Kentico Review: Features, Marketplace, and Pricing

This article is part of a blog series dedicated to the best .NET e-commerce platforms - nopCommerce, Virto Commerce, DNN, Umbraco, Kentico, Sitecore, and Sitefinity.

So far, we have discussed 4 of these platforms - nopCommerce, Virto Commerce, DNN, and Umbraco. We discussed each platform's architecture, features, marketplace, ecosystem, pricing, and more.

Today, we will talk about Kentico.

Kentico is a web content management system (CMS) based on ASP.NET. Unlike Umbraco, Kentico offers e-commerce features out-of-the-box.

Kentico History

Kentico is a Czech-based company that was founded in June 2004 by Petr Palas. One month later, in July 2004, Kentico 1.0 was released.

Kentico 2.0 was released in 2006. The same year Kentico became an official Microsoft Certified partner.

In 2008, Kentico became a Microsoft Gold Partner. The same year Kentico opened its first US office (the second US office was opened in 2011) and was named Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Rising Star.

In 2009 Kentico 4.0 and Kentico 5.0 were released. Kentico won two awards and was named Fast 50 Rising Star for a second consecutive year.

In 2010 Kentico 5.5 and Kentico 5.5 R2 were released. In addition, the certified training courses were launched and the the first Kentico Conference was held. Not surprisingly, Kentico was named the fastest growing company in the Czech Republic.

In 2011 Kentico 6.0 was released and Kentico launched their 24/7 global support.

In 2012 Kentico 7.0 was released and the company opened an office in Australia.

In 2013 Kentico was named Best CMS (DevPro Community Choice Awards).

In 2014 Kentico launched its Integrated Marketing Solution and was recognized as a Notable Vendor by Gartner.

In 2016 Kentico was recognized as a Niche Player by Gartner (Gartner Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals).

The last stable version of Kentico, Kentico 11.0, was released in December 2017.

Today Kentico employs more than 200 people, has offices on 3 continents (Europe, North America, and Australia), and powers more than 15K websites worldwide.

Kentico Architecture

• ASP.NET MVC 5
• Open API
• Microsoft Azure integration

Kentico Features

• Responsive design
• Full control over design. You’re not limited to predefined designs or product types. Everything is fully customizable and can be tailored to your specific needs and preferences.
• Marketing features. You can manage all your marketing activities and customer data from a single management portal. You can also deliver highly engaging customer experiences across multiple channels (social media platforms, email, and more).
• Multilingual support
• Multi-currency support
• Fully configurable products
• Product variants. Customers can customize their products (color, size, custom prints, etc.)
• Downloadable products. You can sell ebooks, software, music, online courses, etc.
• Bundles. You can group different products and sell them as a bundle.
• Discounts. You can create rule-based discounts, buy X get Y discounts, and more.
• Structured product catalogs
• Multiple payment methods. Kentico integrates with multiple payment providers.
• Multiple shipping methods. Kentico integrates with multiple shipping providers.
• Fully customizable checkout process. You can create a custom checkout process, i.e. define the checkout steps yourself.
• Split orders. You can split orders into multiple shipments with different tracking numbers.
• Google Analytics integration
• 30+ built-in store reports

These are some of the more significant e-commerce Features Kentico offers out-of-the-box. See a list of all features.

Similar to Umbraco, Kentico integrates with Ucommerce. The price of Ucommerce for Kentico is €6.999 per year per production server. See what features Ucommerce for Kentico offers.

Kentico Themes

There are 13 products in the web site templates category of the Kentico Marketplace (DevNet).

2 of these products are themes for e-commerce websites:

• A free responsive template for e-commerce websites.
• Shopictes - a responsive and fully customizable e-commerce template that comes with more than 30 template pages. It also comes with a set of plugins including mega menu, newsletter templates, integrated blog for your store, etc. Shopictes is a commercial template. It costs €1,999.

Kentico Plugins

There are 21 e-commerce extensions on the Kentico Marketplace - payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, eWay, etc.), email marketing modules, integrations, currency converters, and more.

Ultimately, Kentico doesn’t offer a wide choice of themes and extensions for e-commerce websites.

However, since it is a fully integrated ASP.NET, e-commerce, and online marketing platform, it offers you all the tools and functionalities you need to run a successful online business. For example, with the set of CMS and marketing features Kentico offers out-of-the-box, you can easily create and manage promotional campaigns, blog post, highly converting product pages, and much more.

Kentico Partners & Community

Kentico has more than 1,000 partner companies that are classified as:

• Solution partners - Kentico partners with companies from 50+ industries (beauty/cosmetics, e-commerce, electronics, intranet, IT, marketing, retail, etc.). There are 168 companies that are classified as e-commerce solution partners. You can see the number of websites each partner has developed, as well as the number of certified developers and marketers in the partner’s company. In addition, you can see the partner level (Gold, Silver, or Bronze) and whether the partner is classified as a Kentico Quality Expert. Having all this information makes finding a suitable partner to work with extremely easy.
• Technology partners - Kentico has 7 technology partners among which DiscoverIT, inRiver, and Ucommerce.
• Hosting partners - Kentico partners with more than 40 partner companies among which winhost, Everleap, E-tech computing, and more.

Kentico doesn’t have an active online community. The last activity on the Kentico forum is from 2014.

However, this doesn’t mean that community support is unavailable. You can submit support issues on the official Kentico website. And if you need premium support, you can purchase a premium support package.

Kentico Pricing

Kentico has 3 versions: Kentico CMS Base, Kentico CMS Ultimate, and Kentico EMS. The price of each version depends on the licence you want to purchase.

For example, this is the price list for a 1 Website License:

You can also purchase an unlimited websites licence and an unlimited server licence. Click here for more information on licence conditions and pricing.

Wrap-up

We hope this article gave you a better idea of what Kentico can offer and whether it's the best choice for your e-commerce business.

Stay tuned for our article on Sitecore - the next blog post of the series dedicated to the best .NET e-commerce platforms!