Umbraco
Paid add-ons
- Forms: €100 a year
- Deploy, for moving content between environments: €2,800 a year
- Engage analytics: Paid add-on
Umbraco alternative
Hatamoto vs Umbraco
Umbraco is a free C# CMS that a .NET developer builds and deploys. Forms, approval workflows and deployment tooling are paid add-ons. Hatamoto ships forms, sitemaps, schema and redirects in one binary. Umbraco is ahead on languages, permissions, multisite and long-term support.
35 lines compared
Updated 28 October 2026, against Umbraco 17 LTS and 18, the free core plus its paid add-ons.
- Hatamoto ahead
- 12 Forms, SEO, plugin safety, running costs and updates
- Umbraco ahead
- 15 Languages, permissions, multisite, LTS and the .NET ecosystem
- About the same
- 8 Licence, database, block editing, caching and MCP servers
Line by line
The full comparison
35 lines in nine groups. Open a group to see each line. "Ahead" means better out of the box for a typical business website.
Hatamoto aheadUmbraco aheadAbout the same
Compared against Umbraco 17 LTS and 18, the free core plus its paid add-ons on 28 October 2026. Sources: Umbraco pricing, Umbraco Cloud pricing, Umbraco Forms, requirements, XML sitemap tutorial, MCP servers, long-term support. Found something out of date? Open an issue.
Six things to weigh before you choose Umbraco
- 01
Umbraco is built for a .NET team
It is a C# application that a developer builds and deploys on .NET 10. Hatamoto is one binary you install and set up in the admin.
Install Hatamoto - 02
Forms cost nothing in Hatamoto
Umbraco Forms costs €100 a year self-hosted. Hatamoto forms include spam protection and CSV export at no cost.
Forms and spam protection - 03
In Umbraco, SEO is your developer's job
Umbraco has no built-in sitemap, meta fields or schema. Hatamoto writes all three for every content type.
SEO and AI search - 04
Umbraco packages run unsandboxed
An Umbraco package is .NET code with full access to the site. Hatamoto plugins run in WebAssembly with declared permissions.
How plugins are sandboxed - 05
Updates without a rebuild
Hatamoto installs signed releases itself. Umbraco upgrades are NuGet updates and a redeploy, and some versions have to go through an LTS first.
How updates work - 06
Umbraco is ahead for larger teams
Language variants, per-page permissions, multisite and a published three-year LTS make it the safer pick for complex sites.
What Hatamoto leaves out
What Umbraco charges extra for
3 paid add-ons that Hatamoto includes for free
Prices are Umbraco's published yearly prices in euros. Umbraco Cloud includes Forms and Deploy.
Hatamoto
In the free binary
- Forms with spam protection and CSV export
- Site export and import from the command line
- Cookie-free visitor analytics
Being straight with you
When Umbraco is the better choice
Choose Umbraco if any of these describe your organisation.
- Your developers work in C#, Azure and SQL Server.
- You publish in several languages from one install.
- Your editors need permissions per page, per language or per field.
- You need visitor accounts, an online shop or approval steps.
- Your procurement team wants a published support lifecycle.
- You want managed hosting with an SLA from the vendor.
Moving from Umbraco
Moving from Umbraco through its APIs
There is no Umbraco importer. The free Content Delivery API and Management API return your content as JSON, which a script or an AI agent can bring across.
- 1
Install Hatamoto
Run it with Docker or the single binary, next to a Postgres database. Getting started
- 2
Match document types
Create a Hatamoto content type for each Umbraco document type that has public pages. Content types
- 3
Copy content and media
Read content from the Delivery API, turn Block List and Block Grid JSON into sections or HTML, then create it through Hatamoto's MCP server or CLI. Connect an AI agent
- 4
Bring the redirects
Copy Umbraco's stored redirects into Hatamoto, then point your domain at the new server. Redirects
Questions people ask
Written by the Hatamoto team, from umbraco.com and docs.umbraco.com as of October 2026.
Is Hatamoto an Umbraco alternative?
For a business website without a .NET team, yes. Hatamoto includes forms, sitemaps, schema and redirects in one binary. If you need several languages, detailed permissions or a fit with Microsoft tools, Umbraco is the stronger choice.
Is Umbraco free?
The core CMS is MIT licensed and free. Forms, Workflow, Deploy, Commerce and Engage are paid add-ons, and Umbraco Cloud starts at €45 a month. Hatamoto has no paid add-ons.
Does Umbraco have built-in SEO?
It creates 301 redirects when a URL changes. Sitemaps, meta fields and schema are built by your developer or added with a community package. Hatamoto has all of them built in.
Does Umbraco support AI and MCP?
Yes. Umbraco.AI adds AI features to the backoffice, and official MCP servers run on Node.js beside the site. Hatamoto's MCP server is part of the site itself, with scoped keys.
How long is each Umbraco version supported?
LTS versions get three years of support, and short-term releases about a year, with dates published ahead. Hatamoto fixes land on the latest minor, and the previous major gets six months of security fixes.
How do I move from Umbraco to Hatamoto?
Create matching content types, read your content through the Delivery API or Management API, convert the block data, then create the pages through Hatamoto's MCP server or CLI. Copy your redirects before you switch the domain.
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