Enterprise Multisite Consolidation: Kentico vs WordPress
While Kentico offers multisite orchestration, it’s often built as a complex, custom, Kentico-specific construct. This can result in a greater reliance on specialized talent, increased adaptability challenges, and higher costs when scaling or integrating new properties. Kentico is powerful but operates within its proprietary walls.
On WordPress, it’s different. Moreover, with solutions like OnePress, you get a system that’s flexible, cost-efficient, and ready to scale, without locking yourself into a proprietary ecosystem.
Let’s now examine how Kentico and WordPress compare in terms of multisite management, allowing you to make an informed choice.
Multisite management in Kentico
To truly understand Kentico’s multisite management, you first need to understand its basic models for handling multiple sites.
If you review Kentico’s official guidance, you’ll see that while “it depends” is the safe answer, they generally recommend going with multiple single instances of Kentico rather than a single shared instance serving various sites.
So what does “multiple single instances of Kentico” actually mean? And what’s the alternative?
Single instance, multiple sites (Multitenant)
Here, you can run all your websites under a single Kentico installation, sharing the same codebase, database, and admin interface. Each site is logically separated but resides in the same system. You can manage multiple domains and content trees, but without spinning up separate systems.
Multiple single-site installations
Here, each site runs in its own Kentico instance—separate codebase, separate database, separate admin UI.
If you’re considering how “multisite” the second model really is, it’s not “multisite” in the architectural sense; it’s “multi-site” only in the business sense. Kentico counts it as part of its multisite story because it positions it as another way to handle multiple properties. However, technically, it consists of numerous standalone environments.
So, yes, the second approach is technically “multisite” at the enterprise level, but only in terms of organizational strategy, not infrastructure. When Kentico recommends separate deployments, what they mean is: multiple multisite setups operating independently rather than one shared site cluster.
Parallels with multisite setups in WordPress
At rtCamp, we see WordPress multisite in two ways:
- Traditional WordPress multisite. Multiple sites in one shared WordPress installation (comparable to Kentico’s multitenant model).
- “Nontraditional” WordPress multisite. Multiple standalone WordPress sites that work together as a unified system.
When we handle enterprise consolidation projects, we often choose between these two approaches. And like Kentico recommends, many times it does make sense to have independent sites that operate in sync (sharing a design system, content hub, integration layers, governance models, workflows, and more) without really tying them into a single installation.
In WordPress, this involves having multiple standalone installs (often on the same server or hosting provider) with orchestration frameworks (like OnePress… more on this in just a bit) that enable them to behave like one cohesive ecosystem.
When you’re evaluating multisite, multibrand, and multilingual setups in a nontraditional multisite environment (i.e., multiple separate installations working together as one), “orchestration” encompasses everything you need to build, configure, and maintain to make those sites function as a single, coordinated system.
So, comparing Kentico and WordPress in this context is really about comparing how orchestration works for each.
Multisite orchestration: Kentico vs WordPress
In a “nontraditional” setup, “multisite” orchestration is about ensuring multiple installs talk to each other and share resources where it makes sense (content hubs, design systems, governance frameworks, features, integration layers, etc.).
When it comes to Kentico, there’s no single way to orchestrate such a setup. A Kentico development agency underlines that while there are many ways to create such a system with Kentico, “the most widespread solution is absolutely different websites with some functional parts, templates/layouts, page types that can be reused on each site, common users that can edit the sites, but with different content.” It further explains the different elements of such orchestration:
- ‘Shared Content’ site – stores all the shared content (news, articles, blog posts, etc.) that is used across multiple websites;
- ‘Site Template’ site – contains main structure that will be basis for all other websites;
- Sites themselves – initially created as a copy of ‘Site Template’, but updated with content that is only related to this site;
- Page templates/css stylesheets – define page structure and UI design;
- Custom Kentico modules – allow site pages management within the simplified interface;
Since multiple standalone Kentico Xperience installs don’t come with a built-in orchestration layer, teams that want them to share anything (content, assets, design systems, governance rules, etc.) must build it themselves. That typically means:
- Writing custom code/custom modules for synchronization and shared functionality.
- Using APIs (Kentico REST, GraphQL, or custom endpoints) to push or pull data between instances.
- Employing middleware (e.g., Azure Functions, custom microservices, or integration platforms) to support communications.
It’s “possible” because Kentico offers enough API surface and extensibility hooks to make it work, but it’s not native. You decide what’s linked, what’s independent, and how much effort you want to invest in keeping it all in sync.
While this approach works, it’s rigid and engineering-heavy.
Also, to be fair, Xperience by Kentico (the latest version) does enhance its multisite capabilities (through a shared content hub and more), but migration is a significant replatforming effort if you aren’t already on it.
Like Kentico, even in a nontraditional WordPress multisite model (where you’re not using built-in Multisite but separate WordPress installs), each site works independently.
And, again, like Kentico, you need to build the orchestration layer to make everything into a unified system. Something that we’ve done with OnePress.
For example, with OnePress, clients already syndicate content as needed across their family of websites via a shared content hub.
Enterprise websites also share design systems delivered and orchestrated through a dedicated plugin, enabling consistent branding and UI across sites:
Custom features and functionalities are delivered smoothly within this framework.
Overall, enterprises using OnePress report savings of 50-80% in maintenance work, thanks to streamlined multisite orchestration and a scalable architecture.
Is OnePress the only way to achieve this?
No.
Can you build your own solution?
Absolutely.
But we already have this live multisite WordPress framework in production, supporting diverse enterprise needs across multiple sites and use cases.
If you’d like to explore how this can work for your organization, let’s discuss.
In all, while WordPress offers a rich ecosystem of APIs, hooks, and deployment workflows, connecting multiple standalone installs still requires intentional architecture — it’s just that it’s easier and simpler with WordPress.
Multibrand ecosystems: Kentico vs WordPress
In multibrand ecosystems, you want each brand to feel distinct (with its own visual identity, tone, and even unique features) while still benefiting from shared infrastructure.
With Kentico, getting your brands to work together requires a significant amount of custom work, including setting up this orchestration, also known as consolidation. While it supports brand differentiation well, maintaining distinct brand experiences across separate installations still requires heavier custom development.
- Each install runs independently, meaning brand-specific codebases and templates can diverge fast if not heavily governed.
- Brand guidelines and UI component libraries must be manually integrated into each site, with no “push once, apply everywhere” model, as a custom delivery pipeline is required.
- Design system reuse across separate installs usually means developer-heavy workflows.
With WordPress, this is a lot simpler:
With modern theming approaches (block-based themes, global style variations, and design tokens), you can create a brand-specific theme that inherits core layout and functionality from a shared framework, but swaps design and UX at the surface. In fact, this is precisely what we’re doing with our OnePress framework. OnePress
You can also handle governance through role-based controls and editorial workflows in each install, while still enforcing shared security, compliance, and performance standards centrally.
In all, scaling to new brands is faster: you can clone a baseline install, attach its shared resources, and have a production-ready brand site in days instead of weeks.
There are many benefits WordPress brings to multibrand ecosystems:
- Lower time-to-market for new brands with strong governance baked in.
- Lower ongoing design debt. It’s easy to maintain brand coherence without killing creative flexibility.
- No dependency on a specific dev team’s proprietary packaging workflow: brand orchestration can be done by in-house teams.
Multilingual capabilities: Kentico vs WordPress
When it comes to multilingual features, Kentico wins. It comes with native multilingual tools that work well in standalone sites. Kentico’s culture feature is definitely impressive.
However, across separate installs, you’re back to custom integration territory:
- You won’t get an automatic orchestration layer for synchronizing content or translations across sites.
- You’d need to build custom integrations or connectors to sync translation content between source and target sites.
- You’d have to manage language switchers and keep them aligned yourself.
All this integration work falls back on custom development.
To be fair, even with WordPress, you’re looking at all this work for setting up multilingual ecosystems.
That said, with WordPress, you’ve many mature multilingual solutions (WPML, Polylang Pro, MultilingualPress) that can be made to work across connected installs.
And in general, WordPress is easy to integrate with enterprise translation APIs (Smartling, Transifex) and to centralize glossary and memory across brands/sites.
Orchestration scripts can also be used to sync translated content across instances without breaking per-site independence.
Overall, while custom work is often necessary, WordPress’s flexibility, ecosystem, and integrations make multilingual enterprise setups more manageable and scalable over time.
The bottom line
In a nontraditional multisite world, where Kentico and WordPress must operate as a single, orchestrated ecosystem across multiple, separate installs, the real differentiator is how efficiently you can connect, govern, and evolve your different sites without introducing friction. In other words, the orchestration layer.
Kentico can deliver here, but the orchestration layer would be complex and not easily scalable.
WordPress, especially when paired with OnePress, thrives in this space because its ecosystem is inherently open, integration-friendly, and can adapt to work around the unique needs of your multibrand ecosystem.
