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ExpressionEngine vs. Ideagen Collaboration Portal

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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

    Ideagen Collaboration Portal

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/AIdeagen 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
    ExpressionEngineIdeagen 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
    ExpressionEngineIdeagen Collaboration Portal
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    ExpressionEngineIdeagen 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 permissions10.036 Ratings00 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
    API9.025 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language9.023 Ratings00 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 editor10.033 Ratings00 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness9.135 Ratings00 Ratings
    Admin section7.135 Ratings00 Ratings
    Page templates10.030 Ratings00 Ratings
    Library of website themes7.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design10.018 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publishing workflow9.028 Ratings00 Ratings
    Form generator9.021 Ratings00 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 taxonomy8.128 Ratings00 Ratings
    SEO support10.028 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bulk management6.230 Ratings00 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions8.035 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community / comment management8.132 Ratings00 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 Management00 Ratings9.16 Ratings
    Gantt Charts00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Scheduling00 Ratings4.53 Ratings
    Workflow Automation00 Ratings4.52 Ratings
    Mobile Access00 Ratings6.46 Ratings
    Search00 Ratings6.56 Ratings
    Visual planning tools00 Ratings10.01 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
    Chat00 Ratings10.03 Ratings
    Notifications00 Ratings4.54 Ratings
    Discussions00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
    Surveys00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Internal knowledgebase00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Integrates with GoToMeeting00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Integrates with Outlook00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
    File Sharing & Management
    Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of ExpressionEngine and Ideagen Collaboration Portal
    Feature
    ExpressionEngine
    -
    Ratings
    Ideagen Collaboration Portal
    7.6
    6 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Versioning00 Ratings9.16 Ratings
    Video files00 Ratings7.35 Ratings
    Audio files00 Ratings6.45 Ratings
    Document collaboration00 Ratings6.56 Ratings
    Access control00 Ratings6.56 Ratings
    Advanced security features00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Integrates with Google Drive00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Device sync00 Ratings7.34 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    ExpressionEngineIdeagen Collaboration Portal
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    Flock
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    ExpressionEngineIdeagen Collaboration Portal
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (64 ratings)
    9.1
    (6 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.2
    (36 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    7.0
    (7 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    2.8
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.2
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    6.9
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ExpressionEngineIdeagen Collaboration Portal
    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
    Read full review
    Ideagen
    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
    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
    Ideagen
    • 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.
    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
    Read full review
    Ideagen
    • 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.
    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
    Ideagen
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Ideagen
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Open Source
    Never experienced an issue like this with it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ideagen
    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
    Read full review
    Ideagen
    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
    Ideagen
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Ideagen
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Ideagen
    We liked how simple it was to use. And the feature set it offered was more in line with our needs than the alternatives we looked at
    Incentivized
    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
    Read full review
    Ideagen
    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
    Ideagen
    • This has made it a lot easier for remote workers to access important documents without needing to use the VPN at home (which does not always work).
    • It clearly shows who updated the last document and when so it is clear who you need to ask if you have questions or something.
    • We have used it in client settings, so this saves money as we do not need to request a separate client laptop or VPN token.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Ideagen Collaboration Portal Screenshots

    Screenshot of Document collaborationScreenshot of Document approval trackingScreenshot of Mobile apps that support remote productivityScreenshot of Android & iOS apps to stay connected while on the moveScreenshot of Huddle Overview