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ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine

Overview

What is ExpressionEngine?

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Reliable Performance: Many users have praised the product for its reliable performance. Several reviewers mentioned that the product …
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Popular Features

View all 16 features
  • Role-based user permissions (33)
    10.0
    100%
  • Code quality / cleanliness (32)
    10.0
    100%
  • Admin section (32)
    10.0
    100%
  • Availability / breadth of extensions (32)
    8.0
    80%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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License

$299.00

Cloud
One Time Fee

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Entry Analytics EEDPX Demo

YouTube

EE Harbor's Transcribe Add-on Demo

YouTube

ExpressionEngine Demo of a Staff Section

YouTube

ExpressionEngine demo door Keesâ„¢ Internetbureau

YouTube

DevDemon's Channel Forms add-on for ExpressionEngine

YouTube

Solspace's Calendar Add-on for ExpressionEngine

YouTube
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Features

Security

This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.

10
Avg 8.0

Platform & Infrastructure

Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.

8.5
Avg 7.7

Web Content Creation

Features that support the creation of website content.

8.6
Avg 7.6

Web Content Management

Features for managing website content

9.4
Avg 7.3
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Product Details

What is ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine is an open source content management system developed by EllisLab in 2002 as a successor to pMachine Pro, a blogging system, which is written in object-oriented PHP and uses MySQL for data storage. EllisLab closed in 2018, but ExpressionEngine is still available, as an open source CMS.

With CodeIgniter, an agile, open-source framework, web professionals can use ExpressionEngine to build websites and applications. The software is meant to be useful for companies of any size and private individuals as well, and to that end it is highly customizable, and implementation may vary. Like many content management systems, various add-ons will determine what the system does, though the core features are somewhat broader than similarly classed free offerings. The Multiple Site Manager allows a user to create and manage multiple sites from a single ExpressionEngine installation. Nexcess (a partner) provides a hosting environment for an ExpressionEngine-powered website.

ExpressionEngine Video

10-Minute ExpressionEngine Primer

ExpressionEngine Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Role-based user permissions and WYSIWYG editor and Code quality / cleanliness highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of ExpressionEngine are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(86)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Reliable Performance: Many users have praised the product for its reliable performance. Several reviewers mentioned that the product consistently meets their expectations and performs well in various scenarios. Ease of Use: The ease of use is a common pro mentioned by several customers. Users appreciate how intuitive and user-friendly the product is, making it easy to navigate and operate without any hassle or confusion. Great Customer Support: Some users have expressed their satisfaction with the great customer support provided by the company. They have found the support team to be responsive, helpful, and efficient in resolving any issues or inquiries they had.

Cons:

  1. Quality Issues: Some users have experienced quality issues with the product, including defects and malfunctions. Several reviewers have mentioned receiving damaged items or products that broke shortly after purchase.
  2. Lack of Customer Support: Many customers have expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of responsive customer support. Several users have reported difficulties in contacting the company for assistance or resolving issues related to their purchase.
  3. Limited Features/Functionality: Some users feel that the product lacks certain features or functionalities they expected. Reviewers have mentioned specific features missing from the product, such as advanced customization options or compatibility with other devices, which have impacted their overall experience.
  1. ExpressionEngine is recommended by many users as a great and promising update in the CMS market. It is praised for being free, open-source, and supported by a helpful developer community. Users suggest exploring extensions in the market to enhance its capabilities.

  2. Improvement is needed in areas such as help and support, as well as managing SEO. Those concerned about security should consider alternative solutions. Reading the developer documentation thoroughly is advised, along with using EE Harbor extensions.

3.ExpressionEngine is suitable for creating different channels and effectively managing website content. It is favored by confident HTML and PHP developers seeking customization options. The platform is considered user-friendly and secure, with the ability to handle large data or databases through proper caching.

While some express concerns about the direction and progress of ExpressionEngine, many still regard it as a leading commercial offering. It is advised to carefully consider project requirements and customization needs when choosing between ExpressionEngine and other CMS platforms like WordPress or Drupal. The value of the EE support plan and the helpfulness of the community are also mentioned as factors to consider for web agencies.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 61)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Doug Black | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use ExpressionEngine to create bespoke, powerful, and secure websites for our clientele. It allows us to create highly extensible sites that focus on the client's content, the functionality that the client needs, and the direct business requirements for each client, all while providing a beautiful user experience (for both front-end and backend users) and the most secure CMS on the market.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ExpressionEngine has completely transformed the way we manage our website. This is our first CMS and it has been a life-saver when it comes to making instant updates or creating/editing content across all of the different pages. We have specific templates designed to fit our brand, our products, and our wireframe.
Robert Bruce Goggins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ExpressionEngine is taking care of the day-to-day content input and delivery from several departments within the organization. I recommended ExpressionEngine as an alternate/replacement CMS to my colleagues, and the organization as a whole, due to the need to migrate away from the existing CMS. ExpressionEngine resolved a number of issues, including usability, reliability, and consistency in regards to delivering content accurately, something the previous CMS did not.
Ben Seigel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I run a web agency which uses ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS for our small business and organization clients. Both are more refined, flexible, and powerful alternatives to the default to WordPress. Both allow development of custom, non-theme-based websites to fit clients' specific business requirements.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I worked at an advertising agency that used ExpressionEngine for all their client websites; it was their CMS of choice. All of the developers installed it, set up custom fields and made it meet the client's requests, each site is fully customized for the client. We had a boilerplate set up that enabled us to set up a new install quickly.
Claudia Lorena Aguilar Ayala | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My husband and I are software developers. We work for companies with websites built in Drupal, ExpressionEngine, WordPress or any php based platform. There is one company using ExpressionEngine for their website. They have forms, user registration, and data display.
February 19, 2016

Great For Novices

Lauren Merka | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used ExpressionEngine to manage the CMS of one of our smaller sites. It was to be used by a team of writers to collaborate on various topics. They needed to be able to upload images and edit in an efficient manner. We needed a quick way to get a site up that had a built in blog tool and user management.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used ExpressionEngine as our primary CMS for building web client solutions. Most of these solutions were created with fairly large data architectures, giving full control to various levels of [client] users to make changes to (and organize) data site wide. The biggest solution this offered was easy, quick, reliable content creation and editing for the user.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use ExpressionEngine as our enterprise CMS solution for the entire university. We host over 10,000 pages, support over 75 departments, train and manage over 200 editors, and serve over 4 million page views per week. After evaluating many commercial CMS solutions, ExpressionEngine was selected for several reasons. First, it was far more affordable than other choices presented to us. Second, our in house skill set was in php development in a LAMP stack environment. Third, it is easily extensible, allowing us to develop custom solutions in house and not be reliant on only solutions provided by the vendor. Out of the box, ExpressionEngine is extremely flexible in regards of how you decide to display cont in the presentation layer.

ExpressionEngine's affordability and flexibility have allowed us to continually enhance our web presence and use the system to build several stand alone web applications.
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ExpressionEngine was used by the marketing department who is the business unit responsible for the company's web presence. The only users in the organization were myself and a few others in the marketing department. The others had access only to post and edit entries in certain areas of the site, where I had access to, and was in charge of all areas of the site and further development. It was used regularly for news releases and updating content.
Mike Griffiths | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used ExpressionEngine to run our news website. We took advantage of the CMS tools that ExpressionEngine offered and used many add-ons and modules to accomplish what we wanted to do. The entire organization was based around the development of the website that was powered by ExpressionEngine. Without the CMS tools, we would not have been able to easily publish our content.
Hercules Schonfeldt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
The software's administrative features include admin logs, site membership, searchable (and search-and-replace) content forums, data export, a blacklist/whitelist module, SQL and extension manager, which are all tools that come standard with this content management system. In fact, Expression Engine is equipped with the full complement of management elements we looked for in CMS software.
Lee Whitworth | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized

Satdaya is a creative services firm that includes web development among our services. We recommend and use ExpressionEngine to our clients when their projects and IT needs require more flexibility than what most other content management systems can offer. D&D Technologies is one of those clients, and they have been with us and using Expression Engine since version 1.x! We have also built our firm's project management system with ExpressionEngine, and our software as a service venture, Eventida, also uses it.

ExpressionEngine is unique in that it allows you to build your own content structure to fit, manipulate, and output your information exactly the way you want. Its template structure is like a blank canvas - any HTML, any CSS, any Javascript, any PHP can be used within the templates any way you'd like. Therefore, it is a viable solution to many business problems that require managing and displaying information online.

Brennan Sang | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use ExpressionEngine to build websites for several clients. For anything other than a very simple blog site, I recommend ExpressionEngine. With a few essential plugins, it's easy to train clients to use; the documentation is great and once you get the hang of the templating syntax, it's very easy to crank out custom sites quickly.
Rachel Rine | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company uses ExpressionEngine as an engine for our larger web development projects. It allows for a very custom experience and has an extensive library of modules and add-ons, making almost anything possible. We have quite a bit of experience using the product, so development generally goes quickly and we trust the product to deliver for our clients.
Jeremy Troxell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I currently use ExpressionEngine for my business website, and as the primary CMS for my clients. It solves a multitude of problems. As a stable platform it allows me to build a very flexible website for my clients; EE (ExpressionEngine) is so flexible that I can build the entire site that is editable by the client or down to just the content. Feature wise EE has powerful plugins which can be installed giving the CMS even more capability. My clients love being able to go in and add/edit products, services, or even staff members to their sites. The language that EE uses is easy to learn and understand, what would take several lines in other languages can be accomplished with only one in EE. Security wise, I am able to develop roles so that I can assign only certain content to be editable by different people. Training my clients on ExpressionEngine is easy as well, if they can fill out a form, they can use EE. I will also choose ExpressionEngine as the CMS for myself, and my clients.
July 21, 2015

Beginner!

Kelley Leonard | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use ExpressionEngine for our web site, our blog and all our web updates and management of in-house image and text changes. Since it's tied directly to the web site, so long as the web hosting company is up, we are able to log in and manage the site. We are able to log in anywhere in the world so long as there is Wi-Fi service so it’s not tied directly to a hard-wired system.


Todd Richards | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
National Network (aka NNEPA) is a national membership organization of estate planning attorneys. We needed a new members-only website to replace our seriously outdated website in which we made all of our updates manually. Already having significant experience with ExpressionEngine, it was an obvious choice for me as I knew it could handle the thousands of entries we already had, and the thousands more we would be adding. In addition to our large library of resources and training tools, it handles our member logins, event calendar and more. We will soon be adding a store so members can make their purchases online. The website will also drive a new front-end recruiting area to help grow our membership.
John Dezember | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ExpressionEngine powers our college's main web site as well as online training modules, event and ancillary sites. ExpressionEngine's flexibility allows us to publish a variety of content types and designs to our web site and other internal systems. User control and access to manage, update, and approve content changes is also a great benefit.
Samuel King | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
eHouse Studio is a digital marketing agency that specializes in medium to large web site design and development. ExpressionEngine is our content management system of choice for these sites due to its ease of use, flexibility, and extensibility.
Chris Lagasse | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

ExpressionEngine was one of the alternatives that we used separate from WordPress. It was a product that we used at Big Sea when WordPress wasn't sufficient for the client's needs.

ExpressionEngine was our go to for clients that needed a heavily robust site without default bells and whistles. These projects included a large number of different streams of data (blog, staff members, locations, news, departments) all with interconnectivity in a way that was quick to set up.

The primary downside to ExpressionEngine is that it is a bare minimum out of the box, and that it essentially requires third party extensions in order for it to be efficient. However, this is a plus when you want to clean up the bells and whistles in the admin to only the essentials that the client will eventually need.

I love the power of ExpressionEngine, but it's usually way more (less?) than we need for our projects, as it takes longer to set up the initial configuration. The handling of the theme is actually far more to my liking over WordPress, as literally every file you create is created for YOU, and not because the theme requires it.

Steve Garcia | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
620 Studio uses ExpressionEngine for both the company website and is the default content management system we use when building websites for other companies. It allows us the ability to design and build websites without any limitations to pre-existing templates or requiring us to build our HTML files just to take them apart again to fit into PHP templates; our code and designs stay completely intact. ExpressionEngine has the flexibility to create any type of website from the ground up; it's a giant box of sand with an arsenal of tools and I can build any type of castle I want for us and our client.
Rachael Swogger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We're a web design agency, and we use ExpressionEngine to help our clients keep an updated website full of content and images. Some of our team members set up the backend to adopt our design and development features, and some team members simply upload all of the website content and do some Q/A testing and editing. ExpressionEngine is great because it's easy to learn and easy to use once you learn it. Therefore, it makes it easy to get everything up on the site and enables simple collaboration and editing among team members and clients.
CJ Williams | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use ExpressionEngine as a CMS for our public website, http://bacterin.com. The biggest issue I have with ExpressionEngine is the lack of current documentation and third party module/plugin support. I find WordPress to be a much more simple solution to CMS with a much larger community. I do like how clean ExpressionEngine code is, but that simply can't outweigh the cons of the product.
Eric Nance | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use ExpressionEngine as a tool in my arsenal to provide web design and development services to clients. I've found that it is an extremely flexible and scalable CMS solution for a large number of web application needs. ExpressionEngine is a blank canvas upon which my clients can build their web-based marketing and business solutions.
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