In the world of website development, if  you look for any CMS to build your website then there are three major choices ExpressionEngine, WordPress and Craft, and it is really complicated to choose that which CMS will be best suited for your website requirements.

Where should you go, you will contact to the many developers or agencies to know which will be suited best among these. And definitely, they will suggest you choose in which they are best. But the question is remained same, how would you know as being a client.

Below, I am trying to figure this out and try to help you to choose the best one.

ExpressionEngine, WordPress and Craft, all these have always been point of conversation between developers. Many coding geeks count the pros of their own technology and count the cons of other technology. This also happens with ExpressionEngine, WordPress and Craft. We can even call it a battle of ExpressionEngine VS WordPress VS Craft.

ExpressionEngine provides you complete freedom to do any kind of customization on the website. You just need to think the possible requirement which is needed and ExpressionEngine and its developers can easily convert your requirements to real world.

Let's compare ExpressionEngine VS WordPress VS Craft.

1. Customization: -

ExpressionEngine: - ExpressionEngine is one of those CMS which gives you the power of changing anything according to your taste of website. Simple means of ExpressionEngine CMS is “Forget about default categories, now it’s time to be creative.”

WordPress: - WordPress also provides customization and also provides so many prebuilt theme and plugins. But the problem is, when you have so many choices then you always stuck and bounded in the limitation that how much the selected theme or plugins can achieve your requirements and then you'll need or think with that limitations. And when you use so many plugins and theme then they have their own JS and CSS that being called on the page and that definitely reduce the page score.

Craft: - Craft has been introduced in 2013 and also the major add-on author team of ExpressionEngine pixel and tonic has developed this CMS. So, somehow you can say that the story and idea is little close to ExpressionEngine. But, not so close. It has also the powerful customization, but it is new in the development world, so you have very limited resources to take care of this. However, you can customize the pages in Craft too. Also, the craft is little expensive comparison to ExpressionEngine and WordPress.

2. Security: -

ExpressionEngine: - ExpressionEngine is known by only small community as compared to other CMS communities. Also, EE is based upon a robust PHP framework. So, it is less penetrable by hackers.

WordPress: - Due to having so many free plugin and themes, it is little easy to hack your server if you installed any unverified theme or plugin. Because, when you install plugin and themes then it also added their files in the server. For preventing this problem, WordPress provides some anti-virus plugins in the market which shows the effected files.

Craft: - It is too early to say about security as this was launched in 2013, but still as a being developer, it is little more secure because the Craft use YII framework and use twig template and the plugin that you'll use are authorized from the Craft associations.

3. Powerful CMS: -

ExpressionEngine: - ExpressionEngine is a robust and developer-oriented platform. There are so many possibilities for the one who has deep coding knowledge. ButExpressionEngine already giving you so many customization options already, like you can create channels, fields, categories, etc as per your need, without any other coding and plugins.

WordPress: - In WordPress, creating posts, fields, categories are little tricky, and you need to either use plugin or custom coding. WordPress generally used for blog type website and then again you if want to manage different kind of blogs in different post type then you'll need to do custom coding on need to use plugin. The same applies with the fields. If you want to create new fields according to your requirement then need to use plugin or custom coding.

Craft: - Craft also provides the options to create multiple channels and fields but their options are very limited. There are some fields which basically needs to any website development, but Craft doesn't give that field by default. You'll need to use plugin for the same.

4. Add-ons: -

ExpressionEngine: - Well, CMS are mostly depending on their add-ons, however there are many add-ons available in the market and they are very authorized and powerful to use on the website. And also, ExpressionEngine developer can create add-ons as per your need and it is very easy to use. In ExpressionEngine the modules are separated into plugin, module, extension and fieldtypes. The purpose behind this to separate anything and create what is needed for your requirement. If you need simple functionality to show something at the frontend only then use plugin, if you want to manage the backend, frontend, fieldtype and extension everything then create module. And if you want only extension that should work only on any event or if you just want to have a fieldtype in the backend. Which means you can manage everything in a well manner.

WordPress: - When we talk about WordPress then the add-ons only known as plugins. And the pros is that you have almost all the plugins available in the market for many purposes. But again, the pros is the main cons of WordPress, when you have so many options then always you need to think what will be the best, how much customization will be needed and also when you upgrade the WordPress version, then you'll need to upgrade all the plugin one by one when you have custom plugin or custom code in any plugin. Because these are mainly free plugins and when we come to free plugin then we can't be so much sure that these plugins will be updated time to time when we upgrade WordPress version of php version upgrade.

Craft: - Craft also provides very authorized plugin but it is little tricky to understand the purpose and when you want to customize then it is hard to understand that from where you should start. It always requires the composer update whenever you do any customization in the plugin and sometimes, if there is any error in the code then that can ruin the other things as well. So, need to be very careful when doing any custom plugin or any customization in third party plugin.

5. User Roles: -

ExpressionEngine: - In the member management, you can create many groups like admin, editor, contributor, simple members and can assign access of each thing, like channels, template, add/edit their own entries, add/edit other entries. So, you have full control on this that what access you want to share to the user or a member group.

WordPress: - By default WP treats every user as admin, so sometimes it’s complicated to enable non-editor to contribute to the site. Also, you have very limited option and by doing the custom code, you can define that what options do you want to give each member group.

Craft: - Craft have all the functionalities like ExpressionEngine in this area.

 

Conclusion:

So, there are countless comparison of these three CMS options, all have their own pros and cons but when we talk about ExpressionEngine then it feels like a freedom to do any customization and this feature makes ExpressionEngine very different to any other CMS.

It is a free CMS, so you can install this to your server and can understand that how much options you are getting by default and also you can compare this to any other CMS. Don't take my words, just install and experience this.

ExpressionEngine is leading the race here because it’s not only user-friendly but also has vigorous features. Though on the other hand, WP wins the SEO battle and also has a large community but ExpressionEngine is very close to this purpose as well. You have free hand to customize so you are very free to use and fulfill your requirement as it has many options to customize.