Our guide for upgrading to Xperience by Kentico mentions the Content hub as a great alternative to custom tables from previous Kentico products, but Xperience also supports custom applications and object types to model and manage non-content data.
That's the key for me - is the data content or is it not content?
Content is typically and needs the following attributes.
- Localized
- Uses publishing workflows and previewing of unpublished changes
- Benefits from visual usage tracking
- Audited with version management
- Prepped and deployed by marketers with content synchronization
- Granular view/edit permission access (workspaces, web page tree permissions)
Non-content data on the other hand has the following attributes.
- Single language
- No preview/publishing workflow requirements
- Might require an audit trail (depending on business requirements)
- Managed and deployed by developers and administrators
- Individual data items referenced directly in code
- View and edit permissions are all or nothing
So, does your custom table data fall into the category of content or not?
I would focus much less on the additional work to build the custom application and object type - this doesn't take much more time than creating a well designed content type with all the proper explanation text and validation to help marketers. You are building this project for today and for the future so choose the path that has the long term payoff.