The primary objective of this document is to help customers and prospects understand the different stages of Progress Sitefinity CMS product release life cycle, and to help with planning the upgrade and/or migration strategies of their Sitefinity installations. We strongly recommend that customers plan upgrades of their Sitefinity CMS 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 less intrusive.

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

Sitefinity release versions are labeled as follows:

              14.0.7700.0

where the first digit is the major release (14), the digit after the first decimal is the minor release number (0), followed by the build number (7700) for product updates. 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 14.0.

Official releases contain new features, enhancements, bugfixes, ports to new platforms, and updates to 3^rd party libraries. Sitefinity has up to 3 official releases per year. Product updates are more frequent and are used to deliver resolution of defects, critical and high security vulnerabilities, or other product issues such as compatibility updates for 3^rd party integrations that need to be addressed outside of the main release cycles.

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 updates (patches) are released to customers. The frequency of such product updates is at Progress’ discretion. Typically, bugfix updates for the most current active version are released bi-weekly. The frequency of product updates for other active versions is reduced.  Product updates are available to all customers with a current Subscription or a Maintenance and Support Contract.

When problems are found using 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. Progress reserves the right to recommend that a customer upgrade to the more recent version of Progress Products if their specific problem is addressed in that/those versions.

A Progress Product will remain in Active phase for a minimum of 12 months from its GA release date.

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 the more recent version of Progress Products if their specific problem is addressed in that/those versions.

Note: Product updates released during Active and Sunset phases do not introduce any new features or enhancements. Further, any bugfixes that may break functional or backward compatibility of the current release will only be considered for subsequent official product releases, unless they address 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 have no assurance of security updates. For these reasons upgrading from a retired product is *strongly* recommended. Please contact support and product management for guidance.

Maintenance and Support	Latest Active	Active	Sunset	Retired
Technical support	Y	Y	Y	Y^
Bi-weekly bugfix updates	Y	N	N	N
Critical product updates*	Y	Y	Y	N
Regular product updates**	Y	Y	N	N
New customer sales	Y	Y	N	N
Existing customer license increase/expansion	Y	Y	Y	N
Certification for new environments, OS, 3rd party applications support	Y – new release	Y - LTS versions only	N	N

*Critical Updates/Alerts include critical security CVSS>=9 fixes, functional addressing significant breakages in functionality, whether internal or caused by changes in 3rd party components. 
**Product Updates/Alerts include High (CVSS 7-9) and Medium (CVSS <7) security fixes selected escalated bugfixes including Enterprise customer requests 
^ 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 some of the official releases as Long Term Supported (LTS) releases

The difference between regular (non-LTS) and LTS Sitefinity releases is in the length of Active and Sunset phases. Sitefinity LTS releases are expected to have longer Active and Sunset phases and be supported for no less than 4 years since the release. It is recommended that Enterprise customers make efforts to upgrade to the latest available LTS release to receive Enterprise support.

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.

The following table summarizes supported product versions and their respective life cycle milestones. Releases and versions that are not in the table should be considered retired.