If you’ve been exploring website platforms, you’ve likely come across Xperience by Kentico (XbyK).
It’s a modern, digital experience platform designed to give marketing and communications teams more flexibility, while reducing the technical overhead that often comes with traditional CMS platforms.
If you’re new to XbyK, we’ve covered a broader overview in this Xperience by Kentico blog.
Here, we’ll focus on one of its biggest differences compared to older platforms: refreshes, and how they work in practice.
What are Kentico refreshes?
Traditionally, CMS platforms rely on major version upgrades every few years. These can be large, costly and disruptive.
Kentico takes a different approach with this evergreen model. Instead of upgrades, the platform is continuously improved through regular refreshes. These are smaller, incremental updates that can include:
- New features
- Enhancements to existing functionality
- Security updates
- Performance improvements
How do refreshes work?
Refreshes are released regularly (typically monthly) as part of Kentico’s evergreen model. Refreshes are handled in the same way for both SaaS and non-SaaS deployments.
That means:
- Updates are made available by Kentico
- They are not automatically applied
- They need to be reviewed, implemented, and deployed by your team or agency
What’s involved in applying a refresh?
Applying a refresh is usually a structured process, rather than a simple switch-on.
It typically includes:
- Reviewing release notes and new features
- Updating the CMS codebase
- Testing in a development or staging environment
- Deploying to production
What about new features?
When Kentico releases new functionality (for example, updates to forms or content editing tools):
- The core capability becomes available through the refresh
- But it may not be ready to use immediately within your website
Some features may require:
- Front-end styling to match your brand
- Configuration or setup
- Integration with your existing components
For example:
- New forms may need to be styled and configured before it’s ready for editors
- New components may need to be aligned with your templates and content structure
So while the refresh delivers the capability, additional work is often needed to make it practical and usable.
An opportunity for improvement, not just maintenance
Refreshes aren’t just about keeping the platform up-to-date, they’re also an opportunity to improve how your website works.
When applying updates, many organisations choose to:
- Review new features and decide what’s worth adopting
- Improve existing components or workflows
- Retire outdated functionality
It’s also a good time for:
- Training and upskilling
- Helping content editors understand what’s changed
- Showing teams how to get value from new features
Benefits of the refresh model
The refresh approach offers several advantages compared to traditional upgrade cycles.
- Continuous improvement: your platform evolves over time, rather than staying static between major upgrades
- Reduced upgrade risk: smaller, incremental updates are easier to manage than large version jumps
- Better planning: with regular releases and a visible roadmap, you can plan ahead and align updates with your broader digital strategy
Want to learn more?
If you’re currently using Xperience by Kentico (or considering it), and want to better understand how refreshes would work for your organisation, we’re happy to help.
We can:
- Help plan and apply refreshes
- Identify which new features are worth adopting
- Support implementation and optimisation
- Provide training for your team
Get in touch to start the conversation or arrange an Xperience by Kentico demo.
