Sitecore's versioning policy is aligned with the wider software industry. Our definitions in these areas, including the notion of a feature release, an update, and a service pack, are described here.
Sitecore encourages customers to use the latest releases and updates that contain functionality and features that they want to use in their solutions.
For releases prior to Sitecore CMS 7.0, Sitecore used 3 levels in the version number (for example, 6.6.0).
Since the release of Sitecore CMS 7.0, Sitecore has only used 2 levels in the version number of products and modules (for example, 7.0).
Since the release of Sitecore XP 8.2, Sitecore has used 3 levels in the version number of all assemblies. Each assembly follows its own version path in accordance with Semantic Versioning and is therefore not aligned with the version number of the product or module. A complete list of all assemblies and their version numbers is distributed with each release.
Since the release of Sitecore XP 9.0, Sitecore has used 3 levels in all product and module artifacts (for example, ZIP and WDP files).