Why sitecore’s upgrade cycle is slowing digital teams down

Many enterprise digital teams remain locked in Sitecore's upgrade cycle, spending months on costly maintenance rather than innovation. This article explains how composable, API-first platforms like Optimizely are helping digital leaders escape the upgrade trap and accelerate delivery.

If you're a technology leader in a business still running Sitecore CMS, you've probably hit the upgrade wall — and felt the impact. According to BuiltWith, over 100,000 sites have historically used Sitecore, while only about 16,600 remain as live installations in its latest form. Earlier this year, our Expert Insight feature explored why businesses are leaving Sitecore, highlighting how the platform's architecture is forcing teams into maintenance mode just when the business expects innovation, localisation, and the rapid rollout of new experiences.

Here, we break down the complexity — and explain why Optimizely's composable DXP represents the strategic alternative for organisations seeking to reclaim their digital agility.

Why are so many enterprise teams still stuck on outdated Sitecore versions?

According to Gartner's 2024 Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) report, nearly 60% of large enterprises remain on versions of Sitecore older than three years. Each new release promises improved performance and flexibility, but in reality, upgrades often require multi-month projects, extensive testing, and costly external consultancy.

This cycle has created a technical debt trap. The cumulative effort of incremental upgrades — often layered over legacy customisations — leaves IT departments reluctant to move forward, even as the gap between business ambition and technical capability widens. Forward-thinking organisations are instead pivoting to platforms designed for continuous evolution rather than disruptive upgrades.

How do upgrade cycles impact digital velocity?

Every upgrade introduces risk. Regression issues, broken integrations, and rework of bespoke modules can delay deployments by weeks. But in the meantime, marketing and product teams are expecting rapid experimentation, and the ability to spin up new journeys, content variants, or markets in days, not months.

Sitecore's monolithic architecture has been proving incompatible with this pace. Fragile deployment processes and dependency-heavy builds limit agility and drain engineering resources. For teams under constant pressure to deliver 'more with less', that operational drag quietly erodes competitiveness.

This is precisely why Optimizely's composable architecture represents such a strategic shift. Rather than forcing organisations into all-or-nothing upgrade cycles, Optimizely's modular approach enables continuous improvement — allowing teams to upgrade individual components without system-wide disruption.

The result is a platform that actually accelerates delivery velocity over time, rather than creating recurring periods of technical paralysis.

Why is integration becoming harder, not easier?

In theory, Sitecore can integrate with almost anything. In practice, though, connecting new tools (from customer data platforms to AI-powered personalisation engines) often requires complex middleware and custom connectors. As digital ecosystems evolve, each integration introduces another layer of potential failure.

Integration complexity is a significant cost factor in DXP ownership and can potentially consume a large portion of the total cost of ownership. For organisations trying to adopt cloud-native workflows or composable architectures, Sitecore's legacy structure can quickly become the bottleneck that slows wider transformation.

Optimizely's extensible architecture addresses this fundamental challenge. Built on modern API-first principles, Optimizely connects seamlessly with best-of-breed tools across the marketing technology landscape.

This extensibility isn't just about technical convenience — it's about strategic optionality. Organisations can confidently invest in emerging technologies knowing their DXP won't become a constraint. Whether integrating with Adobe Analytics, Salesforce, or next-generation AI platforms, Optimizely's open architecture ensures your technology stack can evolve at the pace of market opportunity.

What's the strategic alternative to constant upgrades?

Forward-thinking digital teams are rethinking their approach entirely and moving away from heavy, monolithic DXPs towards composable, API-first architectures that support continuous iteration.

Optimizely, recognised by Gartner as a Leader in the Digital Experience Platforms Magic Quadrant, exemplifies this new generation of enterprise DXP. As Candyspace's Gold Partner status reflects, we've seen first-hand how organisations leverage Optimizely's capabilities to achieve outcomes that would be prohibitively complex or costly with legacy monolithic platforms.

The shift is not just a technical one; it's a strategic move. This frees digital and technology leaders to focus on innovation over infrastructure and aligns technology investments directly with business outcomes.

The path forward

Many enterprise teams remain trapped in Sitecore's upgrade cycle, facing mounting technical debt, costly maintenance, and declining agility. Breaking free from this rigidity requires reimagining the DXP approach, favouring open, modular architecture solutions that deliver flexibility, interoperability, and faster innovation.

Optimizely represents the clearest path forward — a platform that delivers enterprise-grade capabilities whilst maintaining the agility and extensibility that modern digital organisations require. Rather than accepting the maintenance burden as inevitable, organisations can redirect those resources toward competitive differentiation.

As Optimizely Gold Partners, Candyspace has guided numerous organisations through this transition, ensuring they capture the full strategic and operational benefits of composable architecture. The question isn't whether to modernise your DXP — it's how quickly you can redirect your digital investment from maintaining yesterday's platform to building tomorrow's experiences.

Key takeaways

• Legacy Sitecore environments are draining time and budget through constant upgrade cycles.
• Fragile deployments and complex integrations limit experimentation and speed.
• Optimizely's composable, API-first architecture offers a practical route to faster delivery and sustained agility.
• Market-leading capabilities (Gartner Leader positioning) provide assurance that your platform investment is future-ready.
• Strategic partnerships with Optimizely Gold Partners, such as Candyspace, ensure successful implementation and value realisation.