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
Leadpages
Score5.8 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Leadpages is a landing page software that helps to grow small businesses without tech headaches. Leadpages can be used with or without WordPress, on Leadpages' servers or on the user's own. Leadpages aims to eliminate the high cost of website developers and freelancers when creating a company's most important marketing web pages. Included in all plans: Unlimited landing pages, pop-ups, and alert bars for lead generation and sales Website builder for a…
$49
per month
Pricing
ExpressionEngine
Leadpages
Editions & Modules
License
$299.00
One Time Fee
Standard
$49
per month
Pro
$99
per month
Advanced
$399
per month
Standard Annual
$444
per year
Pro Annual
$888
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ExpressionEngine
Leadpages
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Save 25% by choosing an annual plan (3 months free). Standard ($444), Pro ($888), Advanced (Call Us)
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
It's great if you want an easy-to-use but extremely robust tool for producing effective online marketing pages since it makes production work enjoyable and inspires fresh creativity. It also offers wonderful split-testing capabilities which can enhance marketing results. But if you're looking for an out-of-the-box collection of standardized, one-size-fits-all marketing resources, you really might want to consider looking elsewhere.
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
Leadpages integrates well with many of the main software that businesses use like Infusionsoft, Hubspot, Marketo, Mailchimp, GoToWebinar, and Wordpress. This allows your landing pages to be integrated well into the other processes you have with your business.
Leadpages makes it easy to build professional looking landing pages without having to hire someone else or have coding skills. Their drag and drop builder makes it easy enough to use and get the hang of. I particularly love the hundreds of templates they provide for you to help give you ideas and get you going faster.
They also have a Leadbox function that has also been super useful in being able to get other types of forms up on our website. These forms provide some functionality that our website wouldn't have had without them.
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
While most of the editing functions are easy to figure out, some of the finer details to get spacing, sizing, alignment and layout just right can take some trial and error if you don't have formal training in the tool. A lot of the editing tools are collapsed into sections, and finding just what you're looking for can sometimes be a challenge.
I don't believe the version we used had a page optimizer or optimization score, which I have seen on other landing page builders. This may be a feature of a more premium version of the tool or may have been turned off by the product manager, but it would be a helpful feature.
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.
I would give it a 10, for me, I love all the features. For the average person, the number of choices on a landing page could create a decision paradox. Thankfully the pre-designed landing page templates do not require a lot of decisions for a landing page newbie.
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
Leadpages support is helpful, they also created many resources to help people create good funnels and learn about small things that matter when doing marketing. The affiliate program is good and could be something which pays for your subscription. People like Leadpages because its been recommended by many influencers participating in affiliate program and also because it just works without problems and does the job. But right now alternatives should be taken in consideration, as there are many other projects that could do it better and cheaper.
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
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
I have used Mailchimp for clients, and use ActiveCampaign personally for my email marketing and have used it for clients, but prefer Leadpages for the frontend of the opt-in process because of its analytics and performance metrics. Leadpages makes it super easy to see what's performing well, without having to dive into Google Analytics or aggregate any other data. Leadpages also integrates really well with WordPress, my primary platform, with opt-in forms (wayyyy better than Mailchimp).
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
Leadpages, as long as you have it set up properly, will have a quick ROI within days of your first campaign.
For those that are not familiar, it is probably best to hire someone to take over this part and still your ROI will be very quick, including the cost of this professional.
Overall, Leadpages has a very fast ROI if used and implemented in a timely manner, and used to constantly evolve what you are doing with new fresh content.
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
