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ExpressionEngine Reviews & Product Details

Verified User in Information Technology and Services
UI
Mid-Market(51-1000 emp.)
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Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

I honestly don't like anything about this platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

Literally everything. The UI, the UX, the actual platform itself. Nothing is easy about using our navigating EE. When recently went through n EE upgrade that was originally supposed to take 1 week. It ended up taking 4 months. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:

Do not use it. Build in wordpress or any other CMS. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

Allows us to publish content to our website(blog). There really are no advantages to using this platform. It seems to be the lowest form of content management platform on the market, and even consultants who work on implementing it can't fix the issues that arise in it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ExpressionEngine Overview

What is ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine simplifies the process of managing your site while giving your designers complete creative control.

ExpressionEngine Details
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Product Description

ExpressionEngine simplifies the process of managing your site while giving your designers complete creative control.


Seller Details
Seller
EllisLab
Year Founded
2001
HQ Location
Los Angeles, CA
Twitter
@EllisLab
8,963 Twitter followers
LinkedIn® Page
www.linkedin.com
2 employees on LinkedIn®

TJ
Overview Provided by:

Recent ExpressionEngine Reviews

TC
Tim C.Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
5.0 out of 5
"The Best Website Content Management System"
ExpressionEngine is great for the following reasons: - It's flexible, and we can implement any design - It's highly secure with an incredible tr...
DB
Doug B.Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
5.0 out of 5
"EE - The Most Secure, Pure Content Mgmt System Out There"
ExpressionEngine stands out as a robust and genuine content management system (CMS), distinguishing itself from mere page builders in the web devel...
JD
John D.Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
5.0 out of 5
"ExpressionEngine helped our company thrive"
I find the flexibility of EE to make it the most capable CMS around. I've been using it since EE1 in 2007 and have never been disappointed with wha...
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ExpressionEngine Media

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53 out of 54 Total Reviews for ExpressionEngine

3.7 out of 5
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ExpressionEngine Pros and Cons

How are these determined?Information
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
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Overall Review Sentiment for ExpressionEngineQuestion

Time to Implement
<1 day
>12 months
Return on Investment
<6 months
48+ months
Ease of Setup
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TC
Web Developer
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine is great for the following reasons:

- It's flexible, and we can implement any design

- It's highly secure with an incredible track record for security

- It doesn't make assumptions about the website design or content. This allows us to create exactly what we need for each website. We don't need to "overwrite" themes or default content types (e.g. - WordPress) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine is great, but it has a misperception in the marketplace as "for developers". In truth, any web CMS needs a good developer -- just an any instrument needs a good musician to play it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

It is a repliable platform with great security and flexibilty, allowing us to build out great websites for our clients. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

DB
Founder
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: Organic
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine stands out as a robust and genuine content management system (CMS), distinguishing itself from mere page builders in the web development landscape. With a focus on flexibility and extensibility, ExpressionEngine caters to the needs of developers and content creators alike, making it a versatile solution for building and managing websites.

One key differentiator is its commitment to being a true CMS rather than a page builder. ExpressionEngine empowers users to create and organize content in a structured manner, offering a sophisticated system for handling various types of data. For sites that truly care about the structure of their content, and ensuring that they can optimize for SEO, EE is the #1 choice.

EE also stands out as a pioneer in security among CMS platforms. The team managing this ensures there is a constant eye on what is both required as features, and needeed to keep it secure. Regular updates and a vigilant security team contribute to a robust defense against potential vulnerabilities, instilling confidence in both developers and site administrators.

EE remains a top choice for those seeking a genuine CMS experience, offering unparalleled flexibility, security, and a commitment to true content management. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine has a bit of a learning curve to get working. It requires some development knowledge, as it relies fully on your content and your design to power what is displayed on the front end. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

EE gives you all of the power of a content management system without jumbling things up with a number of plugins (though there are a lot of great add-ons). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

JD
Editor-in-Chief
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: Seller invite
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

I find the flexibility of EE to make it the most capable CMS around. I've been using it since EE1 in 2007 and have never been disappointed with what it has given us the capability of doing on our travel-related website. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

I dislike that the tight-knit community EE had built around its product seemingly disappeared after EE3's release. I think internal company issues plagued the software for a while and some developers and community users jumped ship. EE6 is in the hands of a new private company, which has improved the quality of EE, but the community has never fully rebounded to what it was previously. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

EE is our complete publishing platform for our content-based websites Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Design
AD
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

I liked the extensibility of it and how you could modify and shape the platform to work the way you wanted it to. There were a lot of developer friendly controls Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

The platform has no thought put into it for the end-user and instead it's something that gets bolted onto the back end of a website built by boutique developers that overcharge immensely for their services. My experience with clients using it has been that they are clueless on how it works, regardless of documentation. They end up not using the contact management system, defeating the entire purpose of it Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

The problem it solves is providing customers with a content management system for their website. My experience, it doesn't actually solve this problem and just creates new problems. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

CP
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

I've been using Expression Engine for many years, I have experience from EE 1 to the latest install on 5 and what a journey it has been. I love being able to create fluid fields so that my users can create their own pages. I like that you're able to do segment based dynamic pages without having to faff about with pure PHP. Also Code Ignitor and Expression Engine has a lot of support forums, so I'm usually able to fix my issue without much hassle. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

Even though 6 is coming soon and by the screenshots it's looking promising, I really dislike the grid. It's not very responsive and the more fields you have; the smaller the boxes get. I built a plugin which allows me to put it in a tab view, makes it much easier for my clients to manage. Secondly, I don't like that you can't duplicate an entry! The UX of the control panel can be quite hard to explain to non-dev minded users and this can sometimes be an issue to get users to play around and learn. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:

Hold out for it, get used to the latest version and be ready for 6 as it's looking like a great and promising update that competes with the current CMS platforms. If you want a solution that is free and open source with a great community of developers around it, look no further. The documentation is easy to read, if you have little to basic knowledge of PHP/code ignitor, you should't have any issues figuring out how Expression Engine works and runs. The provided entry/category tags allow you access the database quickly and find the exact content you're after. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

It's a client friendly CMS so giving my clients the ability to edit what is on the pages is a great benefit to have. It's less bulky than a WordPress install and you have everything built in that you need. I use a minimal amount of plugins which is great as I hate when they go out of date due to PHP versions and I have to try and fix them. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

NM
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine is an extremely flexible platform. You can create your markup and structure your site as you want. It is very secure, and it is constantly updated it to keep it so. It recently became open source, so now you don't have to pay a license. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

Some features can't be obtained out of the box, you need to purchase add-ons or develop them yourself. It needs add-ons to be truly multi-language. The community is not what it used to be, but we hope it grows again now that EE is open source. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:

ExpressionEngine is open source, but consider paying for a support plan, specially if it's your first time implementing it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

I have used ExpressionEngine to create sites of all sizes with custom designs. My customers love the ease of use and flexibility of the CMS. Features like search, categories, member management are built-in. There are e-commerce solutions too. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

SS
Senior Software Engineer
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
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Validated Reviewer
Verified Current User
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

- Built on a simple CodeIgniter Framework.

- Any changes needed to upgrade the system or the Core expression engine can be easily made without any issue.

- Be it simple website development or complex application, Expression engine is a breeze to use.

- It is fast and has caching features to be used

- Templates and their scalability

-You can create and run multiple sites, this is huge benefit in my opinion when you have international sites or any distributor based model

- The live preview model was a latest addition which is awesome to update the site and check if you want to see any issues

- Ability to install multiple plugins which can help you take you from zero to hundred in no time!

- Currently the software is open source, which is HUGE! I started using expression engine when it was 299 and cannot believe it is free now with the amount of features it gives! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

- Sometimes complex to build a simple plugin.

- If you just need to write a simple plugin to extract some API data, it will still take time write it

- kind of becomes slow when your database is huge (in majority of the cases caching solves this issue but plese make sure to use it in a correct way) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:

Please take care when you are trying to show huge data on the page or have huge database. Use caching properly Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

- I used ExpressionEngine to build anywhere from a basic website to a complex web application.

- I have realised how flexible it is to scale up with the modules and plugin development features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

DW
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

I like how ExpressionEngine hovers in the middle ground between CMS and framework. It's really easy to deploy simple administration interfaces for my clients, and the "you're on your own" approach to the public-facing frontend really gives a lot of flexibility to truly customize the platform for specific use cases. And now it's free! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

The third-party ecosystem is a little bit lacking compared to platforms like Wordpress, which may be a drawback for some, but I like how it keeps the system from being too reliant on third-party plugins and extensions, making it easier to maintain in the long term. The learning curve is also somewhat steeper, but in the long term that's worth it too. The internal search function is also a bit "cold and mechanical" (for lack of a better term) compared to the results that say, a Google site search will give you. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:

Read the developer documentation! Like I said, the learning curve is a little steeper than other platforms, but the docs will tell you pretty much everything you need to know. EE Harbor also has some pretty useful extensions, particularly Editor and Channel Images. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

It is my go-to solution for clients who need any kind of basic content management system, and after using it for various projects since the v2 days, it has nestled itself nicely into some of the web consulting services I offer as a freelancer. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

CP
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

Expression Engine is good for member management, create channels and gives you plenty of parameters and variables to use in the templates to create a dynamic, easy to use php website. My clients really enjoy using the fluid field type to have the ability to build their own pages, this is good for the current trends to be fully customisable. I like how easy it is to set up a new website and attach the CRM to it, I have now got a vanilla site set up so that when I go to build something new all my preferences are already there for me to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

I would like to be able to connect category fields via relationship field inside a fluid field. The grid field UI isn't great either. I'd like to the ability to assign member groups to entries. I would be nice to have structure included in the product, however I have created my own version. It would be good to have more form functions on the standard email plugin, I know solutions and add-ons are out there but I like have the least amount of plugins so that when it comes to upgrading the system it is a smooth process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:

I would use this product if you're looking at creating different channels that include blogs, careers, pages for a website and if you have little to no knowledge of DB set up. You want clear and understandable member management system and everything you need to maintain and manage a website all in one place. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

Being able to create secure websites, less hackers, good member management system in place, I enjoy using the fluid field type with the live preview, its a great way to help out the clients when editing the website. Rememberable parameters and variables to make it easy to code in an HTML file. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

NP
Software Engineer
Small-Business(50 or fewer emp.)
More Options
Validated Reviewer
Review source: G2 invite
Incentivized Review
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

It has a great combination of power and flexibility. Y

Anything that ExpressionEngine can't do out-of-the-box, can be done with add-ons, of which there are many (both free and paid) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

I don't think it is evolved well and not to mention some bugs not getting resolved in time. Each project tends to have a license overhead now that have to spend lots of money depending on the complexity Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:

Users who have voiced opinions because of the direction and progress that EE has taken, that doesn't make it a bad CMS and it continues to be a leading commercial offering. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?

Obviously it saved lots of my time when developing tasks related to user management, custom pages, and user subscription

My role is to build the backend custom modules for registering the members using CRM data and my account module to manage their payments, notifications, news etc.

• Developed Custom Signup Expression engine module with the data from, nested comments for each item in an entry.

• Developed Custom Field types for postcode finder, bank card details look up and also custom vector map.

• Developer custom plugins for events, calendars, to also communicate with Dynamics CRM.

• Using phpodata SDK to read the data from CRM to read the club users.

• Updating the Dynamics CRM using SOAP API.

• Developing EE module for Nested commenting system with voting and reporting. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.