Is ExpressionEngine Worth Paying For?
If you follow Internet ramblings, you may have stumbled across this little war of words between some of the guys from Wordpress and Movable Type. All of this started with an announcement from Movable Type (here) that MT would be getting some upgrades. A shot was then fired back by Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress, and so the volley begins. The two products do the same things (basically) but one is free, the other offers paid licenses. Both sides have their fans, but usually in the end, the conversation/argument goes to, “why should I pay for MT when I can get the same things from Wordpress for free?”
Anytime there are “free” options, some people have trouble paying for an alternative. I’m not here to debate the differences between Wordpress and Movable Type, but I believe that this directly applies to ExpressionEngine.
There are a lot of free content managers. A lot. Does that mean its a good choice though? Maybe, maybe not. Here are some of the things that I’ve found with free content managers and how its different when you use a paid system such as ExpressionEngine.
1. Support. I have built many sites using free software only to hear the very loud chirping of crickets when I needed help most. The “sorry dude, I don’t know” responses are just as painful. If you are a coding god, then this may not be that big of an issue, but for everyone else, this is important. With a paid solution such as ExpressionEngine, I found a great support team and a killer forum that is quick to help. The forum is free, so one could argue that the ExpressionEngine user base is just more helpful, but, is that such a bad thing? Paying for software is what makes the official support happen. If you want to use Wordpress and you back yourself into a corner that you don’t know how to get out of, don’t think that just because they have such a huge user base that someone will have had your problem, know how to fix your problem, be willing to help you and do it.
2. Upgrades. While upgrading shouldn’t be a requirement, it also should not screw up your site when you do it. With free software, I don’t think a developer goes into it with the idea that he wants to screw up everyone’s sites. Silly developer, that would be foolish. He/they do their best to make it work for everyone. But what happens when it doesn’t? Maybe this leans back on the support issue, but you may be completely on your own for figuring it out. Didn’t do a backup before the simple 3 click upgrade? Now you are sunk. A paid solution is typically a much more controlled environment giving you better results. Have trouble with your upgrade? Contact support and get some help and avoid the, “RTF Readme n00b!!1!” replies that plague some of the free programs.
3. Features. With free software, you get features that may or may or not be good and may or may not be useful. With a paid solution, whether or not the developer’s children get to eat is determined by people buying their software. So, they obviously have a strong reason to include the best, most usable features that they can so that people will want to buy their product.
There are probably other some other great ones that I am leaving out, but these are some that I have dealt with personally. Obviously everyone has a budget so you need to do what works for your budget, but before you rule out a paid solution because there is a “free” alternative, you need to make sure that you consider the real cost of free.
The trackback URL for this entry is: Trackbacks are disabled for this entry
Trackbacks:
Comments:
Well said, while other CMS sure are free, they are far from being pain free. EE is a nice combo of predefined database structure and hooks that that are non-intrusive to plain old HTML design.
For those hungry for php and hand coding beyond HTML can easily turn pages into php project.
In other words, worth every cent if your a client(end user), admin, webdesigner or die hard programmer.
MT has a free option, even for commercial use, in the MT Open Source project. Even though the software is free though, you can opt to buy a support package. This places it in a middle ground position between WP and EE in regards to pricing model.
That said, initial pricing is only a part of the Total Cost of Ownership picture.
MT is definetly nice but you may want to read their licence agreement one more time as well as check their pricing. There is no such a thing as free comercial licence.
Total Cost of Ownership is a great topic but I think it really depends on your project and who will be maintaining the site after the initial launch.
Open Source is great if you can afford the time to code and never really call your project done and love finding security wholes on your own.
MT is one of the better Open Source platforms but I am curious to see Code Igniter and EE merged in EE 2.0.
Cost scale should read WP EE MT
Next entry: Job Posting: Convert my psd to EE
Previous entry: Site Spotlight: BestNetworkSecurity.com - Part 1
