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ExpressionEngine

By EllisLab

3.7 out of 5 stars

How would you rate your experience with ExpressionEngine?

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ExpressionEngine Pros and Cons: Top Advantages and Disadvantages

Quick AI Summary Based on G2 Reviews

Generated from real user reviews

Users value the customization options of ExpressionEngine, enabling tailored designs and content without limitations. (1 mentions)
Users value the flexibility of ExpressionEngine, enabling tailored designs without restrictions on content or themes. (1 mentions)

Top Pros or Advantages of ExpressionEngine

1. Customization
Users value the customization options of ExpressionEngine, enabling tailored designs and content without limitations.
See 1 mentions

See Related User Reviews

TC

Tim C.

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5.0/5

"The Best Website Content Management System"

What do you like about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine is great for the following reasons: - It's flexible, and we can implement any design - It's highly secure with an incredible track

2. Flexibility
Users value the flexibility of ExpressionEngine, enabling tailored designs without restrictions on content or themes.
See 1 mentions

See Related User Reviews

TC

Tim C.

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5.0/5

"The Best Website Content Management System"

What do you like about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine is great for the following reasons: - It's flexible, and we can implement any design - It's highly secure with an incredible track

ExpressionEngine Reviews (55)

Reviews

ExpressionEngine Reviews (55)

3.7
55 reviews
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JC
Creative Director
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"My "go to" Content Management System loved by me and my clients."
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

The best Content Management System (CMS) around – ExpressionEngine is a powerful system built for adaptability. As a designer It offers unparalleled flexibility enabling me to build what I want rather than an other platforms that are bulky to use.

It is incredibly secure as well and has a great team that are dedicated to security monitoring any threats and releasing any updates as needed. They also have a great support system with a dedicated slack channel allowing you to converse with other developers to help with any coding issues / problems you have.

The CMS is incredibly easy to set up and get running and takes less than 5 mins. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

There was a little bit of a learning curve but the community support is amazing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

TC
Web Developer
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"The Best Website Content Management System"
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine is great for the following reasons:

- It's flexible, and we can implement any design

- It's highly secure with an incredible track record for security

- It doesn't make assumptions about the website design or content. This allows us to create exactly what we need for each website. We don't need to "overwrite" themes or default content types (e.g. - WordPress) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine is great, but it has a misperception in the marketplace as "for developers". In truth, any web CMS needs a good developer -- just an any instrument needs a good musician to play it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Doug B.
DB
Founder
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"EE - The Most Secure, Pure Content Mgmt System Out There"
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine stands out as a robust and genuine content management system (CMS), distinguishing itself from mere page builders in the web development landscape. With a focus on flexibility and extensibility, ExpressionEngine caters to the needs of developers and content creators alike, making it a versatile solution for building and managing websites.

One key differentiator is its commitment to being a true CMS rather than a page builder. ExpressionEngine empowers users to create and organize content in a structured manner, offering a sophisticated system for handling various types of data. For sites that truly care about the structure of their content, and ensuring that they can optimize for SEO, EE is the #1 choice.

EE also stands out as a pioneer in security among CMS platforms. The team managing this ensures there is a constant eye on what is both required as features, and needeed to keep it secure. Regular updates and a vigilant security team contribute to a robust defense against potential vulnerabilities, instilling confidence in both developers and site administrators.

EE remains a top choice for those seeking a genuine CMS experience, offering unparalleled flexibility, security, and a commitment to true content management. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine has a bit of a learning curve to get working. It requires some development knowledge, as it relies fully on your content and your design to power what is displayed on the front end. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

John D.
JD
Editor-in-Chief
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"ExpressionEngine helped our company thrive"
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

I find the flexibility of EE to make it the most capable CMS around. I've been using it since EE1 in 2007 and have never been disappointed with what it has given us the capability of doing on our travel-related website. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

I dislike that the tight-knit community EE had built around its product seemingly disappeared after EE3's release. I think internal company issues plagued the software for a while and some developers and community users jumped ship. EE6 is in the hands of a new private company, which has improved the quality of EE, but the community has never fully rebounded to what it was previously. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Design
AD
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Good for developers, not good for users"
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

I liked the extensibility of it and how you could modify and shape the platform to work the way you wanted it to. There were a lot of developer friendly controls Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

The platform has no thought put into it for the end-user and instead it's something that gets bolted onto the back end of a website built by boutique developers that overcharge immensely for their services. My experience with clients using it has been that they are clueless on how it works, regardless of documentation. They end up not using the contact management system, defeating the entire purpose of it Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

CP
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Expression Engine is a great platform, stay tuned for EE6"
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

I've been using Expression Engine for many years, I have experience from EE 1 to the latest install on 5 and what a journey it has been. I love being able to create fluid fields so that my users can create their own pages. I like that you're able to do segment based dynamic pages without having to faff about with pure PHP. Also Code Ignitor and Expression Engine has a lot of support forums, so I'm usually able to fix my issue without much hassle. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

Even though 6 is coming soon and by the screenshots it's looking promising, I really dislike the grid. It's not very responsive and the more fields you have; the smaller the boxes get. I built a plugin which allows me to put it in a tab view, makes it much easier for my clients to manage. Secondly, I don't like that you can't duplicate an entry! The UX of the control panel can be quite hard to explain to non-dev minded users and this can sometimes be an issue to get users to play around and learn. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

NM
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Flexible and customizable CMS"
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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sudhamsha S.
SS
Senior Software Engineer
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Great intuitive CMS"
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

- Built on a simple CodeIgniter Framework.

- Any changes needed to upgrade the system or the Core expression engine can be easily made without any issue.

- Be it simple website development or complex application, Expression engine is a breeze to use.

- It is fast and has caching features to be used

- Templates and their scalability

-You can create and run multiple sites, this is huge benefit in my opinion when you have international sites or any distributor based model

- The live preview model was a latest addition which is awesome to update the site and check if you want to see any issues

- Ability to install multiple plugins which can help you take you from zero to hundred in no time!

- Currently the software is open source, which is HUGE! I started using expression engine when it was 299 and cannot believe it is free now with the amount of features it gives! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

- Sometimes complex to build a simple plugin.

- If you just need to write a simple plugin to extract some API data, it will still take time write it

- kind of becomes slow when your database is huge (in majority of the cases caching solves this issue but plese make sure to use it in a correct way) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Dennis W.
DW
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Long time user, and still deploying it"
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

I like how ExpressionEngine hovers in the middle ground between CMS and framework. It's really easy to deploy simple administration interfaces for my clients, and the "you're on your own" approach to the public-facing frontend really gives a lot of flexibility to truly customize the platform for specific use cases. And now it's free! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

The third-party ecosystem is a little bit lacking compared to platforms like Wordpress, which may be a drawback for some, but I like how it keeps the system from being too reliant on third-party plugins and extensions, making it easier to maintain in the long term. The learning curve is also somewhat steeper, but in the long term that's worth it too. The internal search function is also a bit "cold and mechanical" (for lack of a better term) compared to the results that say, a Google site search will give you. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Christian P.
CP
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Brilliant CMS, love using it for all my clients."
What do you like best about ExpressionEngine?

Expression Engine is good for member management, create channels and gives you plenty of parameters and variables to use in the templates to create a dynamic, easy to use php website. My clients really enjoy using the fluid field type to have the ability to build their own pages, this is good for the current trends to be fully customisable. I like how easy it is to set up a new website and attach the CRM to it, I have now got a vanilla site set up so that when I go to build something new all my preferences are already there for me to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about ExpressionEngine?

I would like to be able to connect category fields via relationship field inside a fluid field. The grid field UI isn't great either. I'd like to the ability to assign member groups to entries. I would be nice to have structure included in the product, however I have created my own version. It would be good to have more form functions on the standard email plugin, I know solutions and add-ons are out there but I like have the least amount of plugins so that when it comes to upgrading the system it is a smooth process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.