It's that time of the quarter again. Sitecore is working through another massive restructure, with reports of deep cuts across teams in North America and Europe. For the partners and customers who have built their digital operations on the platform, each round lands the same way: fewer familiar faces, slower answers, and a growing question about where all of this is heading.
What We Know, and What We Won't Speculate On
The reports themselves are consistent. Employee accounts describe large-scale reductions across sales, services, and maintenance teams, with experienced engineers redirected toward SitecoreAI initiatives while the legacy side of the business runs on a skeleton crew. The pattern has repeated since SitecoreAI launched in November 2025: consolidate around the AI-first cloud platform, and reduce everything that is not it.
Then there are the questions everyone is asking out loud. Will Sitecore be able to keep up as a leading DXP while shedding this much institutional knowledge? Is EQT, which has owned the company since 2016 and reportedly explored a sale as far back as 2023, trimming costs to position the platform for an exit before the SaaS-pocalypse reprices every legacy DXP on the market?
Honest answer: we don't know, and neither does anyone posting confidently about it on LinkedIn. There is a lot of rumor and speculation circulating right now, and we are not going to add to it. What we can talk about is the part that is verifiable, because it shows up on your renewal quote.
The Part That Is Not a Rumor: XP Support Is Winding Down
If you are running Sitecore XP today, here is your actual situation. No speculation required.
Since June 1, 2026, Sitecore Extended Support no longer includes security updates or production incident support unless you pay for a separate arrangement. XP 10.0 and 10.1 lose Extended Support entirely on December 31, 2026. Only version 10.4 remains in mainstream support, and that window closes at the end of 2027.
From a platform reliability perspective, that is the definition of accumulating risk. You are paying more each year to run software that receives less attention, on a timeline with a defined sunset, from a vendor that is visibly reallocating people away from the product you depend on.
When we architect systems for scale, the first thing we assess is not features. It is failure modes. An unpatched CMS holding your customer data is a failure mode with a countdown timer attached.
Feeling Unsettled Is Reasonable. Feeling Stuck Is Optional.
The XP customers we talk to describe the same experience. Support tickets take longer to resolve. Account teams rotate. Upgrade guidance keeps changing shape. And nearly every conversation with the vendor funnels toward the same destination: rebuild on SitecoreAI.
That funneling is not an accident, and it is worth being clear-eyed about why it happens. Sitecore partners earn meaningful incentives for moving customers onto SitecoreAI. So let us say the quiet part plainly: we are not the partner that will push you to SitecoreAI just to collect on the massive partner incentives and kickbacks attached to those migrations. If SitecoreAI is genuinely the right platform for your business, we will tell you that and help you get there. If it is not, we will tell you that too.
Incentive structures shape advice. Ask any consultant recommending a platform what they earn if you say yes. The good ones answer without flinching.
Your Three Honest Options Off Sitecore XP
We built a decision hub for exactly this moment: Stuck on Sitecore XP? Your 3 Real Options. It includes an interactive path finder and an ROI calculator you can load with your real license, hosting, and maintenance numbers. Here is the engineering summary.
Upgrade to Sitecore 10.4. The smallest project, typically 8 to 16 weeks, and it gets you back into mainstream support. The trade-off: it buys you time, not a future. Support for 10.4 itself ends in December 2027, so you will be planning your next move before this one finishes depreciating. This path makes sense if your business genuinely runs on xDB personalization, Marketing Automation, or EXM and you need breathing room.
Rebuild on SitecoreAI. A real rebuild, not an in-place upgrade, usually 4 to 9 months. It is the largest upfront investment, but you land on the platform Sitecore is actually funding. If you are committed to the Sitecore roadmap and use the engines that justify the subscription, this is a legitimate path. Go in with clear eyes about the effort involved: your XP customizations do not come with you.
Migrate to Sanity. For content-driven sites, this is consistently the lowest total cost path we model. One-time migration effort measured in days to a few weeks, then near-zero run cost because the license and infrastructure bills largely disappear. The honest caveat: heavy personalization, marketing automation, or commerce extends the scope, and we will tell you up front if your site is not a fit.
The uncomfortable engineering truth underneath all three options is this: most XP sites are, at their core, content sites. Pages, articles, listings, search, and forms running on a very expensive engine. Before you pay to rebuild the engine, verify that you actually use it.
How to Evaluate This Like an Engineer
Strip out the vendor drama and run the same assessment we run for any platform decision.
- Inventory what you actually run in production. Not what you license. Pull the xDB usage, the active automation plans, the EXM sends. Licensed capability and exercised capability are usually very different numbers.
- Price the do-nothing path honestly. Staying on XP is not free. It is your current spend plus Extended Support fees plus unbounded security risk. Model it as a real option with a real cost.
- Separate the platform decision from the vendor's timeline. Sitecore's restructuring pressure is real, but it should inform your urgency, not your destination. Choose the target architecture on its merits, then let the support deadlines set the pace.
- Ask every advisor about their incentives. Including us. Our position is on the record: we implement Sitecore, SitecoreAI, and Sanity, and we will recommend the one that fits your workload, not the one with the largest referral check.
Practical Takeaways
The layoffs will keep generating headlines, and the speculation about EQT's plans will keep filling your feed. None of that changes your engineering reality: XP support is contracting on a published schedule, and every month of waiting narrows your options while raising your risk.
If you are on Sitecore XP and feeling unsettled about your future on the platform, you have three honest paths and a calculator to compare them. Start with the Stuck on Sitecore XP decision hub, plug in your real numbers, and get a data-driven answer instead of a sales pitch.
If you want a second set of eyes on your specific implementation, talk to us. We will give you a straight recommendation and a firm number, whichever direction it points.
