--- title: ExpressionEngine Reviews meta_title: 'ExpressionEngine Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 56 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how ExpressionEngine works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 3.7 review_count: 56 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-04' parent_category: name: Content Management url: https://www.g2.com/categories/content-management --- # ExpressionEngine Reviews **Vendor:** EllisLab **Category:** [Web Content Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/web-content-management) **Average Rating:** 3.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 56 ## About ExpressionEngine ExpressionEngine is a and secure open-source content management system (CMS) designed to empower developers and content creators to build and manage dynamic websites with ease. Its flexible architecture allows users to organize content into customizable channels, facilitating the creation of diverse content types such as blogs, news articles, product descriptions, and more. With a user-friendly interface, ExpressionEngine enables seamless content editing directly from the front end, eliminating the need to navigate complex control panels. The platform's robust templating system supports the integration of HTML, JavaScript, PHP, and ExpressionEngine tags, providing developers with the tools to craft unique and engaging web experiences. Key Features and Functionality: - Flexible Content Channels: Organize and manage various content types through customizable channels, allowing for tailored content structures. - Front-End Editing: Edit content directly on the live site, streamlining the content management process without accessing the backend. - Comprehensive Templating System: Utilize a powerful templating engine that supports multiple programming languages and ExpressionEngine tags for dynamic content rendering. - Custom Fieldtypes: Choose from over 20 different field types to capture and display content in ways that best suit your website's needs. - Entry Cloning: Duplicate existing entries with a single click to expedite content creation and maintain consistency. - User Management: Efficiently manage different types of members and user roles to control access and permissions. - Multi-Site Management: Administer multiple websites from a single control panel, with the option to share design elements, content, and user data across sites. - Live Preview: Preview content changes in real-time within the site's design before publishing, ensuring accuracy and visual appeal. - Add-On Prolets: Extend site functionality by integrating add-ons that can be accessed directly from the front end. - Robust Security: Benefit from a proven track record of rock-solid security, with no serious security issues reported in its 15-year history. Primary Value and Solutions Provided: ExpressionEngine offers a comprehensive solution for building and managing websites that require flexibility, security, and ease of use. Its customizable content channels and templating system allow developers to create unique web experiences without being constrained by rigid structures. The front-end editing capabilities and live preview features enhance the efficiency of content management, enabling users to make real-time updates with confidence. Additionally, the platform's strong security measures and active community support provide peace of mind for users, ensuring that their websites remain secure and up-to-date. Whether for small personal blogs or large-scale enterprise sites, ExpressionEngine delivers the tools and flexibility needed to bring any web project to life. ## ExpressionEngine Reviews ### 1. Flexible and customizable CMS **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nelly M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 27, 2020 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** ExpressionEngine is an extremely flexible platform. You can create your markup and structure your site as you want. It is very secure, and it is constantly updated it to keep it so. It recently became open source, so now you don't have to pay a license. **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** Some features can't be obtained out of the box, you need to purchase add-ons or develop them yourself. It needs add-ons to be truly multi-language. The community is not what it used to be, but we hope it grows again now that EE is open source. **Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:** ExpressionEngine is open source, but consider paying for a support plan, specially if it's your first time implementing it. **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used ExpressionEngine to create sites of all sizes with custom designs. My customers love the ease of use and flexibility of the CMS. Features like search, categories, member management are built-in. There are e-commerce solutions too. ### 2. Used to be great, not the case anymore **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Naga P. | Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 24, 2020 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** It has a great combination of power and flexibility. Y Anything that ExpressionEngine can't do out-of-the-box, can be done with add-ons, of which there are many (both free and paid) **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** I don't think it is evolved well and not to mention some bugs not getting resolved in time. Each project tends to have a license overhead now that have to spend lots of money depending on the complexity **Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:** Users who have voiced opinions because of the direction and progress that EE has taken, that doesn't make it a bad CMS and it continues to be a leading commercial offering. **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** Obviously it saved lots of my time when developing tasks related to user management, custom pages, and user subscription My role is to build the backend custom modules for registering the members using CRM data and my account module to manage their payments, notifications, news etc. • Developed Custom Signup Expression engine module with the data from, nested comments for each item in an entry. • Developed Custom Field types for postcode finder, bank card details look up and also custom vector map. • Developer custom plugins for events, calendars, to also communicate with Dynamics CRM. • Using phpodata SDK to read the data from CRM to read the club users. • Updating the Dynamics CRM using SOAP API. • Developing EE module for Nested commenting system with voting and reporting. ### 3. A useful CMS for PHP developers but expensive addons **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pazbi Z. | Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 25, 2020 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** I found the use of templates with dynamic content allowed for the creation of tens to hundreds of pages to be created very easily. For complex websites with multiple content types, I haven't found an alternative that quite compares to the functionality featured in EE. **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** Addons are very expensive compared to alternatives. The most E-commerce solutions for EE are over $900. **Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:** I would recommend it for confident HTML and PHP developers who want a customizable experience and not worried about costs. **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** Live Preview is one that saves so much time compared to WordPress or straight HMTL development. ### 4. One of the best CMS I have seen and it will surely grow more in future. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shubham Kumar S. | Web Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2020 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** Multiple website, security and customization. **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** Unavailability of themes, not that great seo and since the forum is not that big so it is not easy to find out the solution for any issue or doubt. **Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:** There is need of improvement in help and support. And as well as for managing SEO. **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am handling my own forum and blog too. There I have found it is more user-friendly, customizable and security is too good. ### 5. Use Expression engine **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ruma S. | Business Development Executive, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 13, 2020 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** The expression engine is a great platform to work in as it makes your website more secure and versatile with strong coding and customization. It always works best for business websites, Industrial websites have good plugins too. **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** It requires a bit time as the website you build is strong so for better things you always consume better time and this is it. **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** It doesn't allow for hacking. Makes your website more secure ### 6. Not the best but a viable alternative to WordPress **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Siminiciuc A. | Web Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 16, 2020 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** As a developer, when some client asks if there is an alternative of WordPress that he can use I recomend ExpressionEngine. **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** The documentation is not very well done. It should be improved. **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** In general smaller sites that are less dynamic. ### 7. The fast extendable CMS implementation (for PHP development) **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 12, 2020 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** Its easy templating system and channel system is the most expressive feature. Not yet trying this for a huge database but it performs well in term of speed and reliability. **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** It needs a proper PHP and HTML skill for the good website development will be an advantage for CI users **Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:** Security concern for companies with such security consideration level **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** Security concerns for user management handled easily. ### 8. EE: Easy Fire posting, hard for design **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 23, 2020 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** How easy it is to post things like blog posts or to create new pages. **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** I disliked how difficult it was to create dynamic responsive webpages, and lack of ability to design new pages easily **Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:** Making it a little bit more like wordpress or square space **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** The need for a website that is a benefit to the org, it’s grassroots, and funders ### 9. User Friendly **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robin C. | Author, Marketing and Advertising, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 28, 2018 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** I love the easy interface to update our sites. **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** Sometimes it can be a little "chunky" and slow **Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:** Once the system is in place, our tech team was able to "train" us no-techie people to update the system fairly easily. **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** Utilize EE for our business website as well as for our event registration system. It has allowed us to take on some of the design elements to free up our actual tech team. ### 10. A nice alternative CMS **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kristen B. | Digital Content Strategist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2016 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** I have found EE to be highly extendable. We have member-specific content, discussion forums, wikis, and a ratings system (in addition to regular site content) all running on ExpressionEngine. The support is top notch. We pay for the silver support plan ($49/mo) and it is 100% worth it. The ExpressionEngine support folks are knowledgeable and speedy with their responses. I have never actually expedited a ticket because I know I will have a reply within a few hours by filing a regular ticket. EE 3 has a more user-friendly interface for site admins (compared to EE 2). **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** There are so many settings that can be customized, sometimes it's difficult to remember where certain settings live. Of course, EE is well documented so it's usually easy to look up the answer (or if all else fails, file a support ticket). **Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:** I have found EE to be a great alternative for those considering WordPress or Drupal. Take a look at all 3 and consider how customizable you want your installation to be. If you are willing to pay a little extra per month for the EE support plan, it is totally worth it, and the support techs can even help with implementation of premium add-ons, etc. **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** We wanted something that was more secure and with better support than some of the open source options out there. EE makes it easy for us to run a membership-based site where we can control what content is visible to site members vs. guests. ### 11. Powerful, flexible, extensible CMS for folks who have outgrown WordPress. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ben S. | Principal, Internet, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 07, 2016 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** ExpressionEngine should be evaluated from two perspectives. DEVELOPMENT ExpressionEngine is a design- and content-agnostic CMS. What does this mean? Unlike WordPress and some other CMS, ExpressionEngine adapts to your design rather than the reverse. It is template-drive, not theme-driven, and your templates may contain any code you want, including JavaScript, HTML, XML, JSON, etc. It is a powerful tool for developing customized websites without compromising on layout or features. Once you get comfortable with its template and content scheme, you'll be able to develop anything from a ten-page brochureware site to a 1,000 page news aggregator. CONTENT EDITING ExpressionEngine offers an intuitive content management experience for users. In our experience, content editors enjoy ExpressionEngine's ease of use, as long as the developer takes the time to set it up correctly. **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** * ExpressionEngine's loyalty to its legacy codebase creates extra work for developers. * Too much reliance on third-party add-ons to accomplish tasks that are built in to other CMS. * Updating process is a headache. **Recommendations to others considering ExpressionEngine:** This CMS is best suited to higher-budget, custom websites. If you want a template-driven, somewhat generic site that just works, and/or you have a small budget, stick with WordPress or similar software. On the other hand, if you have a solid budget, clear planning process, and professional design you'd like to implement, ExpressionEngine is a strong contender. Unsure what's best? Hire a developer to spend a few hours walking your web or marketing team through the software, showing both the development aspects and the content editor's perspective. This is the fastest way to get a sense of ExpressionEngine's value to your business. **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** As a branding, web design and development shop, Versa Studio has created and supported over 50 ExpressionEngine-driven sites. It's been our go-to CMS for 9 years, our key software for creating sites that support our clients' business goals. Our clients benefit from ExpressionEngine's ability to adapt to their business goals, as expressed in design, features and content structure. ### 12. Solid CMS **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2016 **What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?** Easy to use once configured, lots of developer options for custom implementations **What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?** Sometimes confusing UI, need a developer for many plugins & customization (which is only kind of a drawback as it does allow powerful customization). **What problems is ExpressionEngine solving and how is that benefiting you?** Website administration, lead generation, online documentation, customer support. We've been able to enable chat through the website, develop thought leadership via blog and content, and generate demand/leads via product info. ## ExpressionEngine Discussions - [Is ExpressionEngine dead?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-expressionengine-dead) - 1 comment - [Why use ExpressionEngine?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/why-use-expressionengine) - 1 comment - [View ExpressionEngine pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/expressionengine/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=4§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-06+12%3A41%3A36+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=d722410c-0fea-479c-8391-29e482278128&secure%5Btoken%5D=20425ec3b37cedc28fa8139b8ac3020a09f0f8a82d11906f5ce73d6dbf3961a7&format=llm_user) ## ExpressionEngine Features **Content** - Content Authoring - Rich Text Editor - Versioning - Plug-ins/Widgets/Apps - Approval Process - Content Scheduling - Asset Management - Internal Search - Content Repository - SEO Management - eCommerce Management - Forms Management - Campaign Management - Media Management - Drag & Drop Editor - Audio Editor **Design** - Breadth of Pre-Built Templates - Mobile - Branding/Themes - Customization **Platform** - User Community - SEO - Flexible Navigation Structures - User, Role, and Access Management - Enterprise Scalability - Internationalization - Dashboards and Reports - API / Integrations **Agentic AI - Web Content Management** - Cross-system Integration - Natural Language Interaction - Social Media Integration **Additional Functionality** - AI/Machine Learning - Reporting/Analytics - Collaboration Tools - Image Editing - Website Publishing Options - Chatbot - Content Publishing Options - Text Editing - Access Control - Website Accessibility Tools - Content Delivery - Content Personalization - Configurable Workflow - Generative AI - Alerts/Notifications - Video Editing - AI Copilot - Performance Testing - Activity Monitoring - Multi-Channel Distribution ## Top ExpressionEngine Alternatives - [Craft CMS](https://www.g2.com/products/craft-cms/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (48 reviews) - [Drupal](https://www.g2.com/products/drupal/reviews) - 3.9/5.0 (406 reviews) - [WordPress.org](https://www.g2.com/products/wordpress-org/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (9,389 reviews)