1. Home
  2. Content Management Systems (CMS)
  3. ExpressionEngine Reviews
  4. User Review of ExpressionEngine
ExpressionEngine: The Flexible Content Management System.
July 17, 2015

ExpressionEngine: The Flexible Content Management System.

John Dezember | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

2.5.5

Modules Used

  • DataGrab
  • Discussion Forum
  • eeXam
  • Forms
  • Low Search
  • Taxonomy
  • Wygwam
  • Playa
  • Zoo Visitor
  • SEO Lite

Overall Satisfaction with ExpressionEngine

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.
  • ExpressionEngine has no preconceived ideas about how your content should look or what code is generated.
  • A robust template engine makes integrating designs and content a breeze.
  • The control panel can be customized to control what content managers have access to.
  • The upgrade process can be tedious if your site uses more than a couple of add-ons.
  • Back ups must be managed manually or by a third party system/add-on.
  • Quicker turnaround for new features and/or micro-sites.
  • Quicker content updates now that managers can update their own content.
  • WordPress,Joomla!,Mambo
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.
ExpressionEngine can literally be used for any type of site, but for a very basic site with just a few pages or if the site will primarily be used for blogging, there are better tailored solutions.

Also, you will need a developer and/or someone very familiar with content management systems to install and configure the software. There is nothing like the "WordPress famous 5 minute install" that will give you visible results very quickly.

ExpressionEngine Feature Ratings

8.3
WYSIWYG editor
6
Code quality / cleanliness
9
Admin section
9
Page templates
9
Mobile optimization / responsive design
Not Rated
8.0
Availability / breadth of extensions
9
Community / comment management
7
Not Rated
API
Not Rated
Internationalization / multi-language
Not Rated
8.0
Role-based user permissions
8
CMS programming language or framework ()
Not Rated

Using ExpressionEngine

15 - Department heads or assistants regularly login to submit content updates for approval.
1 - We have one web developer that manages ExpressionEngine. The skills required for this include experience with web servers and/or hosting environments, FTP, git (recommended), HTML, CSS, Javascript, and other related web technologies.
  • Central content repository.
  • Content update workflow and approvals.

ExpressionEngine Implementation

Ask the implementing company for references and talk to those references about their experience.
  • Professional services company
Paramore Digital of Nashville, TN was hired to implement ExpressionEngine, redesign the web site and work with us to migrate content.
Yes - 
  1. Discovery/Strategy: to gather information about our needs and form a plan of action.
  2. Information Architecture: Develop a Site-Map.
  3. Homepage Wireframe/Design
  4. Interior Wireframe/Design
  5. Front-End Development: Coding the design.
  6. Back-End Development: Installing and configuring software.
  7. Quality Control: Review the site in a test environment to ensure all features and content was in place and functional.
  8. Launch: Migrate site from test servers to live servers.
  • Gathering updated and/or accurate content from internal departments.
  • Communication with the service provider had to be scheduled and was often difficult to feel like we were on the same page.
  • The service provider was reluctant to give super-admin access to the control panel.

Using ExpressionEngine

Some areas are very easy to use, others need to be configured by users, and there are some areas that Ellis Lab needs to update.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Consistent
Convenient
Feel confident using
Slow to learn
Lots to learn
  • Login
  • User management
  • Templating
  • Upgrades, if many add-ons are installed