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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

(1-1 of 1)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
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.
  • The blog tool was decent.
  • Managing users was easy.
  • It was difficult to alter functionality in the admin section. For example, we needed multiple-file uploading and in order to do this the templates had to be directly altered. This direct manipulation of templates makes it hard to upgrade the version without losing custom changes. Same goes for implementing custom file storage.
ExpressionEngine is better for a company that doesn't have a huge user base or any previously existing database/file storage in place. It's better suited for a company more novice than we are.
Web Content Creation (4)
65%
6.5
WYSIWYG editor
60%
6.0
Code quality / cleanliness
50%
5.0
Admin section
80%
8.0
Page templates
70%
7.0
Web Content Management (5)
30%
3.0
Content taxonomy
30%
3.0
SEO support
20%
2.0
Bulk management
40%
4.0
Availability / breadth of extensions
10%
1.0
Community / comment management
50%
5.0
Platform & Infrastructure
N/A
N/A
Security (1)
100%
10.0
Role-based user permissions
100%
10.0
CMS programming language or framework
N/A
N/A
  • It allowed us to launch a new site very quickly.
  • It was tedious to make changes to functionality that wasn't module/plugin based.
I wasn't in charge of selecting this product. On our other site we have a very robust custom built CMS that's much easier to make changes to.
6
Content producers.
1
Must be competent in PHP and reading other people's code.
  • Uploading/creating new articles.
  • Managing existing content.
  • Adding new users to create content.
  • The ability to create your own plugins has been helpful.
  • At this time, there aren't any.
The site we used it for has been put on the back burner and is no longer being updated due to resource constraints and difficulty found using the product.
No
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
Something that we could get up and running fast and had good security for user access.
I wouldn't use this product for another site we wanted to create. Our team is used to being able to request new features and get things exactly how they want. This product was too cumbersome to customize.
No
I'm a software engineer so I'm used to being able to resolve issues on my own. There should be sufficient documentation that exists to help me troubleshoot any issues we encounter. Premium support is for people without any technical abilities or are too scared to touch a computer. It didn't apply for us.
Not sure what is meant by support. I mainly searched for documentation to attempt to sort any issues out. Mainly trying to figure out how the hell the plug ins and caching worked. I was able to find most things I needed because they were so surface. Other things were more difficult.
No
I don't think I ever turned to EllisLab for support. We needed things to move quickly so usually it's faster for me to try to figure it out myself than submit a ticket and hope that they get around quickly. If it turned out they didn't then I would have wasted time waiting.
  • Adding or removing users.
  • Tag management became a huge issue. The more tags that were added the slower the dashboard ran b/c it was trying to load in EVERYTHING instead of a paginated approach.
  • Modifying the system was next to impossible. It was so cumbersome to use our file management system.
I'm not sure how to answer this since I'm coming from the perspective of a programmer, and not a content editor. The content team complained about how cumbersome it was to have to upload images one at a time instead of being able to upload multiple images into a blog at once.
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.
Never experienced an issue like this with it.
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.
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