Enterprise CMS projects tend to fall apart in one of two places. Either the agency can design but can’t handle the content model complexity a large financial brand actually needs, or they can build but the end result looks and feels generic. This is Embrace’s strength: a brand, creative and digital agency that works across strategy, design and technology for global B2B brands in the UK, USA and Europe and its website arm sits specifically inside Umbraco’s Platinum Partner tier.
That matters more than it sounds. Umbraco Platinum Partner status is the top accreditation tier the CMS vendor hands out and it signals a track record of handling demanding, high-traffic builds rather than one-off brochure sites. For a reader vetting agencies for an enterprise rebuild, that distinction is the whole ballgame.
What is Embrace?
Embrace is a B2B marketing agency built around three disciplines: brand and creative work, digital marketing and website development. It isn’t a website-only shop that added branding as an afterthought, nor a branding studio that outsources its builds. All three sit under one roof, which matters when a rebrand and a replatform happen at the same time, as they often do for large financial services clients.
The agency’s website practice centres on Umbraco, an open-source CMS built on Microsoft’s.NET framework. Within that world, Embrace is one of 28 Umbraco Platinum Partners in the UK, a tier reserved for agencies with proven depth on complex, enterprise-scale builds. That’s a narrow club and it’s the clearest signal in this review of where the agency actually operates.
How Embrace Works
The agency’s process spans the full lifecycle of a website rather than just the build phase. Expert design and development sit alongside migration and cloud support, so a client moving off a legacy platform gets help with the technical transition, not just a new front end.
Information architecture and UI/UX design come before anything gets built, which is standard practice for sites with deep content hierarchies, like a fund manager’s library of products, reports and regulatory disclosures. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and SEO are folded into the same engagement, so the site is built to be found and to convert, not just to look right on launch day.
For a reader comparing this against building a site in-house, the trade-off is straightforward. An internal team usually lacks day-to-day Umbraco platform expertise and has to learn the CMS as they go. A Platinum Partner has a certified Platinum Partner team building flexible, scalable and secure CMS solutions, which shortens the learning curve considerably on a platform most internal teams only touch once every few years.
The Financial Services Track Record
The agency’s standout feature isn’t a single tool or feature; it’s who it has built for. Embrace has delivered enterprise websites for Sarasin & Partners, Edmond de Rothschild, Columbia Threadneedle Investments and Trivium Packaging, among others.
That client list matters because financial services websites carry constraints most sectors don’t. Regulatory disclosures, multi-market content variations and strict data handling expectations all shape what a CMS needs to do behind the scenes. An agency that has repeatedly shipped sites for asset managers and private banks has already solved problems that a generalist web shop would be encountering for the first time. This is the one area where Embrace’s experience reads as genuinely sector-specific rather than a general claim any agency could make.
Design and Technical Strengths
A few points stand out beyond the financial services focus.
Award-recognised work. Embrace is described as an award-winning brand, creative and digital agency and has been recognised for an award-winning multi-site platform build. For a reader trying to separate agency marketing from substance, an actual awarded platform project is a more useful signal than a generic design portfolio.
Full-stack CMS support. Beyond design, the agency covers development, migration and cloud support as a connected service rather than separate add-ons. That reduces the number of vendors a client has to coordinate when something breaks post-launch.
Independent structure. The agency’s independence is also flagged as award-recognised, which for a B2B buyer usually translates into more flexibility on how an engagement is scoped, since there’s no network-agency reporting structure dictating the account team’s priorities.
If you’re assembling a shortlist of CMS specialists more broadly, it’s worth reading how the top UK SEO agencies approach technical SEO on large sites, since CRO and SEO work on an enterprise Umbraco build touch many of the same technical levers.
Where Embrace Falls Short
No agency fits every brief and a few honest trade-offs apply here.
The Umbraco specialism is a strength for existing Umbraco users or brands open to that platform, but it narrows the pool for a company firmly committed to WordPress, Sitecore or another CMS. Switching platforms carries its own migration cost regardless of which agency handles it, so that’s worth weighing before a brief goes out.
The visible client list leans heavily toward asset managers and financial institutions. That depth is an asset for a bank or fund manager, but a retail or consumer brand might reasonably want to see work in their own sector before committing.
Finally, as with most enterprise agency engagements, the scope and cost of a project depend on the brief. That’s normal for bespoke enterprise work, but it does mean a reader needs an initial conversation before they can size up a project properly.
Who Embrace Is Best For
Embrace is best suited to mid-size and large B2B organisations, particularly in financial services, that need a website rebuild handled alongside brand and content strategy rather than as an isolated IT project. A company already running Umbraco, or open to migrating onto it, gets the most direct benefit from the Platinum Partner accreditation.
It’s a weaker fit for a small business wanting a basic brochure site, or for a company deeply tied to a different CMS ecosystem with no appetite to change. For those readers, a broader look at implementation partners might be the more relevant comparison point, since HubSpot’s CMS suits a different scale and buying pattern than enterprise Umbraco.
The Verdict
For a B2B brand, particularly in financial services, weighing up an enterprise Umbraco rebuild, Embrace’s combination of Platinum Partner accreditation, named sector clients and full-lifecycle support (design through migration and cloud) makes it a credible option worth putting on a shortlist. The financial services track record especially stands out as the kind of specific, checkable proof point that’s rare in agency marketing.
Companies on other CMS platforms or seeking the cheapest possible brochure site should look elsewhere. For everyone else weighing an Umbraco rebuild against the cost of doing it in-house, Embrace’s track record is a reasonable starting point for an initial conversation.
Image Credit: Unsplash
