The primary objective of this document is to help customers and prospects understand the different stages of Progress® Sitefinity® product release life cycle and plan upgrades and/or migration of their Sitefinity software. We strongly recommend that customers plan upgrades of their Sitefinity software on a regular basis, preferably at least once per year, to take advantage of the latest features, performance improvements, and security fixes. Progress continually invests in simplifying the Sitefinity version upgrade process to make it more reliable and streamlined. Sitefinity Cloud customers benefit from automated software upgrades.

Sitefinity CMS releases follow a versioning format that is based on major and minor versions (official releases) and product updates.

Sitefinity release versions are labeled as follows:

              15.0.8200.0

where the first digit is the major release (15), the digit after the first decimal is the minor release number (0), followed by the update build number (8200). The last digit is the update revision number, which is used very infrequently. When we refer to a release below, it means an official release, such as 14.3, 15.0, etc.

Official releases contain new features, enhancements, bugfixes, ports to new platforms, and updates to 3rd party libraries. Sitefinity has up to 3 official releases per year.

Product updates deliver resolution of defects, critical and high security vulnerabilities, or other product issues such as compatibility updates for 3rd-party libraries or integrations that need to be addressed outside of the main release cycles. Occasionally, and after careful functional and compatibility testing, we may choose to release a functional enhancement or a new feature in a product update.

The Sitefinity Product Life Cycle consists of a series of a product release milestones, from General Availability (GA) to the eventual Retirement. Each Sitefinity release goes through up to three phases of product life cycle: Active, Sunset, and Retired.

The definition of each life cycle phase below includes information about level of support, availability of product updates, etc.

Active phase for a release begins with its General Availability (GA). Active phase product releases are fully supported. While a release is in Active phase, regular cumulative bugfix product updates (patches) are released to customers. Product updates are available to all customers with a current Subscription or a Maintenance and Support Contract. The frequency of such product updates is generally at Progress’ discretion. Typically, bugfix product updates for the latest Active version are released bi-weekly. The frequency of product updates for older Active versions is reduced. 

When problems are found in an Active phase release, Progress will work with customers towards an appropriate resolution if their licenses are covered under a current Maintenance and Support Contract. Customers with specific customer success packages are able to request a bugfix backport to an earlier Active release. Progress reserves the right to recommend that a customer upgrade to a more recent version of Progress Products if their specific problem is addressed in that/those versions.

Sunset (Mature) phase follows the Active phase. Technical support is available for all Sunset releases. Only critical product updates are provided during the Sunset phase, at discretion of Progress. Progress reserves the right to recommend that a customer upgrade to a more recent version of Progress Products if their specific problem is addressed in that/those versions.

Note: As a rule, product updates made available during the Sunset phase do not introduce any new features or enhancements. Further, any bugfixes that may break functional or backward compatibility of the applicable release will only be considered for subsequent official product releases, unless they address critical security vulnerabilities.

Once a product version enters the Retired phase, Progress will carry no obligation to provide product updates for this version. If problems are found using products in the Retired phase, Progress will exercise commercially reasonable good-faith efforts through its Product Support group to resolve customer issues and answer customer questions for Retired versions for customers with current Maintenance and Support contracts. This includes the possibility of an update solely at the discretion of Progress and for a fee (based on an assessment of the effort required by Progress). However, the availability of knowledge and skills to diagnose and resolve issues on Retired phase products is NOT guaranteed. Further, retired products or versions have no assurance of security updates. For these reasons we *strongly* recommend upgrading from a retired product version. Please contact support and/or your account manager for guidance.

The availability and level of support and updates of each life cycle phase above can be impacted by discontinued or deprecated capabilities in the products. A full list of those can be found at https://www.progress.com/documentation/sitefinity-cms/deprecated-capabilities-in-sitefinity-cms.

*Critical Updates/Alerts include critical security CVSS>=9 fixes and functional fixes addressing significant breakages in functionality, whether internal or caused by changes in 3rd party components.

**Product Updates/Alerts include High (CVSS 7-8.9) and Medium (CVSS 4- 6.9) security fixes and selected escalated bugfixes. .

^ Best effort support only. Availability of knowledge and skills to diagnose and resolve issues on Retired Phase products is NOT guaranteed.

Please refer to the Sitefinity Bug Fixing Policy for further details on fixes and product updates, including security updates.

Starting in 2021, the Sitefinity product line has adopted a broader Progress life cycle policy that may designate specific official releases as Long Term Supported (LTS) releases.

Sitefinity LTS releases are expected to have longer Active and Sunset phases than regular releases and be supported for no less than 4 years since the release.

Progress will make reasonable commercial efforts to support new versions of critical third-party products that are announced by their vendors while Sitefinity LTS releases are in Active phase. Otherwise, support for new versions of third-party products is introduced only in new official releases.

It is possible that a 3rd party library or framework (e.g. Microsoft .NET) version support ends earlier than our support for a specific Sitefinity version that uses the library/framework in question. In such cases, we will recommend upgrading your Sitefinity version to the one that uses a newer version of that library or framework.

The following table summarizes supported Sitefinity versions and their respective life cycle milestones:

• Active phase starts on the GA date. The month is provided for reference
• Limited backport requests for bugfixes are considered through the last day of the month referenced in the table, for eligible customers*
• Sunset and Retired phases start on the first day of the month referenced in the table

Releases and versions not included in the table below should be considered retired.