Who knew a routine Umbraco upgrade could reduce digital costs, carbon, and enhance web performance? We did. Here's how our consultants used digital sustainability as a catalyst to drive digital momentum for one of the UK's leading charities.
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Prostate Cancer UK and Cogworks
The story so far
Since 2017, we've proudly helped Prostate Cancer UK strengthen, modernise, and grow their digital platform, from improving donation journeys to creating memorable and accessible experiences for the hundreds of thousands of people who rely on their site to stay informed.
This autumn's work demonstrates how digital sustainability serves as a catalyst for improved performance, reduced costs, and a lower environmental impact.
Necessary upgrade. Major opportunity
With Umbraco version 8 approaching End-of-Life, Prostate Cancer UK needed an upgrade.
As their long-term strategic partner, we used the necessary Umbraco 8 to version 13 upgrade as an opportunity to unlock true digital momentum for their organisation and its users, reimagining their infrastructure so that digital operations are greener, faster, and more cost-effective.
The charity's website previously ran on Azure Web Apps, a reliable and widely used hosting approach. It worked well, but like most setups, it ran constantly, consuming energy and incurring costs even during quiet periods.
Digital sustainability as a catalyst for a greener, faster and cheaper digital presence
With our eye always on forward-thinking technology, we moved Prostate Cancer UK to Azure Container Apps, delivering the same stability but only using resources when needed.
Cogworks digital consultants combined Umbraco Platinum Partner expertise with sustainability-first engineering, modernising the infrastructure to eliminate waste and significantly improve efficiency.
The right technical decisions, applied at the right moment, can significantly enhance performance, sustainability, and business value.
~88% reduction in hosting costs
By moving from always-on Web Apps to consumption-based Container Apps, Prostate Cancer UK now only pays for compute when environments are actually in use. This frees up significant operational budget, allowing more investment to flow directly into their mission and digital growth priorities.
~80% reduction in infrastructure-related emissions
Scaling non-production environments to zero dramatically cuts energy consumption. Combined with Cloudflare offloading the majority of traffic, the organisation now emits a fraction of the carbon previously required to run the same website—without needing to change their workflows or internal processes.
~ 91% reduction in Azure server load
Cloudflare now serves around 93% of all requests, meaning Azure handles just 7% of what it used to. This reduces compute demand, improves stability during high-traffic campaigns, and provides users with a noticeably faster and more reliable experience.
Why this matters
By cutting costs, reducing carbon emissions, and enhancing performance, Prostate Cancer UK can focus its energy where it matters: supporting people, driving research, and increasing awareness.
Cogworks long-term relationship and deep understanding of Prostate Cancer UK's organisation and users allow us to design digital experiences that are accessible, stable, and fast to help drive action when they need it most.
(Yep, even through large media campaigns and huge traffic spikes.)
This part of the project is just one catalyst that continues to build their digital momentum, helping to reach their mission, and one of the reasons why working with Prostate Cancer UK is one of our proudest achievements so far. 🙌
Want to see where digital sustainability will take your charity?
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