Drupal vs ExpressionEngine - comparison
Recently one client ask me to do comparison of Drupal and ExpressionEngine, two well know CMS. Comparison lasted 3-4 days and it was also informative for me. Before that, I never heard about EE - it appears it is commercial CMS that is very capable and it was intersting to see how Drupal will compete with commercial product.
In the end I have concluded that Drupal is better :)) but I have decided to put my research on blog so others can read it and put comments - 3-4 days is not enough to study complex system like EE is so it is likely that I have created some errors in comparison. I am also very interested to hear other people opinions about EE, Drupal and what the others think about the qualities of them (especially, which one is considered as 'better').
Content:
- Introduction
- Background research
- Code review
- Basic using
- Comparison of some of important EE vs Drupal features
- Social networking features
- Security
- Site reviews
- Conclusion
- References
Drupal vs ExpressionEngine
Subject of this document is comparison of two well known and feature rich CMS and web development frameworks Drupal and ExpressionEngine.
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Important note - please understand that this comparison is very personal and subjective. I have long experience with Drupal, but EE is completely new to me. Also I don't have much time to test EE - most of EE review in this article is base of setting basic EE installation on my comp, reading lots of docs on EE site and watching video tutorials. Research lasted for 3 days. So I can make errors in regards to EE because this is a new system to me and I am subjective.
Background research
Both Drupal and EE are already present for some time on the scene. Drupal is little older - Drupal started in 2001, EE in 2003.
Both has company support behind it. EE is commercial product from a start with Elis Lab behind it. Drupal was community project for long time, but last year Drupal founder Dries created Acquia - company that will offer commercial services for Drupal.
Drupal is open source project, EE is not.
Drupal has much larger community support - for example there are many more contribution developers that are doing Drupal programing - so for example there are 1940 modules for Drupal and only 135 for EE.
In 2007 Drupal gained tremendous push. it was winner of several awards, and many big corporations started using it for their products. I don't know the state of EE in 2007.
Simple googling for this two CMS is like this:
- Drupal 18,700,000 Google results
- ExpressionEngine 1,060,000 Google results
Paper books resources - quick search on amazon.com reveals that there are 8 books for Drupal and 0 (none) books for EE.
Conclusion: I would say that both CMS have very good background - they have great communities and also companies behind them. But Drupal has much larger community, and many more third party modules (by 14x). It is open source and free. It beets EE on Google results also by 20x. So my vote goes to Drupal here.
Code review
note: I do not have time to check actual source code of EE (this would take to much time) so this part of my review can't be considered as relevant in every technical detail.
They are modular&extensible, and have clean separation of data and representing data to user (Drupal themes or EE templates).
It seems that Drupal has better JavaScript support (is using jQuery in it core from version 5). EE will support have build in core support for jQuery in version 2.
Drupal is also API frameworks. That mean that developer also can create web applications with it. EE is modular but it seems that it primary purpose is to be only CMS platform.
I think that Drupal is better framework for developing web applications - it seems to me that EE has good foundation for creating extension but its primary goal is to be very good and extensible CMS. Drupal is CMS but on the same time it can be transformed to other area.
But Elis Lab is working on EE 2 - that version will be based on CodeIgnaiter (Elis Lab framework for developing web application), so I believe that in the future EE 2 will probably offer same level of extensibility like Drupal is know.
Conclusion: can't be done. estimation is that both systems are good in their respecitive areas.
Basic using
Both systems are easy to install.
Backends are different. Drupal do not use different frontend and backend (although this is supported). EE use different backend (control panel - similar to WordPress, Joomla...). Many systems use different frontend and backend, but I have found that Drupal approach is more intuitive and faster for learning - it is very simple to post blog or page in Drupal, two clicks and content filling
and thats it - and you don't need to know anything about Drupal to achieve
IN EE, this involves some initial learning and more clicking but really that is not a blocking point.
Conclusion: for install and basic using/management both system plays very well. Theirs approach and philosophy are different (frontend and backend in EE and only one view in Drupal) but i think overall it is a matter of taste - i just can't say whose approach is the better one.
Compassion of some of important EE vs Drupal features
Drupal node and CCK vs EE weblogs and custom fields. Actually this is a same thing. Drupal node is equal to EE weblogs - this is a container for information. CCK is equal to custom fields, but there are differences in functionality. Both Drupal node and EE weblog are flexible and allow easy creation of new content types. In Drupal, CCK is third party module (it is not shipped in core system, but from version 7 it will be in the core), in EE custom fields are in the core system. CCK is created with extensibility in mind - there are more then 15-20 different fields admin can assign to node; on the other hand EE custom fields support 5 different fields, and in module section there is 1-2 more field that can be installed.
So on the one side custom fields in EE are build in core and in Drupal is not (but it will be in next version). On the other hand Drupals CCK has more power then EE custom fields. From “easy of use” view I think that both systems are relatively easy to use.
Drupal themes/regions/blocks vs EE templates/tags - visual part of site - representing data to user.
Well this is a difficult section. In order to really compare this I would need at least 2-3 days just to learn EE templates/tags in deep. Anyway here is a situation - Drupal and EE take very different approach here. EE has very nice tag language and Drupal has powerful callback system - when developing templates in EE, a developer needs the knowledge of html/css and EE tags language (but for doing anything more complex probably php is needed); when developing themes in Drupal developer needs to know html/css and Drupal php api. Also templates development is in EE integrated in system and in Drupal you use external php editor.
I really do not want to go further in this (I just don't have much data on EE side). Lets just say that I believe (based on all research and web site I have seen) that both systems are very capable of visualizing data in many different ways from basic to very complex and both are very powerful in this area.
Wiki - Drupal has no apparent direct wiki support - there is nothing that is called wiki in it. EE has wiki module that behaves like any other wiki, and it is feature rich. Drupal has its own wiki approach - everything in Drupal can be edited by multiple users (there is protection when two or more users edit same content), there is a revision&diff system, books can be used to group many pages into one section with subsections, there are third party plugins that allows users to use wiki syntax when writing content, and so on. So in the end both systems support wikis, theirs approach is different but on the end functionality is the same.
Blogging - both system has nice blogging capabilities. One strange thing I have noticed in EE is that it don't allow all users to write blogs, just admins. Drupal on other hand don't have that kind of limitation - it is full and powerful blogging platform and one of the foundation of Drupal social networking features.
Books - Books are one thing that I like in Drupal - they allow users to organize content in tree structure. From what I have seen in EE there is no such thing, but EE does have page relations and with it (and probably with wiki module) its possible to achieve similar behavior.
Forums - EE do not have forum build in core, but it does have first part module for that - it seams that EE forum module is very feature rich. Drupal have simple&lighter but very capable forum module build in core. Drupal also have modules to integrate more powerful forum (vBulletin, SMF, PHPBB) systems in it if that is needed.
Administration
- Both system offers nice member and roles (in EE called groups) management.
- Menu system – Drupal has powerful menu system build in it. I didn't have time to figure how menus are handled in EE, but looking to web site's it is certainly that it can be done. Need more data for this.
- Members profiles - Drupal also offers customizable members profiles (ability to add custom fields to member data), EE do not have this
- neither system offers user level permission (only role/group level). but Drupal have ACL community module for this
- views&panels - this are Drupal specific features - it gives admins ability to change data representation and layouting without programing - everything is done in system over web browser. From what I have seen EE do not offer this kind of functionality.
Conclusion: both systems are feature rich CMSes. On some parts (like visual representation of data) their approach is completely different but that does not mean either system is less powerful. I would say that EE core is more feature rich, and to achieve the same level of CMS functionality admin needs to install community modules in Drupal. But Drupal offers much more thanks to community - it develop many excellent modules that are extending Drupal in unlimited numbers of ways (about 2000 Drupal modules and only 135 for EE.
Social networking features
One of the great features of Drupal is that it is build to support social networking from the start. For example every member have their own blog, everything can be commented, user profiles are customizable... there are many great modules that brings even more soc features to Drupal - organic groups for example. So it is relatively easy to create feature rich soc networks platforms with it.
On the other hand EE do not support soc networking nor third part plugins exist for it. Even more it seems that EE don't offer individual members blogging (this cant be done because of EE licensing issues!!??). Check http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/74226/ for more data. But it is
probably possible to achieve some low level of soc networkings with installation of third party modules – but I didn't have time to test this.
Conclusion: when soc networking is needed Drupal is much better solution.
Security
Based on the http://secunia.com research, EE is very secure product. There was only 1 moderately critically security hole in it.
Drupal is not so good, there was 19 security issues for Drupal 4, 6 for Drupal 5 and 1 (less critically) security issue for Drupal 6.
Conclusion: when looking through security history EE is really master here (and not only compared to Drupal). Just one moderately critically security issue in 5 years of development is astonishing fact. But it is obvious that Drupal is becoming very secure product. If you want to look history EE is winner here, but when you look latest version of EE and Drupal they are both very secure.
Site reviews
on http://expressionengine.com/showcase you can view showcase of good EE sites
on http://buytaert.net/tag/Drupal-sites and on http://Drupal.org/forum/25 you can see many Drupal sites.
First thing that catch my eyes while quickly reviewed EE and Drupal sites is next - there is only one big name that is using EE - that is http://nelsonmandela.org.
On Drupal side there are many big names and companies that are using Drupal:
- AOL (http://buytaert.net/aol-using-Drupal-2),
- SUN (http://buytaert.net/sun-using-Drupal),
- Amnesty (http://buytaert.net/amnesty-using-Drupal),
- Novel (http://buytaert.net/novell-using-Drupal),
- Yahoo (http://buytaert.net/yahoo-using-Drupal),
- Warner Bros, SonyMusic, NASA, CBC, German Discovery Channel, MTV in UK, IBM, ...
Conclusion: While looking EE and Drupal site's it is obvious that both CMS
can offer very good looking and feature rich sites (this is just matter of good
designer). But far more big names in industry are using Drupal over EE. So
Drupal is winner here.
Conclusion
As I stated in the beginning this will not be far comparison of this two systems. My personal choice and system that I am using in daily work is Drupal. On the other side is EE a system that is completely new to me and I just don't have time to do detail test of it.
But I have really tried to do objective comparison (as much possible it is;)
Overall both systems are very good although they approaches are different. They are both well supported, well documented, actively developed (and will be developed actively in future), have strong community support.
For basic (core) install Drupal is easier and more intuitive from the start, but EE is little more wrapped for CMS (has custom fields and wiki ... in core) - but bringing that functionality to Drupal is no brainier with install of appropriate modules (CCK and many others).
For web application development Drupal is (at least for know) far better solution. EE is good for extending CMS system, but Drupal with clean and well organized API framework is better for custom web application development.But when EE rich very 2.0 it will be based on CodeIgniter PHP framework and then EE 2.0 will probably be good solution for web application development.
In the end - from my "Drupalist" point of view I don't see any real advantage of EE over Drupal, and on the opposite side I see many nice things in Drupal that EE don't have (open source, soc networking, many big company sites created in Drupal, module ratio 14:1, paper books for learning Drupal, good API for web applications development...).
So my personal opinion:
I would definitely vote for Drupal for my next small/medium/big web project.
References
Drupal
EE
Rest
- http://www.cmswire.com/cms/micro-cms/movable-type-40-vs-expression-engin... (this is a comparison of EE and MovableType CMS – EE is winner here)
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Comments
Nice comparison
Hi Phil, Thanks for your
CMS Opposites
Drupal has no interest in catering to designers or creative types - only programmers and developers. They don't even consult with designers or front end experts even in their own marketing - look at their website and admin. They think power and functionality trumps design and ease of use. Everything about their site and structure is realized by coders with no design sensibilities.
On top of the exclusion of design in their project, there is also a total lack of instructions or examples. They figure you should just know or read a book and learn. There is not even any docs on how to build your site structure. Their reasoning for no explanations or examples is that Drupal is flexible, so flexible that everybody has to come up with their own solutions. Drupal people think that if you can't program you have no business building a website. That's what I get anyways. I don't see any web designers of pro skill level endorsing Drupal. Where are they? Most endorse Wordpress or EE. You can't find many Drupal themes because designers are not integrated or welcomed into the process.
EE understands presentation and user interaction. They think about the front end, and they also see that many non-coders build websites. But seriously - open source is the way and EE will never get mainstream unless it's open and free. They need to develop a different revenue model. You can't put your trust in a corporate player who could file for bankruptcy tomorrow and leave you high and dry. They limit their CMS by not including outside ideas and solutions.
Couple of years ago you would maybe be right
Hi adien,
Thanks for your post. But I can't agree with your points. First you say that Drupal has no interest in designers and creativity and you've pointed to drupal.org. Well you are right on that, drupal.org is not very pretty and it structure is certainly far from good usability, and I guess that new users are pretty lost on it.
BUT this does not mean that there is no interest in designers work. You obviously don't know that Drupal Association and many users from drupal.org are working with "Mark Boulton Design" last 3 months on drupal.org redesign. And last week redesign process is finished, and now drupal programmers will pick this great design and code it - so very soon drupal.org will have totally new, modern and usable design.
Then you say that "there is also a total lack of instructions or examples". Hmmm, have you even looked at http://drupal.org/handbooks. There are tons of text from doing basic things like installing drupal to advanced topics like installing contrib modules, theme development and drupal module development.
For example http://drupal.org/getting-started/6 has detail instruction how to install, configure and add content to new drupal site. And there are also dozen of video screencast that explain to new users how to do all basic things.
But beside that you are wrong with drupal documentation I do not understand your appoach "They figure you should just know or read a book and learn (Drupal)". What are you saying that you don't need to learn EE, you just download it and you immediately know how to install it, configure it and start using??? Well, I don't think so. Maybe EE has better docs then Drupal, and if so that's great. But I think that most users will like to have and read a good book. There are 15 books for drupal (http://drupal.org/books) and i think 0 (zero) books for EE - so guys from ellislab.com should really do something about this.
You can't find many Drupal themes because designers are not integrated or welcomed into the process."
Again couple of years ago you would be probably right. But now ;)
Take just a look at http://www.templatemonster.com/drupal-themes.php or http://www.cmslounge.com/Drupal-6/View-all-products - there are lots of commercial drupal themes there. Or take a look at http://www.themesnap.com/ design firm that is doing only drupal themes.
In the past... yes, it was difficult to find commercial drupal themes, but I think the reason for that was something else. Drupal was always great modular web application framework - CMS is just one of its many functions. That's why there are so many big and complex web sites, portal and applications that are build by Drupal. And when you have big project you also have a budget for designers that will create custom theme for you.
But as I said things have changed also on that field for the last couple of years - more and more people are using drupal for small sites, blogs... That's why templatemonster added drupal to list of commercial themes.
Just for the fun :))) let us again compare google results for drupal and "expression engine". In April Drupal had 18,700,000 and ExpressionEngine had 1,060,000 Google results. Now:
So both systems are growing but drupal has faster growing by 16%.
interesting
I find it interesting that the guy designing the drupal website uses expression engine. I can't say the guy or company are that great of designers, but if the work was pro-bono then it's all good.
Looking at EE's front end, you have to admit they spent time on the interface and human interaction part of the system. Developers can't pull this off, it requires some kick ass designers and usability experts.
But I also see how drupal is barebones to allow third parties to integrate their own design. EE probably makes this harder who knows.
EE has a pathetic repertoire of "modules", most of which cost money for weaker versions than what drupal offers. EE doesn't offer this functionality built in.
When I hear people bragging about how badass EE is, I have to wonder if it's a paid advert. Corporations for profit pay for PR which includes fake testimonials and praise.
I would like to see drupal more designer friendly, and eventually making it much easier to theme for those that are designers.
The big issue with drupal is time. It needs to be easier and faster to implement some standard and stereotypical type sites quickly by one non-developer. It can still be a workhorse and provide some default setups for common uses. Right now as things stand there are no real templates for site structures. It may be of value to offer versions of drupal grouped with specific modules and themes for specific types of sites, such as blogs or product review sites.
After some 5 and litle more
After some 5 and litle more months here are figures again:
Drupal is still growing but slower, EE is started to loose market.
So I guess it is happening exactly what many predicted, PHP market will start to centralize among couple of major player like Zend, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and couple of others and the rest of PHP frameworks and CMS will go slowly into history.
Drupal is certainly here to stay, and with new Drupal 7 release scheduled for the end of this year, it will be greater then ever and will certainly gain new momentum and grow in the market.
And being "Webware 100 winner for the third year in a row" is one more sign that Drupal is still on good path and very healthy.
On the other hand I don't know about EE. Its a good product, but I guess being a closed source project which you need to purchase if you want to use is not helping them in the ever changing market.
money money money
Also note the fact that there are realy nice modules, extensions out there for EE but for most of them you have to pay a fee.
I've noticed that prices will raise for EE so in the long run I guess that will kill them.
If you buy a car you don't want to pay extra for the wheels?! Wright?
Well, I paid for Expression
Well, I paid for Expression Engine and I thought it would pose a lot less problems than the Drupal CMS I had used for over a year. For me, Drupal was powerful and is the choice of far more webmasters than is Expression Engine, however Drupal is sometimes very complex and difficult to handle, at least for a newbie like myself. Nevertheless, I tried Expression Engine out and decided to revert back to Drupal in the end. Sure, I need to hire a programmer as needed when I do run into particular issues or when I need to change something I'm not familiar with, but for me, it is worth it. Drupal > EE for sure. Regards, Anne from chainsaws for sale
Thanks Ivica
For the informative comparison. I have been learning Drupal for the past year and a half or so, and it has been quite a challenge (I have a designer/illustrator background), but the thing that I like is that Drupal has a large and growing community. It also seems to keep getting better over time. I recently learned about EE when looking at Veerle's Blog (I noticed she uses EE) and got scared for a moment that EE was possibly superior to Drupal. But reading your comparison, I was relieved to see Drupal as the stronger (at least in popularity) of the two.
I'm learning theming and site construction; the large Drupal community means more books to buy and sites to learn from, without which I would be hopelessly lost.
I tried WordPress as well, which was ok but too blog-centric for what I want to do.
Thanks again for your even-handed review.
Daniel from Los Angeles
Is not about quantity but quality!!!
Thanks for the nice review...
But saying that Drupal is in adventage just because you make a search in google and you find more results is a bit close to ridiculous.
Do that comparation with Wordpress or Joomla and Drupal will be let far behind... and they are not better systems, right?... or the same applies to Windows OS vs Mac OS... ejem... you won't tell me that pathetic Windows Vista or 7 is better than Mac OS X Snow Leopard, right?...
OK... so, I have been a Wordpress, Joomla and EE user. And I know all that hype about "Joomla or Drupal have more Modules... so is better" but what you forget is that EE does not have as many modules because most things are built in the core!!!
- More modules does not mean more quality modules. Most modules that are worth mentioning are not free... you have to pay for them!!
- Basing your website in external modules which by the way in Joomla and Drupal are not certified (by EE most are certified) made you vulnerable, you depend on them and their developers. Most modules I tried in Joomla are useless and only bring problems and I guess in drupal some similars will happen although I give more credibility... I'm not sure.
- There is one thing that EE is far behind drupal and will be also from Joomla when the 1.6 version is out. Roles and Group permissions, in EE are useless for a professional or big community project, since EE does not support roles and you cannot assign a user to different groups. In EE a user can only be assigned to one single group... This feature has been in demand for years but EE seems not see the needs for it (appealing it is difficult to implement) which makes it uselees for big community projects.
- For no coders and designers... there is no comparation, EE let the competition far behind, in this point it just shines and that's why it becomes so many uhhhhh and aahhhhss frorm its users.
- The support that EE offers to his users is just astonishing, you have several workers giving dedicated professional support almost 24/7. Something I have never found that level of support anywhere else.
- Forum: the forum module which is developed also by EE and is actually a kind of part of the core but sold separatelly is really very advanced, complete CSS customisable.
- Security: well... as you said, EE is built in such a mode, that you have a bomb prooved system, have not seen a single hacked EE site in years... and that is remarkable.
- Community: if you really need to build a big community... with hundres or thousand of users with many different roles and access modes, than EE (right now) is maybe not for you and you should look somewhere else.
All in all you made a fair comparation and I congratulate you for your good work. I think you should take a look an let's say March 2010 where the new EE 2.0 will be 2.1 or 2.2 and it's new Codeigniter PHP Framework will be really well stablished. So let's see what the future brings for the new EE 2 just launched a couple of weeks ago.
Re: Is not about quantity but quality!!!
Apples & Oranges
I'm tired so I'm not going to put as much effort in my comment as I would normally. Although I am very long-winded :)
So here's the deal. It's really hard to compare EE 1.6.8 or whatever the number is to Drupal because they're two different types of systems, and the developers/designers are from a different breed. You might be able to compare EE 2.0 when it comes out but I'm dunno, haven't tried it yet. I hope to someday.
EE is meant for quick builds on smaller projects. If time isn't on your side and you don't have to get too advanced, go with EE. That is, if you haven't thought about Wordpress (but that's not my point). The people that work with EE are designers, front-end developers & people that don't have the time to invest in anything complex.
Drupal + Community Modules is meant for the uber coder that has time on his/her side. Drupal can be configured to be very complex, and very big. It's meant for more larger scale projects. I wouldn't use Drupal on anything less than 20 pages. I definitely wouldn't use it if time wasn't on my side. It's complex and I've seen people try out Drupal and fail because they just didn't know it well enough. Most people don't understand the power of Views because it's hard to navigate. I hated Views for 2 years. Now I love Views. I don't need those other modules when I have Views. I just need to know what my data structures are going to be (content types) and I'm golden. Drupal's module directory is overloaded with crap that can be easily replicated in 5 mins. but that's another topic altogether.
Again, you can't compare the two. I've been trying to do research and I've found that they don't compare because they're not even in the same league. Drupal is just a tad below an enterprise system, while EE is more for your average small business site. The users for EE are more geared towards designers/front-end developers and people that don't code anything too complex. Drupal is more for the coder, the guy/girl that likes to write an API that other developers can consume.
I'm actually going to write a great blog about "When to use Wordpress, and, When to use Drupal." You should check it out when I write it.. It's a similar conversation to this. When should you use EE, and, When should you use Drupal?
Okay, I'm tired, so I apologize if this didn't make any sense :(
Drupal is less secure, eh?
Didn't it ever occur to you to question the fact that EE has only ONE security hole in over 5 years, and although you found 19 issues with Drupal all the big companies are using it (including the White House)?
Maybe that is because the EE team are not reporting their security issues...
Ironic
The only CMS that I know, is Drupal. It took me quite a while to get to the point where I could drop in an installation of drupal and built just about anything I wanted. I used to hand code sites from scratch until I started realizing that CMSs were taking over. I read months of reviews before finally choosing drupal as my CMS of choice. I have to agree with most, that Drupal hasnt always looked the prettiest. But, that has certainly changed over the years. If you're new to Drupal, get the basics of the core down and then learn CCK and Views ASAP. After that, what you can build is nearly limitless.
~York PA Attorney
guys...really...
Guys,
Do you ever get the sense that you're arguing over something for which there is no right or wrong answer? Using google stats to predict who will "die off" in this context is craziness. Guess what? There's room for more then one cms. You may have noticed there is room for more then one car manufacturer btw, even though you could argue that there is a single "best car" out there and all others deserve to die off-we know this will not happen. Did you know, that there are commercial CMS's out there that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and these companies are making huge profits because there is a need out there and people are buying them? EE is a few hundred bucks. If you're having a site built by a contractor and the use of EE saves you 2 hours of time across the entire project, it paid for itself (unless you guys are in the habit of building these Drupal sites for $3 an hour of course). Open Source is great. So is Drupal, but did you know that in some situations companies are not willing to go open source because of potential legal risks, and other issues? Also, it is nice to know that when you have an issue, there is support you can rely on (which is verty very good from Expression Engine btw). People are using EE. EE is profitable. They won't go away anytime soon. Either will Drupal. Choose your fav based on your projects, your skillset, your taste or your clients directions.
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