Choosing the Right Umbraco Partner: Why Cloud Spend Doesn’t Equal Capability

The Truth About Umbraco Partnerships

Umbraco’s partner program includes two top tiers: Gold and Platinum. Both are designed to spotlight agencies that deliver consistent quality, contribute to the Umbraco community, and invest in developer certification. In theory, either badge signals you’re working with a qualified and experienced partner.

At FYIN, we collaborate closely with our sister brand, Umbricians, an official Umbraco Gold Partner. Together, we’ve helped clients deploy Umbraco in a wide range of environments — Cloud, self-hosted, and hybrid — all while navigating what’s best for them, not just what earns us a higher badge.

So what really separates Gold from Platinum?

Not capability. Not feature access. Just Cloud spend.

What a Platinum Partner Actually Pays For

A Higher Cloud Billing Commitment

The main difference between Gold and Platinum partners is a financial one. Platinum status requires a significantly larger annual spend with Umbraco HQ, typically via Cloud-hosted client projects. It’s a commercial threshold, not a technical one.

No Extra CMS Features or Dev Access

There is no “Platinum version” of Umbraco. The CMS remains exactly the same whether you work with a Gold or Platinum partner. The codebase is identical. The certification pathways are identical. And the core capabilities of the platform do not change.

What That Means for You as a Client

Your Success Doesn’t Depend on a Badge

If you're comparing agencies and one touts its Platinum badge as a sign of deeper expertise, take a step back. Ask yourself:

• Are they pushing Cloud because it’s best for you, or because it helps them maintain Platinum status?
  
  

• Can they work across both Cloud and custom environments?
  
  

• Do they understand your infrastructure and security needs?
  
  

At FYIN, we know that long-term platform success is about fit, not flashy labels.

Why FYIN Partners With Umbricians (a Gold Partner)

As a full-stack development team with deep .NET and infrastructure experience, we often handle the architectural side of Umbraco builds — including performance optimization, custom integrations, enterprise Azure hosting, and compliance planning. When it’s time to implement Umbraco itself, we work hand-in-hand with Umbricians, our in-house Gold Partner team.

They’ve chosen Gold because it provides complete flexibility, full CMS access, and direct Umbraco support, without tying clients to a mandatory Cloud spend.

This partnership model allows us to deliver scalable, custom-tailored Umbraco solutions that aren’t dictated by partner quotas or platform bias.

We Recommend the Platform That Fits — Not the One That Spends More

Umbraco Cloud Makes Sense Sometimes. But Not Always.

There are many cases where Umbraco Cloud is the right fit:

• Lean teams with no DevOps bandwidth
  
  

• Quick MVPs or prototypes
  
  

• Marketing-led organizations that prefer managed hosting
  
  

But it’s not always the right fit for:

• Enterprise deployments in Azure
  
  

• Regulated industries with strict compliance needs
  
  

• Complex integrations and custom workflows
  
  

• Clients who already have secure hosting infrastructure
  
  

That’s why we never recommend a platform based on our own spend requirements.

Forget the tier. Focus on the track record.

Ask the agency:

• Have you solved problems like mine before?
  
  

• Can you work across both Cloud and custom infrastructure?
  
  

• Are your developers actually certified and active in the Umbraco community?
  
  

• Will you build for my roadmap, or push me toward a platform that benefits you?

Final Word: Transparency > Tiers

FYIN is not an Umbraco Platinum Partner. And that’s by design.

Instead, we work with a certified Gold Partner (Umbricians) so we can architect and implement Umbraco solutions that reflect your priorities, not ours. Whether you need to integrate Umbraco with custom .NET systems, deploy to a secure Azure environment, or build a flexible headless CMS strategy, we’ve got you covered.

The badge on our website doesn’t matter as much as what we build behind it.