Reason #237 to go with ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine may not be free, but it boasts one heckuva support staff — and that’s as much a feature as anything.
ExpressionEngine Logo

I’ve been pretty vocal concerning my love for ExpressionEngine. I’ve been using it for about two years now as my primary CMS/web publishing system, and I’ve yet to be disappointed with the decision. But I know that a lot of folks out there still aren’t convinced, especially when there are so many free, open source CMS options of note (e.g., WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!) and you have to purchase a license to get all of EE’s capabilities.

There are a number of reasons why I think that EE being commercial software is an asset, rather than a liability. And right at the top of that list is support. True, systems such as WordPress have a very large and vibrant community, which is a definite plus. But one of the things that I’ve found most valuable about EE is that, in addition to having a vibrant community of its own, it also has its own paid support staff. Folks like Sue Crocker and Robin Sowell, whose job it is to hang out on the forums and answer people’s questions all day long. And they do an absolutely bang-up job.

Case in point: I was working on an EE-powered site at my day job when I ran into a rather irksome glitch where certain templates weren’t rendering correctly under certain conditions. I tried all the usual troubleshooting measures, to no avail, and so I went to the forums. There, the EE support staff has spent the last month or so patiently working with me to isolate the solution, and as of right now, it looks like we’ve found the culprit.

Now, the reason this took a month was all due to me; oftentimes I had to put this project on the backburner because something else came up at work, thereby delaying any further progress. But whenever I posted in the forums, I could always count on getting a quick response, sometimes within 30 minutes of my post.

That level of dedicated support is, in my book, simply amazing, and as much a feature of EE as its flexible templating system, custom field capabilities, or large library of third-party add-ons. And it just confirms my belief that EE truly is a superlative CMS choice.

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