ExpressionEngine 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
Ideagen Collaboration Portal
Score9.1 out of 10
N/A
Ideagen Collaboration Portal , formerly Huddle is Ideagen’s tool supporting teams' work by enabling them to store, share and work on content.
$10
per user/per month
Pricing
ExpressionEngine
Ideagen Collaboration Portal
Editions & Modules
License
$299.00
One Time Fee
Huddle
$10
per user/per month
Huddle Plus
Contact sales team
Huddle Premier
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ExpressionEngine
Ideagen Collaboration Portal
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
—
More Pricing Information
Features
ExpressionEngine
Ideagen Collaboration Portal
Security
Comparison of Security features of ExpressionEngine and Ideagen Collaboration Portal
Feature
ExpressionEngine
10.0
36 Ratings
19% above category average
Ideagen Collaboration Portal
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions
10.036 Ratings
00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of ExpressionEngine and Ideagen Collaboration Portal
Feature
ExpressionEngine
9.0
29 Ratings
14% above category average
Ideagen Collaboration Portal
-
Ratings
API
9.025 Ratings
00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language
9.023 Ratings
00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of ExpressionEngine and Ideagen Collaboration Portal
Feature
ExpressionEngine
8.9
36 Ratings
13% above category average
Ideagen Collaboration Portal
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG editor
10.033 Ratings
00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness
9.135 Ratings
00 Ratings
Admin section
7.135 Ratings
00 Ratings
Page templates
10.030 Ratings
00 Ratings
Library of website themes
7.011 Ratings
00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design
10.018 Ratings
00 Ratings
Publishing workflow
9.028 Ratings
00 Ratings
Form generator
9.021 Ratings
00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of ExpressionEngine and Ideagen Collaboration Portal
Feature
ExpressionEngine
8.1
36 Ratings
8% above category average
Ideagen Collaboration Portal
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy
8.128 Ratings
00 Ratings
SEO support
10.028 Ratings
00 Ratings
Bulk management
6.230 Ratings
00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions
8.035 Ratings
00 Ratings
Community / comment management
8.132 Ratings
00 Ratings
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of ExpressionEngine and Ideagen Collaboration Portal
Feature
ExpressionEngine
-
Ratings
Ideagen Collaboration Portal
7.2
6 Ratings
7% below category average
Task Management
00 Ratings
9.16 Ratings
Gantt Charts
00 Ratings
9.01 Ratings
Scheduling
00 Ratings
4.53 Ratings
Workflow Automation
00 Ratings
4.52 Ratings
Mobile Access
00 Ratings
6.46 Ratings
Search
00 Ratings
6.56 Ratings
Visual planning tools
00 Ratings
10.01 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of ExpressionEngine and Ideagen Collaboration Portal
Feature
ExpressionEngine
-
Ratings
Ideagen Collaboration Portal
8.8
5 Ratings
10% above category average
Chat
00 Ratings
10.03 Ratings
Notifications
00 Ratings
4.54 Ratings
Discussions
00 Ratings
9.03 Ratings
Surveys
00 Ratings
9.01 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase
00 Ratings
10.04 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting
00 Ratings
9.01 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts
00 Ratings
10.01 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook
00 Ratings
9.02 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of ExpressionEngine and Ideagen Collaboration Portal
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
If you are sharing private information like contracts for designs and designs that aren't meant to be shared only with one client, the platform is very secure
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Huddle allows users to use the native document file types. For example, Word files are still in a Word, not a "Huddle" file version.
Huddle workspaces are invitation-only. If someone should not be in the workspace, they will not be invited and provided access to the documents. Or, they can be removed from the workspace if needed.
Communication about documents is located with the documents in a discussion thread under the document preview. Thus, email inbox clutter can be limited.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The desktop app is occasionally unreliable and it is never easy to get to the bottom of it with the tech support people...
Tasks are virtually useless as they have no context. We want tasks to be against documents so we can make our workflow more formal but they are not, so we don't use them. A reimplementation of to do and calendar facilities with files/documents as the context would make a huge difference to us.
The Huddle Office plugins are a great idea, but they cause us far too many Word and Excel crashes so we have to turn them off.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
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.
Huddle is very easy to use whether you are a new user or you have used it for years, it is an incredibly intuitive system that is so simple to teach to new users, the lock feature prevents important documents from being edited accidentally, while the edit features allow for true collaborative working
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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
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.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info