Distinction is a Kentico implementation partner. That gives us relevant delivery experience and a commercial relationship that should be explicit in any comparison.
A useful DXP evaluation cannot be reduced to declaring Xperience by Kentico, Sitecore, Optimizely, Umbraco or a composable stack the winner. These options distribute capability, responsibility and cost differently. Product names also cover editions and services that change over time.
The task is to choose an operating model and then verify which current product supports it with acceptable risk and total cost.
Stop counting features
Feature matrices reward breadth. They rarely show whether a team can use the feature, whether it requires a higher licence tier or what operating work sits behind it.
Personalisation may require audience data, content variants, traffic, consent design and analytical skill. Workflow may require agreed roles and timely reviewers. Headless delivery may require the buyer to assemble preview, forms, hosting and search.
For every scored feature, attach a scenario, owner and frequency. Ask a representative user to complete the scenario in the proposed configuration. Score the whole task, including development and external tools.
A capability with no funded owner should not materially improve a platform’s ranking.
Compare architecture through responsibility
As of August 2026, Xperience by Kentico’s official documentation describes ASP.NET Core website channels, SaaS deployment, structured and reusable content, workflows and digital marketing capabilities. Headless channels use GraphQL and require the relevant licence tier.
That may suit a Microsoft-aligned organisation wanting content and marketing functions in a connected platform. It also creates dependency on the product’s implementation model and specialist capability.
Other options make different trades. A content-focused platform may offer a lighter editorial and development footprint while leaving marketing capability elsewhere. A broad enterprise suite may support more complex global operation with greater licence and delivery demands. A composable approach may improve component choice while increasing integration and supplier responsibility.
Avoid describing any model as inherently modern. Ask which responsibilities the firm wants to own.
Evaluate the team after launch
Procurement focuses on implementation credentials. The platform will spend much longer in operation.
Define the steady-state team: content owners, campaign operators, developers, service management, data specialists, security and support. Determine which roles are internal, which remain with a partner and how quickly expertise can be replaced.
For Xperience, credible .NET capability is material. For any platform, specialist scarcity can affect change cost and resilience.
Ask suppliers to price representative changes after launch. A new content type, CRM field, campaign journey, site or language often reveals more about operating economics than the initial build estimate.
Test editorial reality
Give editors tasks drawn from the firm’s work:
- create a complex service page from approved components;
- update content reused in several places;
- route an item through review and rejection;
- preview across channels;
- find and replace an expired asset;
- correct a published error;
- schedule and withdraw content;
- understand who changed what.
Include occasional editors and people with access needs. Observe the work rather than accepting a demo.
A powerful system that requires agency support for routine change may still be correct if the governance benefit justifies it. The dependency should be visible in the decision.
Verify integration, identity and data
An API tick on a matrix is weak evidence.
Choose the highest-value integrations and design them at enough depth to expose data ownership, permissions, timing, error handling and monitoring. Ask how the platform handles identity across editorial and client-facing services. Determine what personal data enters marketing features and how preferences, correction and deletion propagate.
For tracking and personalisation, UK organisations should consider the ICO’s guidance on storage and access technologies and obtain suitable advice.
A platform can support compliant implementation without making the organisation’s use compliant automatically.
Compare total cost under scenarios
Calculate more than licence and initial build.
Include implementation, migration, hosting, integrations, support, routine development, campaign operation, training, security, accessibility, upgrades and exit. Identify costs that move when traffic, contacts, environments, sites or features increase.
Use scenarios relevant to the strategy: expected operation, acquisition of another brand, a new jurisdiction, heavier campaign use and a partner change. Estimate ranges and record uncertainty.
A unified platform may retire several products and reduce integration cost. It may also charge for capabilities a team barely uses. A composable estate may avoid suite overhead while multiplying contracts and operational interfaces.
The right comparison is net lifecycle responsibility, not product price.
Examine supplier and product separately
A strong partner can make a suitable platform deliver well. It cannot remove a fundamental product constraint. A capable product can also fail through weak implementation.
Where possible, evaluate the platform and delivery partner in parallel. Ask each partner to explain the platform’s weak-fit conditions, how it handles upgrades and what happens when the relationship ends.
Verify team members rather than the pitch organisation. Review engineering, accessibility, security, content migration and service-operation approaches. Speak to references about difficult moments and post-launch change, with permission.
Distinction’s own recommendation should receive the same scrutiny because of our Kentico relationship.
Test exit before entry
Ask for an export of representative content, assets, metadata and relationships. Understand proprietary components and custom code. Clarify data return, deletion, transition support and licence effects at termination.
No export will make replatforming costless. The goal is to avoid unknown or deliberately obstructive dependency.
Also examine product lifecycle. Which updates are automatic? Which require project work? How are breaking changes communicated? What control does the customer have over timing?
Use current contractual and official product evidence. Roadmaps can inform the view and should not be treated as delivered capability.
Structure the decision
Begin with knockout constraints: security, legal, technical, accessibility, deployment and commercial requirements that genuinely cannot be compromised.
Then run a small number of weighted scenarios covering editorial, marketing, integration, development and operation. Record evidence and caveats. Apply a sensitivity test to the weights, because a result that changes with a minor scoring adjustment is not decisive.
Finally, hold a decision session that includes business, marketing, technology, risk, finance and future service ownership. Record why the chosen option won, which assumptions matter and what would invalidate the choice.
If you want a deeper look at Kentico's positioning specifically, there's a companion piece on why Xperience by Kentico is a smart choice for mid-market firms.
Make a conditional choice
Xperience by Kentico can be a strong candidate for a firm that values its current combination of governed content, digital marketing, SaaS operation and .NET-aligned delivery. Another DXP, a content platform or a smaller stack may fit better when the organisation’s needs and capabilities differ.
The quality of the decision comes from making those differences explicit and testing them against real work.
If your evaluation has surfaced an architecture question - headless vs hybrid, composable vs monolithic - there's a separate piece on headless or hybrid worth reading before you finalise. And if you've arrived at this comparison without the broader strategic context for why the CMS decision matters in the first place, I'd suggest reading why your next CMS decision matters more than you think. For legal sector readers specifically, there's a sector-specific framework on future-proofing your law firm's technology stack.
If you want a structured way to apply these five criteria to your own evaluation - across any platform shortlist - we've put together a DXP evaluation scorecard that makes the comparison rigorous rather than impressionistic. It's genuinely vendor-neutral, and it should produce a useful output whether you end up choosing Kentico, Umbraco, Sitecore, or something else entirely.
The platform decision is a five-to-ten year commitment. Give it the evaluation it deserves - not the one the demo encourages.
