• A place to manage the on your project.

• A place to manage the that has access to your project.

• A page that gives a Summary of your project, like when it was created, that plan, and more.

Different ways to start an Umbraco Cloud project

Not every project starts from scratch. Depending on your needs, there are other ways to kick-start your Cloud journey:

A Baseline Child project is similar to a Fork (forked repository) on GitHub. A clone is created of an existing project while maintaining a connection between the two projects. The connection exists between the Live environment of the Baseline project, and the left-most mainline environment of the Child project.

Any project can act as a Baseline project.

The basic idea is that you have a project that contains all your standard Umbraco packages/components. Some default Document Types which you want to use as a baseline for future projects is also configured. When you've made changes to your Baseline project, you push these changes out to all the Child projects with a click of a button.

Video Tutorial

Create a Child Project

To create a child project:

1. Log in to the .

2. Click the Create New Project button.

3. Select Baseline Project.

4. Open the Choose baseline drop-down list and select the Cloud project, the new project should be based on.

5. Choose either Starter, Standard or Professional plan from the Plan Selection window.

6. Enter the Project Name in the Project Information window.

1. Choose an Owner from the drop-down list.

2. Enter your Name, Email, and Telephone in the Technical Contact section.

3. Click Continue.

4. Review the entered information and select I have read and agree to the terms and conditions and the Data Processing Agreement.

5. Click Create Project.

It might take couple of minutes for the project to spin up before your environments are ready. When your environments are ready, you will see a green light next to the environment name.

Restore content from the Baseline project

When you've created the Child project you can choose to restore content from your Baseline project:

1. Go to the Content section.

2. Right-click the top of the Content tree in the Umbraco backoffice.

3. Choose Workspace Restore.

4. The Baseline project should already be selected as the environment to restore from

5. Click Restore from Baseline

If you do not see the content, Reload the content tree once the restore is complete.

As with any Git repository-based development, it is not uncommon to have merge conflicts as the repositories begin to differ. Read this article for more on the merge strategy we use and how to approach resolving these conflicts.

In this article, you'll find a guide on how to upgrade your Child project with changes from your Baseline project.

When you are working with Baseline Child projects you might sometimes want to have an individual configuration for each project. This can be handled using config transforms.

In this article, we will look at how to break the connection between the baseline and one of its child projects.

In this article, you will find examples of applying environment-specific configuration to your Umbraco Cloud project.

Common configuration files, like the web.config and appSettings.json files on your Umbraco Cloud project will be used as examples.

What are Config Transforms?

Config Transforms are a way to transform your config files without changing the actual config file.

To transform a config file, you need to create a new file in your project with the following naming convention: {config-file name}.{environmentAlias}.config.

To transform your appSetttings.json file for an environment with the alias "Live", create a config transform that looks like this:

appSettings.Live.json

The {environmentAlias} part needs to be replaced with the target environment's alias. The environment alias is fetched from the environment variable named DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT.

You can find and manage the value of the DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT environment variable through the Advanced settings in the Configuration section of the Cloud Portal.

Create the files in your local project clone to ensure it's added to the repository.

When the file is deployed to the Live environment, the transforms will be applied to the appSettings.json file in the Root of your project. In the case that you have multiple mainline environments, the appSettings.Live.json will only transform the appSettings.json on the Live environment.

For each deployment, the Umbraco Cloud engine searches for all of the .{environment}.json files in your site and apply the transforms.

Syntax and testing

When creating config transforms you need to follow these three rules:

1. Use the correct file-naming convention.

2. Place the transform file in the same folder as the file you want to transform.

3. Follow the correct .

Before applying the config transform files to your environments, we recommend running a test using this tool: .

Using the tool will let you test whether the transform file transforms your config files correctly. The tool can be used for all config files.

Examples (web.config)

Rewrite rules are often something you only want to apply to your Live environment. To avoid the rewrites being applied to other mainline environments, create a transform file to apply the rewrite rules only to the Live environment.

Here is an example of how that config transform would look:

This config transform will add a <rule> to <system.webServer><rewrite><rules>. The xdt:Transform attribute is used to tell the system what to transform. In this case, the value is Insert, which means it will add the section if it's not already in the config file.

Dedicated Resources is a feature on Umbraco Cloud that gives you the option to move your project to a dedicated server. You can choose between a number of dedicated options depending on the amount of resources you will need for your project.

In this article, you can read about how to move your Umbraco Cloud project to dedicated resources. You can also find information about what you need to be aware of before doing so.

Before you move your project to dedicated resources

Before you decide to move your Umbraco Cloud project, you need to consider a few things:

• Umbraco Cloud offers dedicated resources for Starter, Standard, and Professional plans. You can choose among one dedicated option for projects on a Starter plan, two dedicated options for a Standard plan project, and three dedicated options for a Professional plan project.

• Moving from a shared resource to a dedicated resource will change the outgoing IP of the project. If your solution has an external service that requires whitelisting the outgoing IP, we advise you to enable the static outbound IP feature for your project and share that static outbound IP address with the third party. The static outbound IP address will not change when moving from a shared resource to a dedicated resource. For more info on static lease visit the documentation for .

How to move from shared to dedicated

The first step in moving to a dedicated resource is to access your project in the project overview at .

• Find and select the project that you want to move to dedicated resources.

• Select Dedicated Resources from the Management menu:

• There are currently three dedicated options for you to choose from the Professional plan, two dedicated options from the Standard plan, and one dedicated option from the Starter plan. For each of the dedicated options, you will find its name, the memory and CPU cores, and the price per month.

• By hitting the "Upgrade" button on your dedicated option of choice and confirming this, you will be redirected to the project page where you will be notified when the move to a dedicated resource has been completed.

How to move from dedicated to shared

Moving away from dedicated resources and back to a shared plan can be done from the Dedicated Resources page.

• By hitting "Downgrade to shared" and confirming your choice, you will be redirected to the project page where you will be notified when the move back to a shared resource has been completed.

• Your Cloud project is now back on a shared resource.

Frequently asked questions

Wondering what happens when you move your environment to a dedicated server? Below you can find a list of the most frequently asked questions including answers.

Will it move all the environments to the dedicated server?

You can choose to only move your live environment to the dedicated server.

How will the resources be split between the environments?

All environments on the project moved to dedicated will share the resources of the dedicated server.

Will the customer be able to work on the project during the move?

It will not be possible to work on the project while it is being moved to the dedicated server. The move takes a couple of minutes, and during that time the backoffice will not respond as usual.

Will the environments be moved at the same time or one by one?

All environments that have been selected to be moved, will be moved simultaneously.

Will the live environment be unavailable while the Project is moved?

There will always be an active live environment that continues to serve requests and be online during the move operation. When the moved live environment is ready and responding to requests, the hostnames will be switched to point to the moved environment.

If you have any other questions regarding dedicated resource, feel free to reach out to .

Connecting to your Cloud database locally

Umbraco Cloud automatically overrides whatever is in the umbracoDbDsn connection string in the web.config or appSettings.json when the site is running on Cloud.

Any connection string named umbracoDbDsn will only be used when you run the site locally (cloned). In rare cases, you might need the database timeout increased on Cloud, for that, you'll need to reach out to support for assistance.

For security, your database on Umbraco Cloud is running behind a firewall. You'll need to open the firewall for the relevant IPs to connect to the database. This can be a single IP, a list of IPs, or even an IP range.

To open the firewall to a specific IP follow the steps below:

1. Go to your Umbraco Cloud Project.

2. Go to Configuration in the side menu on your project.

3. Click on Connections.

4. Click Add new IP address under SQL Azure firewall rules

5. Enter the IP that is allowed to access the database.

   1. Give the IP a name as well. his gives an overview of who the different IPs that have been added belong to.

If you don't see the SQL Azure firewall, it's due to permissions and you'll need to contact the projects administrator.

The IP can also be added by clicking "Add now". It'll automatically add your current IP address and save the settings. It might take up to five minutes for the firewall to be open for your IP.

Connecting to the database using SQL Management Studio

Once the firewall is open, it's time to fire up SQL Management Studio and connect to the database. Be aware that a database exists for each environment on Umbraco Cloud. Any changes you make to custom tables need to be done for each database.

To connect to the database using SQL Management Studio follow the steps below:

1. Go to SQL Connection Details in the Configuration menu on Umbraco Cloud.

2. Note down the Server name, Login, Password, and Database.

3. Go to SQL Management Studio.

   1. Choose SQL Server Authentication as the authentication type In the Connect to Server dialog.

   2. Add the Server name in the Connect to Server dialog

   3. Add the Login in the Connect to Server dialog

   4. Add the Password in the Connect to Server dialog

4. Click Options.

5. Add the name of the database in the Connect to Database dialog under Connection properties.

6. Click Connect.

Now that you've connected you can work with the databases on Umbraco Cloud, like you could on any other host. Remember to let Umbraco Cloud do the work when it comes to the Umbraco-related tables (Umbraco* and CMS* tables).

LocalDB

When you clone a site locally, Umbraco Cloud automatically creates a local database and populates it with data from your website running on the Cloud. If you don't specify database settings before the local site startup, it defaults to a SQL CE database in the umbraco/Data folder. If you wish to use a local SQL Server instead, you can update the connection string in the web.config or appSettings.json file (from v9+). You need to do this before your site starts up the first time.

By default when Umbraco Cloud restores a local database it will be a Umbraco.sdf file in the /App_Data folder. However, the restore creates a Umbraco.mdf file if LocalDB is installed and configured. To use LocalDB ensure applicationHost.config it is configured with loadUserProfile="true" and setProfileEnvironment="true".

Read about how to work with LocalDB and full IIS in the .

Usually applicationHost.config is located in this folder for IIS: C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config

and in one of these folders for IIS Express:

C:\Users\<user>\Documents\IISExpress\config\

If you're using Visual Studio 2015+ check this path: $(solutionDir)\.vs\config\applicationhost.config

In Visual Studio 2015+ you can also configure which applicationhost.config file is used by altering the <UseGlobalApplicationHostFile>true|false</UseGlobalApplicationHostFile> setting in the project file (for example, MyProject.csproj). Source: Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) forum.

Now that you are all set and ready you can continue to work with your .

Umbraco Cloud uses a deployment model based on Git, Kudu, and Umbraco Deploy to move changes between environments. This follows a left-to-right deployment approach. Changes start in the local or left-most environment and are deployed to the production/Live environment. This workflow is called the mainline.

The mainline environments are used when building and deploying the initial website. Upgrades, both manual and automatic also go through the mainline environments.

Flexible environments can be used to work on features separate from the mainline. This is done without interfering with upgrades or other changes being worked on in the mainline.

Deployment Approach

Umbraco Cloud separates schema and content during deployment. Schema includes Document Types, Templates, Forms, Views, and config files. Content includes content items and media.

• Deploy: Moves schema between environments using a Git client or the Umbraco Cloud Portal.

• Transfer: Move content and media directly via the Umbraco backoffice.

Types of Deployments

Content editors do not need Umbraco Cloud Portal access. They can manage content through the backoffice, while developers handle schema deployments via Git.

Deploying Schema

The source and target environments must be in sync before transferring content and media. Deploy schema first to ensure consistency.

Transfer Content and Media

Content and media move between environments through the Umbraco backoffice. Content can be transferred from Local to Development and restored from Live or Staging.

All configuration for Umbraco Deploy is stored in the appSettings.json file found at the root of your Umbraco website.

Environment Restart

Some deployments can trigger an Umbraco Cloud environment to restart. The table below outlines which actions initiate a restart.

Manual Restart

From the Umbraco Cloud Portal, you can manually restart your environments.

Umbraco-cloud.json

The umbraco-cloud.json file defines deployment settings, identifies the current environment, and determines the next deployment target.

When you have content on your Cloud environment and clone down your project to your local machine, you need to restore the content. You will also need to use the restore option when setting up new Cloud environments.

The restore option can be used to always ensure you work with the latest content when developing new features.

How to Restore Content

You can restore the content in the following ways:

Restore when starting up the project locally

The first time you run your project locally you will have the option to restore your content and media before going to the Umbraco Backoffice.

1. Run the website locally.

2. Click the green Restore button to restore all the content nodes and media files.

3. Wait till the process completes. This might take a while depending on the amount of content and media you have on your project.

4. Select Open Umbraco to go to the Backoffice.

All your content and media is now available in the Umbraco Backoffice.

Workspace Restore

Use this option when setting up new Cloud environments. The Workspace restore option restores all the entities (content, media, forms, datasources, and prevalue sources from Umbraco Forms) of a workspace via the Backoffice.

1. Log in to the Umbraco Backoffice on the environment you want to restore the content and media.

2. Click ... and select Do something else or Right-click the Content Tree in the Content section.

3. Choose Workspace Restore.

4. Select the environment from the Restore this workspace from dropdown.

5. Make sure that your environments have the .

6. Click Restore from <environment_name> and wait till the process completes. This might take a while depending on the amount of content and media you have on your project.

7. Click Okay to complete the process once the restore is done.

8. Right-click the Content tree and choose Reload to see your content in the tree.

Tree Restore

The Tree restore option restores all the entities available for the selected tree in that section. It's available in the Content, Media, Members, Forms (root node of Forms, Datasources, and Prevalue sources), or Translation (Dictionary menu if configured) sections. Using Tree Restore, you can choose to restore only content. This will restore any media that’s referenced in that content, but it won’t attempt to restore the full media library.

1. Log in to the Umbraco Backoffice in the environment you want to restore the tree.

2. Click ... and select Do something else or Right-click the Content Tree in the Content section.

3. Choose Tree Restore.

4. Select the environment from the Restore this tree from dropdown.

5. Make sure that your environments have the .

6. Click Restore from <environment_name> and wait till the process completes. This might take a while depending on the amount of content and media you have on your project.

7. Click Okay to complete the process when the restore is done.

8. Right-click the Content tree and choose Reload to see your content in the tree.

Using the Partial Restore option, you can restore single nodes from a tree (optionally with descendants) that you need to work with.

After deploying changes to the metadata, it's time to transfer your content and media. This is done from the Umbraco Backoffice.

Content and media transfers are flexible. You control which content nodes or media items to transfer, all in one go, a few at a time, or a single node.

Transferring content will overwrite any existing nodes on the target environment. Content transfers will transfer the items that you select in the "source" environment to the "target" environment the same as it was in the "source". This means that if you have some content on the target environment already, this will be replaced by the new content from the source environment.

Important: Content and Media transfers will only work if you've deployed all changes to your metadata beforehand. Please refer to our documentation on how to deploy metadata from either or .

Step-by-step

Let’s go through a content transfer step by step. Imagine you’ve finished working on new content for your project locally and you are ready to transfer the changes to your Cloud Development environment.

You want to transfer the whole site. You start from the Home node and choose to transfer everything under it:

1. Right-click ... next to the Home node in the Content tree.

2. Select Queue for transfer.

3. Alternatively, if you are in the Home page editor, you can go to the Actions dropdown and select Queue for transfer.

4. Choose if you want to include all items below the chosen page or only transfer the chosen node. Alternatively, right-click the Content tree and select Queue for transfer to transfer all your content at once.

5. Click Queue.

6. Select Open transfer queue. The Workspaces dashboard opens.

   • You will be able to see which items are currently ready to be transferred - this will include both content and media that you've queued for transfer.

7. Click Transfer to Development and monitor the progress of the transfer.

Once the transfer is completed, you will see a confirmation message stating that the transfer has succeeded.

Media Items

Media items are transferred the same way as content:

1. Right-click the items in the Media section and select Queue for transfer. Alternatively, right-click the Media tree and select Queue for transfer to transfer all your media at once.

2. Click Queue.

3. Select Open transfer queue. The Workspaces dashboard opens.

4. Click Transfer to Development.

To be able to transfer Members and Member groups make sure that AllowMembersDeploymentOperations is configured to transfer and TransferMemberGroupsAsContent is set to true. This needs to be done in the appSettings.json file

Once the settings have been configured Members can be transferred in the same ways as both content and media from the Members section:

1. Right-click on the Members or the Member Groups folder and choose Queue for transfer.

2. Click Queue.

3. Select Open transfer queue. The workspace dashboard opens.

4. Click Transfer to Development.

Umbraco Forms

You'll need to ensure the TransferFormsAsContent the setting is set to true in the appsettings.jsonfile:

Once the setting has been added to the source and target environment, Forms can be transferred the same way as content and media:

1. Right-click the items in the Forms section and choose Queue for transfer. Alternatively, right-click the Forms tree and select Queue for transfer to transfer all your Forms at once.

2. Click Queue.

3. Select Open transfer queue. The Workspaces dashboard opens.

4. Click Transfer to Development.

TransferDictionaryAsContent

Deploy can be configured to allow for backoffice transfers of dictionary items instead of using files serialized to disk by setting TransferDictionaryAsContent as true.

Schema Mismatches

Sometimes a content transfer is not possible. For example, adding a new property to the HomePage Document Type that's missing in another Cloud environment throws an error. The error contains details on how to fix it.

If you encounter this issue while transferring content, refer to the article. This article provides guidance on resolving these issues.

On Umbraco Cloud, deletions are environment specific. To delete something entirely from your project, you need to delete it in all environments.

In this article, you can read about the correct way of deleting files, schema, and content from your Umbraco Cloud project.

When you have an Umbraco Cloud project, you might have couple of environments including a local clone of the project. Each of these environments have their own database. These databases store references to your content, media, and schema files, such as Document Types and Templates.

The databases are environment specific. During deployment across environments, Umbraco Cloud's engine compares schema files with database references using alias and GUID for accuracy. If something doesn't add up, for example, there is a mismatch between the database references and the files deployed, you will see an error. Learn more about this in the .

The workflow described above does not recognize deletions of content and schema from the database. You'll need to delete the content and/or schema on all your environments to fully complete the deletion.

The main reason not to delete schema and content on deployments is that it could lead to an unrecoverable loss of data.

Here's an example of what can happen when a Document Type is deleted and deployed:

• A Document Type is deleted in the left-most mainline environment.

• This deletion is then pushed to the Live environment, where many content nodes depend on the deleted Document Type.

• When the deployment is completed, all those content nodes would be instantly removed.

In the scenario described above, there is no option to roll back because the Document Type they rely on no longer exists. To prevent such situations, manual deletion is necessary. You must actively decide on each environment for the process to occur. Below is the same scenario explained in more detail.

Example scenario

The following example will build in the scenario outlined above, calling the left-most mainline environment the Development environment. In addition to the deletion, additional changes that have been made will also be deployed.

Before you deploy the changes, the Development environment will show that the following changes are ready to be deployed:

Following the Activity log in the browser, you'll notice that the .uda file for the Document Type gets deleted. Additionally, other files with changes are copied to the Live environment.

Once the deployment is completed, the following changes has taken place:

• The template is correctly updated.

• The Document Type you deleted on the Development environment is still present in the backoffice on the Live environment.

The reason for the Document Type to still be there is, that the associated .uda file is deleted. The Document Type still exists in the database.

To delete the Document Type from your entire project, you need to delete it from the backoffice of the other environments. When the Document Type has been deleted from the backoffice of all the environments and no .uda file exist, it is fully removed.

If you save your Document Type during the process, a new .uda file is generated. This can recreate your deleted Document Type when deploying changes between environments.

Which deletions are deployed?

Every file that's deleted, will also be deleted on the next environment when you deploy. However, there are some differences depending on what you have deleted.

Here's an overview of what happens when you deploy deletions to the next environment.

Deleting Schema (Document Types, Datatypes, etc.)

Deleting a Template

Deleting Files (CSS files, config files, etc.)

All files are deleted in the next environment upon deployment.

Deleting Content and/or Media

Deletions of content and media won't be detected during deployments. You must manually delete them on each environment where removal is desired.

Deleting Backoffice Languages

Deleting the language in the backoffice on the target environment will ensure the environments are in sync.

You can now configure a deployment webhook to be triggered upon successful deployments to any of your Umbraco Cloud environments. For example, when deploying from your local environment to one of your Cloud environments. Upon successful deployment, general information about the deployment will be posted in a JSON format to the specific URL you have configured.

Use cases

There are many use cases for deployment webhooks such as providing a detailed audit trail. Here are some scenarios where webhooks could be useful:

1. Any deployments to the Live site could be relevant for many parties in a company. Posting information about a deployment in internal communication channels like Slack is made possible using this feature.

2. Monitoring of the whole deployment cycle. A successful deployment might cause an error to show on the website. Integrating the webhook with other monitoring services, you could find out which deployment caused the issue.

3. Letting content editors know about particular deployments such as when a new Document Type was added. Will inform them that they can now use the new Document Type.

How to set up a webhook

1. From the Umbraco Cloud Portal go to Settings -> Webhooks

2. Select the environment to register a webhook.

3. Fill in the Webhook URL to which the data about a deployment should be posted to. An absolute URL with HTTP/HTTPS schema is an acceptable input to the field - ex. https://exampleURL.com

4. Click Add Webhook.

Sample data

General information about the deployment (to the configured environment) will be posted in JSON format to the URL (configured in the previous section).

Headers

The headers contain information about the payload in JSON format as well as a version of the payload.

Contents

Contents of the payload contain general information about the current deployment with links to the project in the Portal and the frontend of the environment. The final section lists deployed commits, including author, commit message, and changed files in the environment.

All media files on your Umbraco Cloud projects are stored using Azure Blob Storage. This means that the media files are not stored with the rest of your project files but in an external storage system.

To access the media files on your Umbraco Cloud project you can either:

• (Recommended)

About Azure Blob Storage

Azure Blob Storage is an external storage system, that the Umbraco Cloud service uses to store all media files on Umbraco Cloud projects. To learn how you can connect to your Blob Storages, read the article.

Working with media locally

When cloning a Cloud environment to your local machine, run a content restore from the backoffice. This will retrieve a copy of all the media files from the Azure Blob Storage container connected to that environment.

You can learn more about how this works in the article.

Adding new media files to your local clone automatically uploads to the Azure Blob Storage container connected to the environment you are deploying to.

One Storage per Environment

Each environment on your Umbraco Cloud project has a separate Azure Blob Storage container. Each of your environments uses a storage container specific to that environment.

When you deploy between two environments on your Umbraco Cloud project, media files will be copied from one storage to the other. The files are transferred depending on which environment you are moving to and from.

As an example, consider a scenario where you are transferring content changes from your left-most mainline environment to your Live environment. Initiating the transfer copies all media files from your left-most mainline environment Azure Blob Storage container to the Live environment container. Once all content changes have been successfully transferred and the process is complete, the media libraries in both environments will be synchronized.

Media Folder

You will notice that there is a Media (wwwroot/media) folder in your project files. This folder usually holds all media files associated with a Umbraco project. As your Umbraco Cloud environments are all configured with Azure Blob Storage, the media files are not in this media folder.

Instead, you will find a project.assets.json file in the obj folder. This file is used to connect the Media library on your Cloud environment to an Azure Blob Storage container.

Environment Variables

In some cases, you might want to connect to your Azure Blob Storage container for the environments on your Umbraco Cloud project. This could be to clean up unwanted media files or to download the current contents of the library.

To do this, you need to know some details about the connection between the environment and the Azure Blob Storage containers. Below are the steps you need to follow, to locate the necessary variables:

1. Access on your Cloud environment.

2. Locate the Environment page in the top navigation.

3. Scroll to the section containing Environment variables.

There are 4 variables related to the Azure Blob Storage container in your environment:

• APPSETTING_UMBRACO__CLOUD__STORAGE__AZUREBLOB__CONTAINERALIAS

• APPSETTING_UMBRACO__CLOUD__STORAGE__AZUREBLOB__CONTAINERNAME

• APPSETTING_UMBRACO__CLOUD__STORAGE__AZUREBLOB__ENDPOINT

• APPSETTING_UMBRACO__CLOUD__STORAGE__AZUREBLOB__SHAREDACCESSSIGNATURE

Once you have the variables, use the guide to connect to your storage container.

Related Articles

Tools

• A

The Scenario

You have an Umbraco Cloud project with two environments, Development and Live.

You have been working on building the site on a local clone of the Development environment. Now, you want to send some but not all changes to the Live environment.

Three commits have been pushed from your local clone to the Development environment. Out of these three commits, you only need the changes from one of the commits in the Live environment.

Apply selected changes to the Live environment

Here are the steps to follow to apply selected changes to the Live environment without deploying from Development to Live.

For the sake of simplicity here's an explanation of the names I'll be using in this guide:

• The cloned Development environment: Development repository

• The cloned Live environment: Live repository

Move the files

1. Clone down the Live environment.

   • The clone URL for the Live environment can be found in the Umbraco Cloud Portal:
2. Locate the files from the Development repository that you want to move to Live.

   • Check the commits in the Git history for the Development repository to verify which files you need.
   • The new files can be moved from the Development repository to the Live repository.

   • The same goes for changed files. You can also edit the files, and only move the code snippets you need on the Live environment.

3. Copy and paste the new and/or updated files from your Development repository to your Live repository.

4. You can now Stage and Commit these changes to the Live repository in Git.

A benefit of having the Live environment cloned down, is that you can test the new changes locally before sending them to the Live environment.

Test changes locally

1. Run the Live repository through IIS

2. Go to the backoffice of your project

3. Navigate to the settings section

4. Go to the Deploy Dashboard in the Settings section

5. Run the Deploy operation Update Umbraco Schema From Data Files

The changes will now be reflected in the backoffice of your local Live environment.

Once you've checked that everything works locally, you are ready to push to the Live environment.

Push to Live

1. Push the committed changes to the Live environment using Git.

1. Run the Deploy operation Update Umbraco Schema From Data Filesfrom the Deploy Dashboard

You have now applied a hotfix to the Live environment.

When you are done with development on your Development environment, follow the normal workflow of . The hotfix which now exists in both environments should automatically be merged upon deployment.

Important Notes

• Once you've applied the hotfix, we recommend that you delete the local clone of the Live environment. If you need to apply another hotfix at some point, clone the environment down again.

• Make sure that the changes you push directly to your Live environment are also pushed to the Development environment. This will ensure that your environments are kept in sync.

• This guide can also be used for applying a hotfix to a Staging environment.

Deploy on Cloud will either be automatically upgraded with patch releases or it can be done through the portal when new minors are available.

In rare cases, Deploy might not be on the latest patch or minor and you will need to upgrade Deploy manually.

This article will give you a step-by-step on how to manually upgrade the deployment engine used on your Umbraco Cloud project.

Prepare for the upgrade

When upgrading an Umbraco Cloud project manually, the first step is to .

Make sure you can run your Cloud project locally and restore content and media. It is important that you check that everything works correctly after the upgrade. To achieve this, you need to have a clone locally that resembles the Cloud environment as much as possible.

Get the latest version of Umbraco

To get the latest version of Umbraco Deploy you will need to upgrade the site using NuGet. The main package to install is Umbraco.Deploy.Cloud. This has dependencies on other components of Umbraco Deploy that will be imported automatically.

If using Umbraco Forms in your installation, you should also update the Umbraco.Deploy.Forms package reference.

1. Run the dotnet add package Umbraco.Deploy.Cloud command in the directory that contains your project files. If you want a specific package version, run these commands:

• dotnet add package Umbraco.Deploy.Cloud --version <VERSION>

• dotnet add package Umbraco.Deploy.Forms --version <VERSION>

1. Run dotnet restore to install the packages.

2. Open your .csproj file to make sure the package reference is updated:

Alternatively, you can also update Umbraco Deploy via the NuGet Package Manager in Visual studio:

Make sure that everything works on the local clone and that you can run the project without any errors.

Manually Upgrade Umbraco Deploy Legacy Version 7 and 8

Push upgrade to Cloud

When you've upgraded everything locally, and made sure that everything runs without any errors, you are ready to deploy the upgrade to Umbraco Cloud.

• Stage and commit all changes in Git

• Push the changes to the Cloud environment

• When everything is pushed, head on over to the Umbraco Cloud Portal

• Make sure everything runs without errors before deploying to the next Cloud environment

In this article, you can learn about how Umbraco Forms is handled on Umbraco Cloud and read about the workflow and best practices.

Umbraco Forms is a package that is included with your Umbraco Cloud project. It gives you a nice integrated UI, where you can create Forms for your website. The package is built specifically for Umbraco and is maintained by Umbraco HQ.

Read more about the product in the Umbraco Forms documentation.

How Forms are handled on Umbraco Cloud

Forms are handled like content and media. This means that you can transfer your Forms between environments, using the same workflow you use for content and media.

Definitions for each specific Form, its fields, workflows, and prevalues are all stored in the Umbraco database.

Entries submitted are not transferred to the next environment, as they are environment-specific. If you need to move entries from one environment to another, you need to run an export/import script on the databases.

Recommended workflow

You can work with Forms in an environment of your choice. When you need to test or use your Forms in another environment you can:

• Transfer the Forms to the next environment using Queue for transfer or

• Restore the Forms on an environment lower in the workflow.

For more information on how to handle content transfer/restores on Umbraco Cloud, check out the following articles:

• Transfer content, media and forms

• Restoring content

Upgrades

Umbraco Forms is part of the auto-upgrades on Umbraco Cloud. Whenever a new patch is ready for release, we will automatically apply it to your Cloud project. There will be a notification in the Umbraco Cloud Portal at least 5 days before we roll out new versions.

To avoid having the auto-upgrades overwrite any of your custom settings, we strongly encourage that you use config transforms when you need custom configuration. Additionally, use Themes when you need to customize your forms.

When a new minor version of Umbraco Forms, like 10.x or 11.x, is available, you'll have the option to upgrade your project. When your project is eligible to receive the new version, you will see an "Upgrade available!" label on your left-most environment.

Version-specific changes

In this section, you can find information about version-specific changes that might affect the way Umbraco Forms works on your project.

Version 9+

In Umbraco Forms version 9.0.0+, it is only possible to store Form data in the database.

If you want to upgrade to Umbraco 9 and are using Forms, you should first migrate the Forms to the database using Forms 8. See the Umbraco Forms in the Database article.

Version 8.5.0

Prior to Umbraco 8.5.0, all forms data was saved as .json files in the App_Data/UmbracoForms directory in the file system.

As of Umbraco 8.5.0, you have the option to persist all Forms data directly in the database. This behavior defaults to all new sites created on Umbraco Cloud since September 2020. If your Cloud project was created before, you will need to upgrade the Umbraco Forms version. Additionally, apply a setting to perform the migration of the Umbraco Forms data.

To switch to persisting all definitions for Umbraco Forms data in the Umbraco database, follow these steps:

1. Make sure all environments are upgraded to at least Umbraco Forms version 8.5.2 and Deploy 3.5.0.

2. Make sure your Forms are in sync between all your Cloud environments.

3. Clone down your left-most environment.

4. Restore content and Forms to the local clone.

5. Open the configuration file App_Plugins\UmbracoForms\UmbracoForms.config from your local clone.

6. Add the following key in the <settings> section and make sure the value is set to True:

   Copy

   <setting key="StoreUmbracoFormsInDb" value="True" />

7. Save the file.

8. Spin up your local clone and verify that everything works as expected.

Now it is time to deploy the setting to your Cloud environments.

Follow the steps outlined below for each environment for the migration to run on each of them.

1. Access KUDU.

2. Navigate to site/wwwroot/App_Data.

3. Delete the UmbracoForms directory.

4. Push the updated setting to the environment.

5. To run the migration, restart the environment from the Cloud portal.

6. From the Umbraco Backoffice, Queue and transfer the Forms to the environment.

7. Repeat steps 1-5 for each of your Cloud environments.

Did you create your project before June 2018?

Then your Umbraco Forms data might still be handled as metadata.

You will need to follow the steps below to persist Umbraco Forms data in the Umbraco database.

1. Find and open Config\UmbracoDeploy.settings.config on your local machine.

2. Update the transferFormsAsContent value to true:

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   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <settings xmlns="urn:umbracodeploy-settings">
      <forms transferFormsAsContent="true" />
   </settings>

3. Remove all existing data\revision\forms-form__*.uda files, so it's not possible to accidentally revert to this state (removing UDA files won't remove the actual form on deploy).

4. Push the change back to the Cloud environment.

   • If you have more than one Cloud environment, make sure to deploy the change through to all of them.

5. You are now able to queue your Forms for transfer between the Cloud environments, like content and media.

If you do not have the transferFormsAsContent setting in the UmbracoDeploy.settings.config file, you do not need to make any further changes.

Common issues with Umbraco Forms on Cloud

The Forms tree is missing

Sometimes you might experience that you lose the tree in the Forms section in the backoffice after a deployment. To get the tree back, all you need to do is restart the environment from the Umbraco Cloud Portal.

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 Deployment section.

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

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

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.

Learn more about how this works in the Flexible Environments article.

Plans and availability

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.

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 Microsoft documentation.

The value of the DOTNET_ENVIRONMENT environment variable can be managed through the Advanced settings in the Configuration section of the Cloud Portal.

Learn more about how to transform configuration files in the Config Transforms article.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

On Umbraco Cloud, users work in almost the same way as on a normal installation of Umbraco. However, there are a few more settings available for the backoffice users on Umbraco Cloud.

In this article, we will show how users work, as well as explain the different settings for users on Umbraco Cloud.

Umbraco ID

Umbraco ID is a centralized login for all users on Umbraco Cloud, both team members and Umbraco Backoffice users. It is to log in to the Umbraco Cloud Portal, projects, as well as cloning down a project to your local machine.

When working locally the initial login will go through Umbraco ID and the online login flow. After the initial login, you can set a password on your user or create a new local login for the backoffice.

Adding users on Umbraco Cloud

There are two ways of adding a user to your backoffice on Umbraco Cloud.

You can add them as a team member) from the project portal on Umbraco Cloud.

By default, when added as a team member, they are added as users to the backoffice of all the environments as administrators.

Users can also be invited directly from the backoffice of your Umbraco Cloud project, from where you can give them different permissions.

Check out the Users article for an in-depth explanation about Umbraco users in general.

Invite User through the Umbraco backoffice

As mentioned, it is possible to invite new Users to your Umbraco Cloud project through the backoffice.

To invite a User you need to do the following:

1. Go to the backoffice of your Umbraco Cloud project.

2. Go to the Users section in the backoffice.

3. Click on the Invite User button.

4. Enter the Name, Email, add a User Group to assign access and permissions, and enter a new Message for the invitation.

Accept invitation

Once the User has been invited they will receive an invitation for the project.

If the invited person already has a user on Umbraco Cloud they will see the invitation in the project portal under "Project Invites".

If the User being invited does not have a User on Umbraco Cloud, they will receive an email asking them to create one.

Once the User has been created, it is now possible for them to log in to the Umbraco Cloud portal.

From here they will be able to see a pending invitation to the project they have been invited to.

Once the invitation has been accepted, they can now access the project through the Umbraco Cloud portal and access their site from there.

User group permissions for transfers and restores

On Umbraco Cloud, it is possible to control which users have access to transferring and restoring content and media on your Umbraco Cloud project.

This can be done when creating a new User Group or when editing an existing group.

You can decide whether a specific User Group has permission to do restores and queue content for transfer to the next environment.

It is also possible to get Granular control on a per-node basis to restrict restores and transfers of specific content on your site. This can help avoid mistakes and ensure that the proper workflows are followed.

Set up Permissions for transfers and restores

There are two ways that you can set up these permissions:

• Create a new User Group

• Edit an existing one

To create a User Group, go to the Users section of the backoffice.

1. Click on "Groups" in the right corner, from here you are able to either create a new User Group or edit an existing one.

1. Click "Create group"

2. Scroll down and go to the "Content" heading in the "Default permissions" section. Here you can see three options:

1. Decide whether the users in the new User Group can restore items for the whole workspace, restore items for a tree, or partially restore items and click Save.

To edit an already existing User Group:

1. Go to the User Group you want to edit, e.g Editors or Writers.

2. Update the permissions and click Save.