Kentico is a .NET digital experience platform that puts content, email marketing, personalization and commerce in one product, now sold as Xperience by Kentico. Content.One is a federated multisite CMS with hosting included, built for organizations where dozens of locations or chapters publish their own pages without waiting on a developer.
Independent review scores from G2 and Capterra.
Content.One
G2 + Capterra review profiles
Ease of use for non-developers. Hands-on support, "goes above and beyond." Customers report dropping their own software and database maintenance after migrating.
Kentico
Capterra review profile
Reviewers like getting the CMS, marketing tools and commerce under one roof. Ease of use and customer service both score 4.1, and the pushback that comes up most is cost, followed by advanced tools like marketing automation that take training to use well.
The four trade-offs that show up most often when teams evaluate Kentico vs Content.One.
Kentico Xperience 13 reaches End of Support on December 31, 2026. Until then it gets security hotfixes only, and after that your site keeps running with no fixes at all. Moving to Xperience by Kentico means a new product on new terms, which makes it the natural moment to compare.
Kentico doesn't publish prices, and Xperience by Kentico is licensed per channel, in a Standard or Advanced tier, with AI sold as credit packages. Content.One is quote-based with hosting in the price.
Kentico sites are built on ASP.NET Core, Microsoft's web framework, by in-house developers or one of Kentico's 500+ partner agencies, and marketers work from the widgets those developers prepare. On Content.One, marketers build pages visually, with SSO, custom roles and audit logs part of the standard product.
Pick Kentico if you want website content, email campaigns, commerce and personalization in one .NET product. Pick Content.One when many locations or chapters need to publish on their own, inside brand guardrails.
Capability by capability. Why each one matters in the right-hand column.
| Capability | Content.One | Kentico | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing and plans | |||
| Plans and entry price | Custom pricing by consultation, no public tiers | No published prices. Licensed per channel (website, email domain or headless feed) in a Standard or Advanced tier, plus AIRA credit packages | You can't size a Kentico bill until sales has counted your channels |
| Pricing model | Quote-based | Quote-based. SaaS is a fixed subscription by cloud level, with no limit on admin users or visitors, and extra channels cost less when bought up front | Both need a sales call, and Kentico rewards buying your site count early |
| Implementation and time to value | |||
| Implementation | Standard onboarding, live in weeks | Built by your .NET developers or a Kentico partner, and SaaS environments spin up in under 30 minutes | Kentico's environments are quick to set up, and build time depends on your .NET team |
| Hosting | Included, hosting and global CDN | Kentico-managed single-tenant SaaS on Azure, or your own private cloud on Azure, AWS or on-premises | Kentico gives you more hosting choice, handy if data has to stay on your own servers |
| Updates and upgrades | Rolling weekly updates for every customer, no upgrade projects | Xperience by Kentico gets weekly hotfixes and monthly refreshes. Kentico Xperience 13 gets security hotfixes only until December 31, 2026 | Xperience 13 sites stop getting fixes in 2027, while Xperience by Kentico and Content.One both update without version jumps |
| Editorial experience | |||
| Publish without a developer | Yes, visual drag-and-drop builder | Page, Form and Email Builders for marketers, using widgets developers prepare | Both let marketers publish, the difference is how often a new layout needs a developer |
| Specialist skills required | No specialist stack | ASP.NET Core and C# developers, in-house or through a Kentico partner | ASP.NET Core is Microsoft's web framework, and Kentico skills are a smaller pool within it |
| Content model and scale | |||
| Multisite and multilingual | Native federated multisite, localization built in | Several websites, microsites and languages from one Content Hub, with extra full websites on the Advanced tier | Both run many sites, but each extra Kentico website is another channel on the license |
| AI and agents | |||
| AI content and agents | Generative AI plus a native MCP server | AIRA for writing, translation, image tagging and audience segments, plus agents for content strategy, SEO and campaigns (Advanced tier, paid in credits) | Kentico puts more AI tools inside the editor, and you pay for them in credits |
| MCP server for AI agents | Native MCP server | KentiCopilot MCP servers for developers at no extra cost. Kentico's docs limit the management API behind them to local development instances | MCP is how AI assistants like Claude work inside other software, so check who each server is built for |
| Developer experience | |||
| APIs | REST, GraphQL, and JSON endpoints | GraphQL for headless channels, plus a full .NET API | Both can feed apps and other front ends |
| Stack | Framework-agnostic headless plus templating | ASP.NET Core on .NET 8+ with React, any front end for headless channels | Kentico commits your back end to Microsoft's stack |
| Personalization and marketing | |||
| Personalization | Built-in personalization with A/B testing | Rules-based personalization across web and email, contact profiles and customer journey mapping | Kentico ties personalization to email and contact data in one product |
| Email marketing | Not listed as a built-in feature | Email channels with a drag-and-drop Email Builder and triggered autoresponders | Kentico lets you run email campaigns from the CMS |
| Commerce | Not listed as a built-in feature | Native cart, checkout, orders, promotions and coupon codes | Kentico can sell online without a separate commerce platform |
| Security and governance | |||
| SSO, roles and audit logs | Included, with per-content-type permissions and audit logs | SSO with roles mapped from your identity provider, 2FA, access by team, brand or channel, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II | Both cover enterprise access control |
| Support | |||
| Support | Reviewers praise responsiveness on Capterra | 24/7 in-house engineers. Standard is best effort, about one business day. Premium is 1 to 3 hours on an annual contract | Kentico publishes clear response times, and the faster ones cost extra |
| Partner network | Direct team plus on-demand developers | More than 500 digital agency partners worldwide | Kentico's partner bench is deep, which helps if you want an agency to own the build |
Kentico vs Content.One, based on each vendor's public pages (accurate as of September 2026)
Who runs on Content.One
If Kentico is on your shortlist, these usually are too. Content.One is the reference point across all three.
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Compare Adobe Experience Manager vs Content.OneWhy teams choose Content.One over all of these
Whichever of the above you were considering, Content.One replaces per-property licenses, agency-mediated migrations, and credit-based AI billing with one instance-based subscription. See the specifics in the comparison above, or start a build to see the network shape yourself.
Kentico vs Content.One looks like a CMS comparison, but the two products start in different places. Xperience by Kentico is a .NET digital experience platform with content, email, personalization, customer journeys and commerce in one licensed product. Content.One is a federated multisite CMS with hosting included, built for franchise networks, multi-location brands and chapter-based organizations where many sites publish without a developer. So the question is how much of Kentico's suite you'd use, and who on your team would run it.
On Capterra, Kentico holds a 4.3 rating across 48 reviews, with ease of use and customer service both at 4.1. Reviewers like having everything in one place and most often push back on cost and the training advanced tools take, though most of those reviews predate 2024 and describe the older Kentico CMS rather than Xperience by Kentico.
Kentico pricing comes from a quote built on channels, a Standard or Advanced tier and AIRA credits, and a second full website needs Advanced. The date matters more, because Kentico Xperience 13 reaches End of Support on December 31, 2026, with security hotfixes only until then and nothing from January 1, 2027. Its successor, Xperience by Kentico, is a separate product, and while the Kentico Migration Tool moves content, Kentico's upgrade docs say code and customizations move by hand because the page API and data structure are completely different. That rebuild runs on ASP.NET Core, which 19.7% of respondents used in the Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey, against 44.7% for React. (Our Kentico alternative post covers why teams leave.)
Content.One starts from the other end. Hosting and global CDN come with it, and weekly updates reach every customer with zero downtime, so there's no upgrade project to plan. It's built for federated multisite, where headquarters sets templates and permissions and each location or chapter publishes its own pages, and the Salvation Army used it to go from five CMSs to one across 3,000+ locations, with traffic up 50%. Our MCP server, generally available since June 2026, lets marketers build pages by prompting Claude or Gemini, with every action checked against editor permissions. KentiCopilot's MCP servers are aimed at developers, and Kentico's docs keep the management API behind them to local development instances.
Kentico comes out ahead on breadth. Xperience by Kentico has native email marketing with an Email Builder and autoresponders, built-in commerce with carts, checkout and promotions, personalization tied to contact profiles, and the AIRA Agentic Marketing Suite. Kentico has also been making moves to help its users, with single-tenant SaaS, weekly hotfixes and monthly refreshes instead of major versions, ISO 27001 certification and a SOC 2 Type II audit, and a KentiCopilot plugin that guides the Xperience 13 migration. With more than 500 agency partners and published support response times, it's an established choice for Microsoft shops.
So it comes down to who does the work. If you have .NET developers or a trusted Kentico partner and want email, commerce and personalization in the same product as your website, Xperience by Kentico is a sensible next step. If you run dozens or hundreds of location or chapter sites and want marketers publishing without a .NET build behind each change, the Xperience 13 deadline is a good moment to move to Content.One.
Kentico is the stronger choice if you want one .NET product for website content, email campaigns, commerce and personalization, you have in-house ASP.NET Core developers or a long-standing Kentico partner, your security team needs private cloud or on-premises hosting, or you're already partway through the move from Kentico Xperience 13 to Xperience by Kentico.
What teams ask most when they weigh Kentico against Content.One.
Yes, for franchise, multi-location and multi-chapter teams, and the timing works in your favor. Moving to Xperience by Kentico also means rebuilding your code and customizations, so both paths start with a project, and the choice is which platform that project lands on.
Neither vendor publishes prices, so compare quotes line by line. Kentico doesn't charge per admin user or visitor, so ask how many channels your sites need, which tier and cloud level fit and how many AIRA credits you'll use, then add the partner's build fee. For Content.One, ask what the quote covers for hosting, onboarding and any on-demand developer time.
For Kentico, yes, since Xperience by Kentico installs as NuGet packages inside an ASP.NET Core application that your team or partner maintains. Content.One doesn't need a .NET team, and when you do want developer time, you can engage our on-demand developers directly instead of signing up an agency.
Your site keeps running after December 31, 2026, but from January 1, 2027 Kentico ships no more fixes for it, security fixes included, and stops taking support tickets for the version. Its lifecycle policy also ends Kentico's liability for Xperience 13 on that date, so any incident after it is yours to handle.
Content.One picks the right page variant on the server by audience rules like location, device, referrer or UTM tag, so visitors don't see a flicker and search engines still get a fast page. Kentico's personalization reaches further into email and contact profiles, because both live in the same product.
Content.One was called Zesty.io until November 2025, so most of its G2 and Capterra reviews were written under the old name, and the Capterra profile address still carries it. It's the same product under a new name.
Most of the effort sits in templates, widgets and custom .NET code, since content can be exported and mapped while code has to be rebuilt for the new platform. The estimator at migration.content.one sizes a move off Kentico in a few minutes.
Kentico runs each extra full website as a main channel on the Advanced tier, and small microsites or sub-brand sites can go on Microchannels, which Kentico caps by content volume. On Content.One, headquarters shares templates and approval workflows with every location, and activity logs show who changed what.
Related reading
Start a build, or get an estimate for migrating off Kentico, both take a few minutes.
