Progress Sitefinity Life Cycle Policy Guide

This document describes essential tenets of Progress® Sitefinity® platform life cycle including both Sitefinity Cloud and packaged Sitefinity software intended for self-hosting on-premises, in private or public clouds. It is intended to provide guidance to customers, prospects and partners regarding life cycle phases of packaged Sitefinity software, active and retirement timelines for different versions including LTS (Long Term Supported), as well as principles and cadence of delivering product updates to Sitefinity Cloud.

Terminology Note: “Official releases”

In the past, Sitefinity functionality was primarily delivered through major and minor “official releases,” along software version lines (for example, 14.4, 15.0, 15.3). Released Sitefinity versions utilize the following version encoding:

              15.4.8624.0

where the first digit is the major release (15), the digit after the first decimal is the minor release number (4), followed by the product update build number (8624). 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 15.0, 15.3, etc.

Going forward from version 15.4 LTS, Sitefinity is transitioning to a continuous delivery model, where new functionality, improvements and fixes are delivered incrementally through successive product updates on top of 15.4 LTS version rather than new official releases.

As a result:

The term “official release” is used in this document only to refer to Sitefinity versions that have already reached General Availability.

New functionality for both Cloud and  self-hosting customers will be delivered primarily through incremental product updates.

Progress may at its discretion define an additional “official release” or an LTS release in the future, to simplify upgrades for existing customers.   

Product Delivery and Versioning

Delivery model

Sitefinity now follows a cloud-first continuous delivery model.

• Sitefinity Cloud delivers new functionality, improvements and functional or security fixes in incremental updates that are applied automatically by us as part of the service (in SaaS mode) or by the customer via pull requests (in PaaS mode)
• Packaged Sitefinity software receives the same improvements (as applicable) through published incremental product updates, which customers can apply as they choose on their own schedule.
  

Product updates as the primary delivery mechanism

Product updates are now the primary mechanism going forward for delivering:

• New functionality and enhancements
• Security fixes and vulnerability remediation
• Performance and scalability improvements
• Compatibility updates for third-party components

Product updates are cumulative within a version line and are released incrementally. For self-hosting customers, product updates provide a predictable and controlled way to adopt new capabilities without requiring major version upgrades.

Consideration of breaking changes

Product updates are designed to maintain backward compatibility and avoid changes to existing behavior whenever possible.

In certain cases, updates may introduce changes to existing behavior when necessary to address security vulnerabilities, resolve defects, update dependencies, or implement required functional improvements. Such changes are made only when necessary and are minimized to the greatest extent possible.

Any product update that introduces changes to behavior, functionality, or dependencies is documented in the corresponding release notes and communicated accordingly so that customers can review the changes and assess and mitigate any potential impact.

Product Life Cycle Phases for Official releases (historical): Support and Availability of Product Updates for Self-Hosted and Sitefinity Cloud PaaS versions

The Sitefinity Product Life Cycle consists of a series of 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 provided, 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. 

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 may 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 newer product versions, 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.

Regular (non-LTS) and Long Term Supported (LTS) Releases

Starting in 2021, the Sitefinity product line 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 the latest Active release via product updates.

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.

Supported and Retired Versions Schedule

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 indicated in the table, for eligible customers*
• Sunset and Retired phases start on the first day of the month indicated in the table

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