Sitecore Version History and Features | Sitecore Upgrade and Migration Services
In the era of Sitecore, it has come a long way with massive updates and features for improving its own features. We can walk through the list of versions and features explaining why every organization is important to update their Sitecore into its latest versions.
Sitecore Versions:
| Version | Release Year | Mainstream Support End Date | Extended Support End Date |
| Sitecore 5 | 2007 | 31-Dec-2010 | 31-Dec-2013 |
| Sitecore 6.0 | 2008 | 31-Dec-2011 | 31-Dec-2014 |
| Sitecore 6.1 | 2009 | 31-Dec-2012 | 31-Dec-2015 |
| Sitecore 6.2 | 2009 | 31-Dec-2012 | 31-Dec-2015 |
| Sitecore 6.3 | 2010 | 31-Dec-2013 | 31-Dec-2016 |
| Sitecore 6.4 | 2010 | 31-Dec-2013 | 31-Dec-2016 |
| Sitecore 6.5 | 2011 | 31-Dec-2014 | 31-Dec-2017 |
| Sitecore 6.6 | 2012 | 31-Dec-2015 | 31-Dec-2018 |
| Sitecore 7.0 | 2013 | 31-Dec-2016 | 31-Dec-2019 |
| Sitecore 7.1 | 2013 | 31-Dec-2016 | 31-Dec-2019 |
| Sitecore 7.2 | 2014 | 31-Dec-2017 | 31-Dec-2020 |
| Sitecore 7.5 | 2014 | 31-Dec-2017 | 31-Dec-2020 |
| Sitecore 8.0 | 2015 | 31-Dec-2018 | 31-Dec-2021 |
| Sitecore 8.1 | 2015 | 31-Dec-2018 | 31-Dec-2021 |
| Sitecore 8.2 | 2016 | 31-Dec-2019 | 31-Dec-2022 |
| Sitecore 9.0 | 2017 | 31-Dec-2020 | 31-Dec-2023 |
| Sitecore 9.1 | 2018 | 31-Dec-2021 | 31-Dec-2024 |
| Sitecore 9.2 | 2019 | 31-Dec-2022 | 31-Dec-2025 |
| Sitecore 9.3 | 2019 | 31-Dec-2022 | 31-Dec-2025 |
| Sitecore 10.0 | 2020 | 31-Dec-2023 | 31-Dec-2026 |
| Sitecore 10.1 | 2021 | 31-Dec-2024 | 31-Dec-2027 |
Features
Sitecore 6.x
Sitecore 6.x were important versions in the Sitecore platform’s release history with major improvements has made to the Digital Marketing System (DMS). Especially 6.5 and 6.6 versions are notable enhancements with forecasting abilities.
Key Features
- Marketing and engagement automation
- Measurable value and efficiency
- Real-time personalization
- Dashboards & reports with Executive Insight Dashboard
- Classified origin visits
- Content Experience Platform
- Device Simulator
- Page Preview service
- MVC support
- Page Editor & Rich Text Editor
- NET Search Engine
Sitecore 7.x
Sitecore 7.x were merely has major focusing on improving the analytical and experience data improvements. Especially Sitecore 7.2 and 7.5 has massive updates in content, analytics and experience scalability.
Sitecore 7.5 version has introduces the xDB (Experience Database or Analytics Collection Database), which makes the switch over from SQL Server to MongoDB for analytical data with lot of scalability improvements.
Key Features
- Content scalability improvements
- Introduced Item Buckets
- Major Improvements in Data Sources
- Content Tagging/Faceting
- xDB with Scalable analytics data architecture in MongoDB
- Experience profiles allow tracking users across devices/visits
- Enhanced Sitecore Experience Platform
- Renamed Digital Marketing System (DMS) to Experience Marketing
- Renamed Email Campaign Manager (ECM) to Email Experience Manager
- Renamed Engagement Analytics to Experience Analytics
- Renamed Adaptive Print Studio to Print Experience Manager
- Renamed Engagement Automation to Experience Automation
Sitecore 8.x
Sitecore 8.x has major improvements in UI and in analytics area. It has very easy and flexible user interface, new experience profiles, powerful analytics, and an array of advancements in content management.
Key Features
- Experience Profile
- New Experience Explorer
- Versioned layouts like Shared/Final layouts allows us to share components across layouts to further target different segments
- Improved Faceted Search in Media Library
- Improved xDB with default built on MongoDB.
- Content Tags by profile cards
- New UI in Launchpad view
- New login screen “Single Track Login”
- Federated Experience Manager enhancements
- Experience Analytics – improved analytics and insight around the customer experience
- Path Analyzer – allows you to view the path a user takes while navigating your site
- List Manager – completely rebuilt to work with the Email Experience Manager (ECM)
- Renamed Marketing Center to Marketing Control Panel
- Renamed Page Editor to Experience Editor
- Renamed Social Connect to Social Experience Manager
Sitecore 9.x
Sitecore 9.x has major improvements in enhanced xDB analytical data access, performance improvements, and federated authentication. It strives to create an easy-to-use, scalable and accessible solution for developers, marketers, and customers.
Key Features
- Sitecore experience cloud
- xConnect framework – It is directly integrated with the Experience Database (xDB) and allows for collecting and interchanging data about customers across third-party channels and external sources
- xDB Data interchange with xConnect
- Sitecore Cortex
- xDB supports multiple databases like SQL Server 2016 and above, SQL Azure, MongoDB, and Azure CosmosDB.
- Marketing Automation
- Sitecore commerce
- Sitecore Forms – A new Experience Forms module was created to replace web forms for marketers (WFFM) with Drag-and-drop functionality.
- Sitecore JSS
- Sitecore Identity server supports out of the box.
- Sitecore Federated Authentication
- Sitecore OMNI and Headless CMS
- Improved Sitecore Experienced Accelerator – SXA is a framework that allows web developers to speed up the development and production of websites and reuse components, layouts, and templates across a variety of sites and maintain it quickly and cost-effectively.
Sitecore 10.x
Major digital transformation and digital optimization is a primary goal and improvement in Sitecore 10 and Sitecore 10.1 versions. It has lot of improvements in digital transformations and in AI automation.
Key features
- Container Support – The major feature that comes with version 10.0 is that Sitecore has packaged its software in containers. Sitecore 9.3 had already supported containers, but now they will come out of the box. Docker and Kubernetes technology run the software containers. This helps developers to easily run vast quantities of Sitecore copies, to run Sitecore production instances, and to efficiently test load balancing.
- Headless development with Asp.Net core
- New Horizon editor for Marketers to edit the page
- Sitecore Content hub
- Deprecated Support for Azure search and default to SOLR search.
- Basic personalization support for Sitecore XM subscriptions.
- Marketing Automation
- Salesforce integration out of the box.
- Sitecore AI video support
- Analytics filtering – Marketers can target segments of contacts via predefined rules and gain more insights into key audience groups
- Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) for serializing, sharing, and deploying content items, as well as keeping them in version control.
Sitecore Version History and Features | Sitecore Upgrade and Migration Services in USA & India
Author: Prabhu Ranganathan, Sitecore Specialist
