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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    ExpressionEngine

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/AExpressionEngine is a content management system from EllisLab in 2002, a successor to pMachine Pro, a blogging system, which is written in object-oriented PHP and uses MySQL for data storage. ExpressionEngine is their flagship Content Delivery Platform.

    $249

    per year

    HCL Digital Experience

    Score9.9 out of 10
    N/AHCL Digital Experience is based on the former IBM Web Content Manager and IBM WebSphere Portal products, acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018. The product allows the user to create, manage and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile, and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).N/A
    Pricing
    ExpressionEngineHCL Digital Experience
    Editions & Modules
    License
    $299.00
    One Time Fee
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    ExpressionEngineHCL Digital Experience
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    ExpressionEngineHCL Digital Experience
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of ExpressionEngine and HCL Digital Experience
    Feature
    ExpressionEngine
    10.0
    36 Ratings
    19% above category average
    HCL Digital Experience
    5.0
    5 Ratings
    47% below category average
    Role-based user permissions10.036 Ratings5.05 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of ExpressionEngine and HCL Digital Experience
    Feature
    ExpressionEngine
    9.0
    29 Ratings
    14% above category average
    HCL Digital Experience
    4.1
    5 Ratings
    64% below category average
    API9.025 Ratings4.14 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language9.023 Ratings4.15 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of ExpressionEngine and HCL Digital Experience
    Feature
    ExpressionEngine
    8.9
    36 Ratings
    13% above category average
    HCL Digital Experience
    2.9
    5 Ratings
    84% below category average
    WYSIWYG editor10.033 Ratings7.04 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness9.135 Ratings3.15 Ratings
    Admin section7.135 Ratings3.15 Ratings
    Page templates10.030 Ratings1.15 Ratings
    Library of website themes7.011 Ratings1.15 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design10.018 Ratings4.04 Ratings
    Publishing workflow9.028 Ratings1.14 Ratings
    Form generator9.021 Ratings3.02 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of ExpressionEngine and HCL Digital Experience
    Feature
    ExpressionEngine
    8.1
    36 Ratings
    8% above category average
    HCL Digital Experience
    1.9
    5 Ratings
    111% below category average
    Content taxonomy8.128 Ratings1.15 Ratings
    SEO support10.028 Ratings2.15 Ratings
    Bulk management6.230 Ratings2.13 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions8.035 Ratings2.14 Ratings
    Community / comment management8.132 Ratings2.13 Ratings
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    ExpressionEngineHCL Digital Experience
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    Score7.7 out of 10
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    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    Progress Sitefinity
    Score7.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    ExpressionEngineHCL Digital Experience
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (64 ratings)
    9.0
    (11 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.2
    (36 ratings)
    5.7
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    7.0
    (7 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    2.8
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.2
    (4 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    6.9
    (3 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ExpressionEngineHCL Digital Experience
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Open Source
    ExpressionEngine is a very powerful and flexible content management system. It can handle a simple small business website all the way to a large corporation's website. If you are a business with multiple websites ExpresionEngine can handle that as well with it's Multiple Site Manager. I think ExpressionEngine would be less appropriate for a global large scale business with a magnitude of sites with different regions and languages.
    Incentivized
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    HCLSoftware
    HCL DX does really well at managing and maintaining the site. It allows the business to basically maintain the site while IT spent time developing new and enhanced functions. The main issue I currently have with HCL DX is not directly with the product but it does play a role. It is difficult finding skilled resources to support HCL DX in my experience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Open Source
    • Content structuring. You can set up channels and fields to hold just about any kind of information imaginable; text, images, videos, numbers, code, etc. You can structure this information any way you want and in any order. You literally create your own information database just the way you want it using a clear, easy online interface.
    • Template system. Utter freedom. Need I say more?
    • Exensible. There are a lot of add-ons, extensions, and other external modules that extend the core functionality of ExpressionEngine. Need a user management system? Check out the User module at http://solspace.com.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    HCLSoftware
    • With Version 8.5, IBM Web Content Manager introduced in place editing capabilities which allow authors to make content edits on sections of the page instead of going to the content itself. This feature allows authors to make changes in context of the page and preview changes within the actual look and feel of a live page.
    • Projects provide a collaborative atmosphere for the author community so that authors can interact and work as a team to manage inter-dependent content changes under one project and publish all changes at once, instead of working separately on individual content changes. This brings awareness across authors in an organization and easy knowledge share.
    • IBM Digital Data Connector is a cool feature that allows [users] to integrate external content sources onto the portal using IBM Web Content Manager presentation components. This allows UI/UX designers to present integrated external data in any manner they want, manage UI changes with an underlying approval process and leverage syndication to push changes live immediately.
    • IBM Web Content Manager offers a targeted content feature that allows business users to deliver personalized content to customers based on customer demographic information, browsing history and other transaction related information. Any rules created follow the publishing process thereby making it just a configurable item resulting in less turn around to turn on the feature on a website.
    • IBM Web Content Manager offers 'multi lingual solution' out of the box which allows content creation for almost all popular languages.
    • Syndication feature has improved a lot and it now provides a detailed views comprising of 'failed items', 'items that have syndicated successfully, 'items in queue'. Failed items view provides detailed and clear cut information of what resulted in failure helping IT to troubleshoot problems easily.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Open Source
    • For me, one of the greatest strengths of ExpressionEngine is also one of their weaknesses. There are so many add-ons available (some free, some not) for ExpressionEngine to allow you to do just about anything you want. However, the more add-ons that you use the more you have to deal with when performing updates. For instance, is the add-on compatible with the new version of ExpressionEngine - or even another add-on? What if that add-on gets abandoned by the developer - is there another that can perform the same functionality?
    • I think that ExpressionEngine needs to offer more out of the box than it does. Yes, you can get add-ons for just about anything but this adds to the cost. I have a list of add-ons that I use on almost every site which can raise the cost of getting started with a new site by $100-300. So add that to the cost of a license and you're at $400-600 and you haven't even started working on it yet. For instance, I shouldn't have to buy an add-on to allow me to customize the menu for my end-users.
    • The membership management feature is seriously lacking. Fortunately, there are add-ons (for an additional cost) to allow you to manage things better.
    Incentivized
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    HCLSoftware
    • IBM Web Content Manager should provide some easily usable connectors through a GUI to connect to bring content from custom data sources including connecting to Salesforce and custom databases.
    • Should further optimize and enhance creation of rich and responsive content driven UIs on various digital channels.
    • Should further optimize and enhance content personalization features.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Open Source
    I'm satisfied with the way that my site runs on EE. My primary concern is that support is now a profit center for EE's publisher and so they've consequently gutted their community support boards. However, a good EE community is developing at StackExchange. At this stage, I don't think that EE is a good choice for an individual site owner. WordPress or SquareSpace would be a better choice unless you have a budget for support.
    Read full review
    HCLSoftware
    IBM products always moves forward to adapt to new requirements and technologies. I have used versions 6, 6.1, 7 and 8 of IBM WCM, and I know IBM is ready to revamp the tool based on emerging needs, and still provide the capabilities to migrate your old system to the newer versions.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Open Source
    ExpressionEngine is very powerful and flexible. With this flexibility comes a bit of a learning curve. There are some great online resources for getting up to speed with EE, but the control panel can be a bit daunting. A lot of EE's installation process involves settings, configurations and flipping of switches. It is tedious, but well worth it as you ultimately have a very robust, secure and scalable CMS. Also, as of version 2.9.2, the control panel isn't responsive natively. You'll want to have a big enough screen to see the full control panel UI. Personally, I think the control panel would benefit from a major overhaul. It would be nice to see the colors and UI controls "modernized" and be able to more effectively customize the layout. Yes, some of this is built-in, and there are third-party add-ons to help, but maybe we'll see more refinement in future versions.
    Read full review
    HCLSoftware
    New versions has increased user experience facilitating usability.
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Open Source
    Never experienced an issue like this with it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Open Source
    The admin section would slow to a crawl the larger the tag section grew. There were many areas where better pagination would've helped improve performance. Nothing complicated, which made the lag so frustrating
    Incentivized
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    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Open Source
    I have personally never found any complications when trying to receive support from EllisLab in regards to ExpressionEngine when using the support plans they offer. I have always been responded to promptly and received satisfactory help with whatever my needs were in an extremely timely manner. This makes rating the support offered an easy job for me
    Read full review
    HCLSoftware
    We had some issues related with performing and the support was suitable and sucessful.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Open Source
    After installing the system a few times, you can see a pattern of things that have to be done to work the way you want them (settings, paths, etc.). By knowing what you want, you can put together some scripts that prepare the file system for installation, adjust post installation configuration settings, and install initial templates.
    Read full review
    HCLSoftware
    Implementation was successful due to Websphere application server used.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Open Source
    ExpressionEngine is vastly more flexible than any other content management system I have used to date and the quality of the add-ons are significantly higher than what you find in other directories. The ExpressionEngine community is also very willing and helpful with if you have any questions or run into any issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    HCLSoftware
    Magento and Prestashop are E-commerce CMS platforms. They are used in a different scale of application than WCM.
    Concerning Joomla, it's a useful CMS forsmaller website. Once again this is an other scale of application than WCM Liveray can compete WCM 7 concerning the : ¤ specific development ¤ security ¤ responsive
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Open Source
    Maybe it's scale-able from the content user perspective, but it was very limited from the programmers perspective. So many custom hacks were necessary that it reached a point it would be impossible to upgrade to a newer version
    Incentivized
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    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Open Source
    • Being able to be recognized as a leader within the ExpressionEngine development community has led to us being sought out by those customers seeking expert guidance.
    • We tend to specialize in using ExpressionEngine for our customers, so it has been easier to ramp new resources up on our development process, as well as be able to seek out independent experts to use as sub contractors or freelancers.
    • As we have been using ExpressionEngine almost exclusively for a number of years, we have built a reusable repository of proprietary code that makes our development process much more efficient and decreases the effort required for our projects.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    HCLSoftware
    • Negative: Very complex architecture for on-premise deployments (too many servers to installed)
    • Positive: Easy customization
    • Negative: Architecture limited to cloud solutions
    • WCM is an old product and needs an update
    • Blog, and community are not integrated in Digital Manager for discussion
    • Templates are not available to integrate basic services (FileNet, more complex BPM , e-commerce)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots