Skip to content
busyless
Book a call

Umbraco Heartcore review

Proprietary

Claim or correct this listing
Reviewed by Eugene SuslovUpdated September 2026No affiliate links
Umbraco Heartcore homepage
Umbraco Heartcore homepage, captured September 2026. Source: umbraco.com.

Heartcore is Umbraco's hosted headless product: the Umbraco backoffice that editors already know, run by Umbraco on Azure, with a REST Content Delivery API, a GraphQL API, a Preview API and a Cloudflare CDN in front. You never patch it, upgrade it or install anything into it. Umbraco manages the codebase, and its own documentation describes that codebase as closed source.

It is still on sale, from €60 a month, and nothing on umbraco.com announces an end date. But the reason it was built has moved. Umbraco CMS, which is free under the MIT licence, has shipped its own Content Delivery API since version 12 in June 2023, and Umbraco's newest headless SaaS is Compose, priced from €12,000 a year.

The signals around Heartcore are quiet rather than alarming. Its last release note is dated April 2025, it has no category on Umbraco's public roadmap, and its Node.js client library has been archived. Umbraco's MCP servers cover the CMS, Forms, Automate and Commerce but not Heartcore. What it still offers that the free CMS does not is GraphQL without a server to run.

Our scorecard

Our editorial read across six dimensions, scored 1 to 5. This is our own assessment, not an aggregate of user reviews, and it is deliberately kept out of the page's structured data.

  • Content modelling4/5

    Umbraco document types, compositions and a GraphQL schema generated from them. Mature, but nothing can be added through packages.

  • Developer experience2/5

    Solid REST and GraphQL APIs undermined by an archived Node.js client, drifting docs and no MCP server.

  • Editor experience4/5

    The familiar Umbraco backoffice, with preview and the free Workflow edition, minus any backoffice customisation.

  • Pricing3/5

    Published in five currencies, but Starter leaves out webhooks, Forms and preview, and costs more than Umbraco Cloud Starter.

  • Governance3/5

    Unlimited roles from Standard, EU hosting and availability SLAs from Professional. No roadmap commitment to govern against.

  • Ecosystem2/5

    Umbraco's partner network helps, but Heartcore is closed to packages and absent from Umbraco's new MCP and AI tooling.

An editorial read, not an aggregate of user reviews, and deliberately kept out of this page's structured data.

Umbraco Heartcore in their own words

From Umbraco Heartcore's own YouTube channel. Vendor marketing rather than an independent review, included because it is the quickest way to see the product before you sign up.

What you can query

Content Delivery API

Public by default; soft limit of 25, 50 or 75 requests a second

Published content and media as HAL JSON from cdn.umbraco.io: by id, URL or type, children, ancestors, descendants, filters and search.

GraphQL API

Unprotected until you enable API keys; limited separately

A schema generated from your document types at graphql.umbraco.io, with where filters, orderBy, cursor paging and persisted queries.

Preview API

Always requires an API key; Standard plan and above

Draft content through the same endpoints as the Content Delivery API, served from preview.umbraco.io.

Content Management API

Authenticated; not rate limited

Content, media, languages, members, relations and forms can be created, updated and deleted, and drafts and types read, at api.umbraco.io.

Webhooks

Retried up to 9 more times; at-least-once delivery

A POST to your URL on backoffice or Management API events, filterable by content type, with custom headers.

Media CDN

Included on every plan

Images served from media.umbraco.io with resizing and cropping options, behind the Cloudflare CDN.

Who Umbraco Heartcore is for

Teams that want the Umbraco editing experience and GraphQL, with no appetite for hosting or upgrading a .NET application. Typically that is a JavaScript front-end team working for an organisation, or an agency client, that already trusts Umbraco, where a managed backoffice at a published monthly price is easier to approve than another server.

A team that is happy with REST should price the free CMS first, on Umbraco Cloud or its own Azure, because that route does the same delivery job and keeps backoffice customisation. Heartcore is also a risky base for a long-lived platform until Umbraco states in writing what its next few years look like.

Strengths and limits

What it does well

  • GraphQL comes built in, generated from your document types, with filtering, ordering, cursor paging and persisted queries. The open-source CMS has no GraphQL API of its own.
  • Umbraco runs the backoffice and the APIs and applies every upgrade, so there is no .NET codebase, patch cycle or major-version migration on your side.
  • Prices are published in five currencies, from €60, $75, £55, 440 DKK or AU$110 a month, so the budget conversation can happen before anyone talks to sales.
  • Rate limits are soft and apply per API, responses served from cache do not count, and the Content Management API is not limited at all.
  • Every plan includes the Cloudflare CDN and a media service that resizes and crops images, with data hosted in Azure West Europe.
  • The free version of Umbraco Workflow has been included on every Heartcore project since April 2025, adding approval steps without another licence.
  • Webhooks retry a failed delivery up to nine more times, and since August 2024 one hook can cover several event types and send custom headers.
  • Editors get the same Umbraco backoffice used on self-hosted Umbraco sites, so an organisation that already has Umbraco editors needs no retraining.

Where it falls short

  • UMBRACO'S HEADLESS INVESTMENT HAS MOVED. The free CMS gained a Delivery API in Umbraco 12 and the new headless SaaS is Compose. Heartcore's last release note is dated April 2025.
  • The €60 Starter plan excludes webhooks, Umbraco Forms and the Preview API, and allows one user role, one environment and one language. Most real projects are pricing Standard at €300.
  • Umbraco Cloud Starter hosts the full open-source CMS, Delivery API included, for €45 a month, less than Heartcore Starter. It includes Forms and Deploy, though it has no GraphQL.
  • Nothing can be installed. The codebase is closed, so the packages and backoffice extensions available to a self-hosted or Cloud Umbraco site do not apply here.
  • The Node.js client library that the documentation still points to is archived on GitHub, last pushed in April 2023. The .NET library was last pushed in January 2025.
  • A developer on Umbraco's own forum reported in July 2026 that new Heartcore projects appear to be based on Umbraco 13, whose security support ends on 14 December 2026. Umbraco has published no plan.
  • The documentation has drifted from the price list. One page says Forms comes with Starter, another says preview is Standard-only, and a third lists GraphQL on Starter and Professional but not Standard.
  • Heartcore has no MCP server. Umbraco's MCP repositories target the CMS Management API, Forms, Automate and Commerce, and Heartcore's separate API is not among them.

Umbraco Heartcore pricing

Umbraco Heartcore pricing covers four plans, each priced per month, with a separate price set in each currency rather than a conversion. Starter is €60 ($75, £55, 440 DKK), Standard is €300 ($340, £280, 2,250 DKK), Professional is €1,100 ($1,350, £1,000, 8,400 DKK), and Enterprise is quoted. No minimum term is stated.

Starter is thinner than its price suggests. It includes the Content Delivery API, GraphQL, the CDN and hosting, but not webhooks, Umbraco Forms or the Preview API, and it allows one user role, one environment and one language. Standard is where a real editorial team starts, with unlimited roles and languages, a second environment and all three missing features.

Support is what the top tiers pay for. Starter and Standard get forum and chat. Professional adds tickets, a 24-hour response SLA, 99.9% availability, a dedicated service contact and onboarding, and Enterprise adds phone support, custom limits and 99.95% availability. Transfer and storage are friendly-use limits, so Umbraco contacts you rather than cutting traffic.

Now price the alternatives from the same vendor, because that is the real decision. Umbraco CMS is free under MIT, with a Delivery API you switch on in configuration. Umbraco Cloud hosts it from €45 a month on Starter, €280 on Standard and €730 on Professional, with Forms and Deploy included. Neither offers GraphQL, and Umbraco Compose starts at €12,000 a year.

None of these figures is an Umbraco website cost, which is mostly the build. Umbraco offers an interactive pricing calculator for its own products, and we publish no implementation estimate. On a self-hosted or Cloud site, budget developer time for upgrades as well, because Umbraco 13 LTS reaches end of life on 14 December 2026. On Heartcore, that work is Umbraco's.

Starter

€60 / mo

$75, £55 or 440 DKK a month

  • 1 user role, 1 environment, 1 language
  • Content Delivery API, GraphQL, CDN and hosting
  • NO webhooks, NO Umbraco Forms, NO Preview API
  • 25 requests a second, 50GB transfer and storage

Standard

€300 / mo

$340, £280 or 2,250 DKK a month

  • Unlimited user roles and languages, 2 environments
  • Webhooks, Umbraco Forms and the Preview API
  • 50 requests a second, 600GB transfer, 100GB storage
  • Forum and chat support only, no SLA

Professional / Enterprise

€1,100 / mo or quote

Professional is $1,350 or £1,000 a month

  • 3 environments, 75 requests a second, 2,000GB transfer
  • Ticket support, 24-hour response SLA, 99.9% availability
  • Dedicated service contact and an onboarding programme
  • Enterprise: phone support, custom limits, 99.95% availability
Check current Umbraco Heartcore pricing

Query example

A minimal fetch against the live API, with credentials read from the environment rather than pasted inline.

Query recent content through the Heartcore GraphQL API · bash
curl -s "https://graphql.umbraco.io" \
  -H "Umb-Project-Alias: $UMBRACO_PROJECT_ALIAS" \
  -H "Api-Key: $UMBRACO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"query($culture: String) { allContent(first: 10, culture: $culture, orderBy: [createDate_DESC]) { edges { node { name url contentTypeAlias } } } }","variables":{"culture":"en-US"}}'

# GraphQL is the one delivery API the open-source Umbraco CMS does not
# ship, so it is the main technical reason to pay for Heartcore.
# The endpoint is unprotected by default: the Api-Key header only
# matters once protection is switched on under Settings > Headless.
# Rate limits are soft (25, 50 or 75 requests a second by plan) and
# responses served from cache do not count against them.

Limits and quotas

  • Soft delivery rate limits: 25 requests a second on Starter, 50 on Standard, 75 on Professional, from 75 on Enterprise.
  • Rate limits apply separately to GraphQL, Content Delivery and Preview; cached responses do not count; the Content Management API is unlimited.
  • Environments: 1 on Starter, 2 on Standard, 3 on Professional and Enterprise, and 3 is the maximum.
  • Friendly-use data transfer: up to 50GB on Starter, 600GB on Standard and 2,000GB on Professional.
  • Friendly-use media storage: 50GB on Starter, 100GB on Standard and 500GB on Professional.
  • The Content Delivery API depth parameter accepts 0 to 5 levels of referenced items.
  • Webhooks retry a failed delivery up to 9 more times and may deliver the same event more than once.
  • Availability SLA: 99.9% on Professional and 99.95% on Enterprise, none on Starter or Standard.
  • Support: forum and chat on every plan, tickets from Professional, phone on Enterprise only.
  • Free trial: 14 days. Data is hosted in Azure West Europe and cached globally by Cloudflare.

What developers say on Reddit

Not enough discussionOur read of public threads, not a review score.

Heartcore barely registers on Reddit. The only 2026 thread about it is an August question in r/dotnet from an account named after a development agency, and nobody replied except the subreddit's automated moderator. Our searches found almost nothing else specific to the product, although full-text archive searches of the largest subreddits timed out.

The older discussion that does exist explains why Heartcore once mattered. In October 2022, before Umbraco 12, one developer described Umbraco's headless option as cloud-only and expensive, and another described hijacking MVC controllers to return JSON. That is exactly the gap the free Content Delivery API closed the following June.

The current practitioner conversation happens on Umbraco's own forum instead. A July 2026 thread there asks what Heartcore is for now that the CMS has a Delivery API and Cloud has Cloudflare caching. The replies point to GraphQL and the included Workflow, and one notes nothing Heartcore-related on the roadmap.

  • “It now offers headless, but only for their cloud solution and it's quite expensive.”
    r/csharp on Reddit
  • “I "hijacked" the controllers to return JSON instead of HTML.”
    r/csharp on Reddit

Verdict

Buy Heartcore for one reason: you want GraphQL over Umbraco content and never want to own the server or the upgrade. For that job it still works, the entry price is published, and the Standard plan at €300 a month is a complete product for a small editorial team.

For anything else, look through the rest of Umbraco's own catalogue first. A headless Umbraco site on the free CMS has been possible over REST since 2023, Umbraco Cloud runs it from €45 a month, and the backoffice stays extensible there. Heartcore Starter costs more than Cloud Starter while leaving out webhooks, Forms and preview.

Before a multi-year commitment, ask Umbraco which version Heartcore runs on and what happens when that version reaches end of life, and put the answer in the contract. No sunset has been announced. Quiet release notes, an archived client library and a new headless product priced for enterprises are reasons to ask, not proof of an ending.

Visit Umbraco Heartcore

Umbraco Heartcore FAQ

  • Is Umbraco Heartcore being discontinued?
    Umbraco has announced nothing of the kind, and Heartcore is still sold with purchase buttons and a 14-day trial. The signals are quiet, though: the last Heartcore release note is dated April 2025, it has no category on the public roadmap, and Umbraco's newer headless product is Compose. Ask for continuity terms in writing before committing for several years.
  • How much does Heartcore cost per month?
    Starter is €60 a month, Standard €300, Professional €1,100 and Enterprise is quoted. Umbraco sets each currency separately: $75, $340 and $1,350 in US dollars, or £55, £280 and £1,000. Starter excludes webhooks, Umbraco Forms and the Preview API and allows one language, so most teams are really choosing between Standard and Professional.
  • What does Umbraco cost if I skip Heartcore?
    Umbraco pricing starts at zero, because Umbraco CMS itself is free under the MIT licence. The Umbraco Cloud price is €45 a month on Starter, €280 on Standard and €730 on Professional, or 320, 2,000 and 5,400 DKK, with Forms and Deploy included. Self-hosting costs whatever your infrastructure does. The build is usually the largest cost, and Umbraco publishes a calculator rather than a typical figure.
  • Can I run Umbraco headless without Heartcore?
    Yes. Umbraco CMS has included a Content Delivery API since Umbraco 12, released on 29 June 2023. It is opt-in: you enable it in appsettings.json, register it in Program.cs and rebuild its index, and it then serves published content publicly unless you require an API key. It is REST only, and it runs self-hosted or on Umbraco Cloud.
  • What does Heartcore do that the free Umbraco Delivery API does not?
    Three things. It ships a GraphQL API generated from your document types, which the open-source CMS does not. Umbraco runs and upgrades the whole platform, so there is no .NET application for you to maintain. And the Preview API, CDN and media cropping service arrive as one managed package rather than something you assemble and host.
  • What does an Umbraco upgrade cost, and does Heartcore avoid it?
    The updates themselves are free; the cost is developer time and testing. On Umbraco Cloud, patches apply automatically, but minor and major upgrades need a second environment, an extra €45 a month on Starter. Umbraco 13 LTS reaches end of life on 14 December 2026, so those sites face a major upgrade. On Heartcore, Umbraco manages upgrades for you.
  • How do I find a freelance Umbraco Heartcore developer?
    Split the role in two. The front end is ordinary headless work, so anyone fluent in REST or GraphQL and your framework can build it. The content model lives in the Umbraco backoffice, where Umbraco experience matters more than .NET skills, because Heartcore accepts no custom code. Umbraco runs a partner directory and certifications. We have no rate data to share.
  • Heartcore or Umbraco Compose?
    They solve different problems. Heartcore is a hosted CMS with its own backoffice. Compose ingests content from a CMS, PIM, ERP or other systems and serves it through one GraphQL API, from €12,000 a year on Professional with 100,000 ingestions a month. Choose Compose to join many sources, and Heartcore or the free CMS to manage content.

This is an independent review. We have no affiliate relationship with Umbraco Heartcore, earn nothing if you sign up, and no vendor pays for placement in the directory. Prices were read from the vendor's own pages in September 2026 and change without notice.