.NET CMS Showdown: Three Platforms, One Discussion

Three .NET CMS platforms. Three MVPs. One open forum. On Thursday 7 May 2026, Umbraco Leeds Meetup hosts a head-to-head comparison of Umbraco, Kentico and Optimizely at IDHL's offices on South Parade in Leeds city centre.

Each speaker gets ten minutes to cover their platform's key features, available products, AI capabilities and what makes it stand out. After that, the floor opens for a Q&A that can go anywhere: technical architecture, editor experience, licensing models, hosting options, AI integrations, real-world implementation headaches. The format is deliberately informal — no winner is declared, no vendor deck is pushed. The point is to hear honest trade-offs from people who work with these systems daily.

The three speakers are Andy Boot (Umbraco MVP), Liam Goldfinch (Kentico MVP) and Graham Carr (Optimizely OMVP). Between them they cover the main ground of enterprise and mid-market .NET CMS work in the UK. If you're in the middle of a platform evaluation, or you've been on one platform for years and want to know what you're missing, this is a rare chance to put direct questions to all three camps in a single session.

The event is aimed at developers, technical architects and project managers involved in CMS selection or implementation. It runs from 18:00 to 20:00, with pizza from 18:30. Attendance is free. IDHL is on the first floor at 10 South Parade, Leeds. Sponsors include Enjoy Digital, Pixelbuilders, Moriyama and MSQ DX, who are covering the venue, food and drink.

Umbraco Leeds Meetup has been running community events in Leeds for several years, bringing together .NET developers and digital professionals with a shared interest in open-source and enterprise CMS. The group is hosted by Phil W. and four other organisers.

Why attend

You'll hear ten-minute pitches from MVPs of all three platforms, then get to ask the questions that actually matter to your work — licensing costs, hosting constraints, AI integration maturity, editor usability. That combination of structured overview and open Q&A is hard to find outside a paid conference.

The networking runs until 20:00 and beyond. The .NET CMS community in Leeds is fairly tight-knit; this is a good room to be in if you're evaluating platforms, switching jobs or looking for people who've already solved the problems you're facing. Pizza is included.

Agenda

• 18:00 — Doors open, mingling and pizza
• 18:30 — .NET CMS Showdown: ten-minute presentations from Andy Boot (Umbraco), Liam Goldfinch (Kentico) and Graham Carr (Optimizely), followed by open forum Q&A
• 20:00 — Open social and networking

Speakers

• Andy Boot — Umbraco MVP
• Liam Goldfinch — Kentico MVP
• Graham Carr — Optimizely OMVP