Expression Engine vs ModX

The biggest selling point for ModX was it’s claim that it was SEO optimized out of the box and that it was a CMS framework capable of customization and so on. When we decided to make a couple of sites in ModX, we did manage to do some crazy things with them, but it felt clunky with a lot of overhead. Granted the promise it made of SEO friendliness did hold true, its in the customization is where we werent as impressed.

Recently we decided to pick a code framework to use with our PHP based applications, and we chose the light weight Code Igniter. The fact that Expression Engine is actually built on Code Igniter makes it a very attractive solution for us because its built on a framework that we already know and use. We decided to try Expression Engine with this site, and we are very glad we did.

Now unlike ModX, Expression Engine is not free, at $250 for the commercial edition per server install, it’s comparatively expensive. But for us, that’s actually what we like about it, because although all things open source are quite awesome, the nominal fee that we pay for a product allows the product to mature faster and with a small team that can focus on building better technology.

So in a nut shell, it’s a thumbs up for EE, it’s now become the platform that we will be moving forward with, sorry ModX.