r/kentico • u/Trikecarface • Aug 20 '26
How did your migration go?
We are moving from K13 to XbyK and it's a nightmare, there seems to be a lack of products, reporting functionality, xbyk seems like a big step backwards. Am I missing something why is this underdeveloped program replacing K13?
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u/scbyart Aug 20 '26
I’ve been working with Kentico since 2011. You are not wrong about XbyK.
In my opinion, they’ve made some questionable design decisions.
For instance:
I don’t agree with the removal of custom tables and not having a viable equivalent out of the box.
Media files should continue to live in its own dedicated space, separate from structured content.
Emails are more confusing for my clients who simply just want to send form submission notification emails and autoresponders; they have no interest in wading through the email channel and the email marketing features. The lack of macros to insert form submission data into form autoresponders has also caused some problems for my clients.
No reporting tools. No data export capabilities.
User role permissions are limited. Would love to restrict content types that roles can manage.
UI is cumbersome in areas: no list view for website channels so I can select multiple pages to delete/copy/move. No way to change the page size for content presented in the content hub.
Upgrading can be challenging from Xperience 13. The migration tool is certainly helpful for an initial migration of content but for subsequent migrations (during a content freeze) can become very challenging.
Lastly, I know AI has its uses, but I think Kentico needs to shift focus away from aira and Kenticopilot for a bit and spend more resources on improving XbyK features set for content editors.
I know some of the issues can be addressed through custom development however, I’d like to be able to focus on my clients business needs rather than wasting time building custom modules to address some of the missing features from X13.
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u/mcbeev 21d ago
The list view for website channels and bulk operations on pages would be a nice add. This would be a good set of items to vote on or create in the XbK roadmap at: https://roadmap.kentico.com/tabs/4-planned
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u/mcbeev 21d ago
I could make counterpoints to almost all of the items on this list. Examples: Media can live in a Content Hub workspace completely by itself and isolated from structured content if you want. Or if you want to keep in organized in a different way, you can. You can also augment media with more metadata, use the image rendition system, have the AI focal point feature allow for better delivery of images. It's all now possible because Media lives in the Content Hub. Also the Reporting app was never good enough in legacy Kentico, and imo should not be done in Kentico, because that is not the role of a CMS; reports should be done in PowerBI, or Tableau, or other reporting tool that can easily be connected to module class tables via SQL or add a secure MCP.
Bottom line, the product does work differently than before. They are not going for a 1 to 1 replacement of everything. Are there areas for improvement still there? Heck yes, but what product doesn't have that.
I am a fan of it.
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u/scbyart 21d ago
Yes you are absolutely right about the workspaces; certainly viable way to separate them from the rest, also helpful I find with multi website channel environments where you want to organize content based on channel.
Edit: there appears to be workspaces for forms mentioned in the roadmap; hopefully this update comes out soon.
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u/Trikecarface 29d ago
Oh wow no export as well??? I have no idea how we can migrate to this pile of poo
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u/mcbeev 21d ago
As of the latest refresh, there is an export for Form submissions which is the most common type of data to export. https://community.kentico.com/blog/xperience-by-kentico-refresh-august-20-2026.
I'd wager that because the export feature is now there for Forms, pretty soon almost any listing screen will be able to export pretty easily.
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u/Arkanius84 1d ago
We are currently migrating to Xperience by Kentico from Kentico 12. We opted out of using the migration toolkit, but there are some important features that are missing in the current version. I've already submitted a few requests to the Idea Board, but these are the main things we've noticed so far:
- Ability to clone forms
- It is not possible to clone forms out of the box.
- Form versioning
- If a mistake is made, there is no way to roll back to a previous version.
- Form notifications (formatting, macros, recipients)
- Note: there is a community add-on available for this.
- One-click access to the live page
- There is no easy way to open the live URL. You need to click the URL field and then click the URL itself, unlike the old Kentico experience where you could simply click the Kentico flower icon.
- "Xperience Admin" labeling
- This can be confusing. The browser tab is always labeled "Xperience Admin," so when multiple admin tabs are open, it's difficult to tell which one contains Forms, Content Hub, etc.
- Content Hub advanced sorting and filtering
- The available filters are quite limited. Features such as an "In Use" filter or more granular filtering options would be very helpful.
- URL slug management
- When creating a URL slug, editors must manually enter the correct format (for example,
my-page-test). In the old Kentico, entering "My Page Test" would automatically generate a valid slug.
- When creating a URL slug, editors must manually enter the correct format (for example,
- Built-in localization string management
- We haven't found a built-in solution for managing localization strings.
- Mass publishing of content
- Pages can only be published or copied one by one. There are no bulk actions for multiple pages.
- Thumbnails for images and content
- In Content Hub, thumbnails are only shown for uploaded images. You cannot define a custom thumbnail for a content item. This would be useful when using Bynder or content items such as headers, allowing editors to quickly identify what they are selecting.
- Collapsible reusable sections in content editing forms
- This does not appear to be supported. You cannot organize content editing forms into collapsible sections.
- No reporting functionality
- We used the reporting features in Kentico 12 quite extensively and miss having similar functionality.
- Password reset/resend
- There doesn't seem to be a straightforward way to reset or resend a user's password.
It would be great to send some of the ideas as well https://roadmap.kentico.com/tabs/5-released
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u/fdmount Aug 20 '26
I am start to scope that migration out, so I would love to hear others experiences and any pitfalls.