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Free vs. Commercial

In my article about using the custom profile data tag, a commenter, Noushad, brought up the issue of how he sees ExpressionEngine’s shortcomings being that you have to pay for it and then pay for some additional add-ons to gain the functionality you need (I was writing about the User Module from Solspace). Noushad brings up an excellent point:

There is no doubt that EE is a very good CMS, especially for designers. Sadly even after you pay for CMS, you need to shell out more money for modules that extend EE (eg. User Module from Solospace). This is the only reason people like me staying away from it, and embracing open source options. (drupal). And best of all, you don’t need to wait for months to know what’s going to happen to your favorite CMS and worry about whether it’s pricing would be affordable to you.

First, there’s nothing wrong with choosing free software or commercial software. You are in a situation, you weigh your options and you make a choice. Noushad asked for my take on this and I was happy to oblige.

There are definite trade-offs when you use commercial software, but I think the advantages are greater: dedicated support staff, dedicated development staff to add new features, fix bugs—and most importantly—keep the software secure. Buying the software keeps those people employed and working full-time on the software. That’s what I want if me and my clients are going to invest in the software. I want to know they have a business model and will be around in 5 years and will continue issuing any needed security updates.

As far as having to buy add-ons to supplement ExpressionEngine’s native functionality, I think it’s actually a good thing. I don’t want a CMS that does _everything_. Sure, EE should probably have better member template management that doesn’t require a $90 module. But it doesn’t and the development community surrounding EE was inventive enough to recognize that missing piece and write the code to fix it. This happens a lot and it’s more of a testament to EE’s flexibility and extensibility than it is to any missing features.

I linked the comment up on Twitter and had some more people chime in. Please take the time to read all of the comments, as they’re quite thoughtful and good. Personally, I think Chad Crowell strikes the right tone:

I am not saying I am right and you are wrong, there are thousands of ways to build a site. Just sharing why EE is usually a no brainer for my business decisions.

What’s your take?

Posted on Feb 13, 2009 by Ryan Irelan

Filed Under: Life as a Web Professional

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Thanks, el! All fixed. :)
Posted by Ryan Irelan on 2009-02-16 17:01:36 Ryan, I just noticed - the title has a typo: commerical versus commercial I think its a cute typo but you may want to correct :-)
Posted by el on 2009-02-16 16:22:59 It seems to me there begins to grow a conflict of interest between EE license holders and 3rd-party developers. Does EllisLab start slowing down development of vital aspects of the system, such as user management, because a 3rd-party provider has stepped in to fill the breach albeit at a price?
Posted by Adam Khan on 2009-02-16 13:06:13 Echoing what's been said, it's nice to have someone to hold accountable for a baseline level of quality. Some don't mind paying for peace of mind, others would rather not. My attitude changed a bit when a client's site broke due to an old plugin, and I was dependent on some guy across the world patching it in his free time.
Posted by Judd Lyon on 2009-02-15 18:08:36 Hi Noushad, I don't think you offended anyone. In fact, I'm glad you brought it up. You raised a worthy topic that I knew the community would be interested in discussing.
Posted by Ryan Irelan on 2009-02-14 18:08:27 Hi everyone, thanks for all your comments. Let me make it clear that I didn't want to offend any of EE fans here or promote drupal in an EE blog. I was just curious, why people go for a commercial software when they have something good for free? I got your justifications
Posted by noushad moidunny on 2009-02-14 17:10:27 Bottom line for me is that you get what you pay for. It's cliche but it's true. Are there good Open Source options? Absolutely. And they work well for many instances. But once you start heading into territory where you may not be familiar with how to accomplish something often times the support forums fail miserably. For me that's the primary reason EE wins hands down. Aside from it being an incredible option in many aspects, the fact that it's a paid option gives us that quality support. That's crucial for us as developers as well as for the clients we serve.
Posted by Angie on 2009-02-14 10:27:43 I started playing with CMSes using Drupal, it was open source and free, but the way it makes custom fields with cck and views was a mess. Glad I switched to EE. For the price is not bad.. I worked on a site done with ektron, that cms costed $30,000 and I never could figure out why it was so expensive.
Posted by mirkob on 2009-02-14 09:10:56 I used to think exactly like Noushad does. When I first started experimenting with a CMS I tried around 10 or so free ones and finally settled in on TextPattern. I was of the mindset that I was not going to pay for what I can get for free. I dabbled with TextPattern for I'm guessing eight months or so before seeing some posts on EE in the TextPattern forums. The topics peaked my interest enough to try out EE and I'm glad I did. I was really at point where I was stuck and couldn't figure a few things out and the support forums on TextPattern were not much help and the documentation was not real thorough either. After trying EE, everything seemed to click. There was a couple month period where I felt completely lost but having the paid support staff readily available was very comforting and it helped me get familiar with EE much quicker than I did with TextPattern. Knowing what I know now, I wish I would have found EE earlier, but I suppose if I had found EE first I may have wondered if there was something better out there. At least having tried a lot of the open source options before finding EE, I know there's nothing better out there. Just knowing that there's a paid support staff that's there to help any problems, fix bugs, etc. is comforting. I know a lot of other people agree with me, but the $99 for a personal license is extremely cheap for what EE gives you and even the $249 for commercial license is not outrageous. I can see where people are coming from though having not tried EE because I was there too with the "free" mindset. I really believe if these say people would just download the Core version of EE and see what it's all about, they would fall in love the same way I did and see that the fees are not so bad for a superior product.
Posted by Deron Sizemore on 2009-02-14 04:11:21 The company I work with has mainly used open source tools in the past and it has been problematic in some places. For example, using a module that is no longer being maintained. Its nice to know that someone will be there to maintain a module/extension/plugin. I guess the other thing that attracted us to Expression Engine has nothing to do with commercial vs open source, its how flexible it is and none of the open source options were as good. And I hear people complain about the costs of EE, but consider this: a fully equipped version of EE should cost you no more then $1,000, whereas a copy of something like Cascade Server (http://bit.ly/e0gKd) starts at $15,000 and goes to $40,000. And that is one of the more reasonable Commercial CMSes.
Posted by Wes on 2009-02-14 03:31:42 Open source is great, but my experience with getting questions answered on opensource support forums is that they don't get answered. With EE if I don't get an answer within a few hours I start to wonder why. The official support is outstanding, and should be since they are getting paid to help the community, but what's even better is the community support. it's truly 2nd to none. For that reason alone, I can't imagine using anything other than EE, unless a client requests it.
Posted by Sean on 2009-02-14 02:18:28 While there are obvious advantages of going open source, I've found that most of them lack some basic feature here and there that overall makes it a hazzle to work with. Relying on user support in those cases is just a horrible, horrible ordeal. With EE I atleast know I have a support team that can quickly help me or point me in the right direction, which they have done so many times for me now. EE is lacking some basic stuff too, like a better user manager, some forum features that has become standard in all forums now a days (subforum, better move post tool, allowing for custom BBcode etc.).. BUT!, with such a triving community, there isn't anything that can be fixed, and users do fix them, and paying the users who fixed it just ensures he will continue to support the plugin and keep it updated for as long as possible. For everything else, you have the forum, which is as helpfull as ever, user and EE team alike! ^^
Posted by Wolferey on 2009-02-13 23:09:28

Wolferey — 23:09 on 02.13.2009

While there are obvious advantages of going open source, I’ve found that most of them lack some basic feature here and there that overall makes it a hazzle to work with.

Relying on user support in those cases is just a horrible, horrible ordeal. With EE I atleast know I have a support team that can quickly help me or point me in the right direction, which they have done so many times for me now.

EE is lacking some basic stuff too, like a better user manager, some forum features that has become standard in all forums now a days (subforum, better move post tool, allowing for custom BBcode etc.)..

BUT!, with such a triving community, there isn’t anything that can be fixed, and users do fix them, and paying the users who fixed it just ensures he will continue to support the plugin and keep it updated for as long as possible.

For everything else, you have the forum, which is as helpfull as ever, user and EE team alike! ^^

Sean — 02:18 on 02.14.2009

Open source is great, but my experience with getting questions answered on opensource support forums is that they don’t get answered.

With EE if I don’t get an answer within a few hours I start to wonder why. The official support is outstanding, and should be since they are getting paid to help the community, but what’s even better is the community support. it’s truly 2nd to none.

For that reason alone, I can’t imagine using anything other than EE, unless a client requests it.

Wes — 03:31 on 02.14.2009

The company I work with has mainly used open source tools in the past and it has been problematic in some places. For example, using a module that is no longer being maintained. Its nice to know that someone will be there to maintain a module/extension/plugin.

I guess the other thing that attracted us to Expression Engine has nothing to do with commercial vs open source, its how flexible it is and none of the open source options were as good.

And I hear people complain about the costs of EE, but consider this: a fully equipped version of EE should cost you no more then $1,000, whereas a copy of something like Cascade Server (http://bit.ly/e0gKd) starts at $15,000 and goes to $40,000. And that is one of the more reasonable Commercial CMSes.

Deron Sizemore — 04:11 on 02.14.2009

I used to think exactly like Noushad does. When I first started experimenting with a CMS I tried around 10 or so free ones and finally settled in on TextPattern. I was of the mindset that I was not going to pay for what I can get for free. I dabbled with TextPattern for I’m guessing eight months or so before seeing some posts on EE in the TextPattern forums. The topics peaked my interest enough to try out EE and I’m glad I did. I was really at point where I was stuck and couldn’t figure a few things out and the support forums on TextPattern were not much help and the documentation was not real thorough either. After trying EE, everything seemed to click. There was a couple month period where I felt completely lost but having the paid support staff readily available was very comforting and it helped me get familiar with EE much quicker than I did with TextPattern. Knowing what I know now, I wish I would have found EE earlier, but I suppose if I had found EE first I may have wondered if there was something better out there. At least having tried a lot of the open source options before finding EE, I know there’s nothing better out there. Just knowing that there’s a paid support staff that’s there to help any problems, fix bugs, etc. is comforting. I know a lot of other people agree with me, but the $99 for a personal license is extremely cheap for what EE gives you and even the $249 for commercial license is not outrageous. I can see where people are coming from though having not tried EE because I was there too with the “free” mindset. I really believe if these say people would just download the Core version of EE and see what it’s all about, they would fall in love the same way I did and see that the fees are not so bad for a superior product.

mirkob — 09:10 on 02.14.2009

I started playing with CMSes using Drupal, it was open source and free, but the way it makes custom fields with cck and views was a mess. Glad I switched to EE.
For the price is not bad.. I worked on a site done with ektron, that cms costed $30,000 and I never could figure out why it was so expensive.

Angie — 10:27 on 02.14.2009

Bottom line for me is that you get what you pay for. It’s cliche but it’s true. Are there good Open Source options? Absolutely. And they work well for many instances. But once you start heading into territory where you may not be familiar with how to accomplish something often times the support forums fail miserably. For me that’s the primary reason EE wins hands down. Aside from it being an incredible option in many aspects, the fact that it’s a paid option gives us that quality support. That’s crucial for us as developers as well as for the clients we serve.

noushad moidunny — 17:10 on 02.14.2009

Hi everyone, thanks for all your comments.

Let me make it clear that I didn’t want to offend any of EE fans here or promote drupal in an EE blog. I was just curious, why people go for a commercial software when they have something good for free? I got your justifications

Ryan Irelan — 18:08 on 02.14.2009

Hi Noushad,

I don’t think you offended anyone. In fact, I’m glad you brought it up. You raised a worthy topic that I knew the community would be interested in discussing.

Judd Lyon — 18:08 on 02.15.2009

Echoing what’s been said, it’s nice to have someone to hold accountable for a baseline level of quality.

Some don’t mind paying for peace of mind, others would rather not.

My attitude changed a bit when a client’s site broke due to an old plugin, and I was dependent on some guy across the world patching it in his free time.

Adam Khan — 13:06 on 02.16.2009

It seems to me there begins to grow a conflict of interest between EE license holders and 3rd-party developers. Does EllisLab start slowing down development of vital aspects of the system, such as user management, because a 3rd-party provider has stepped in to fill the breach albeit at a price?

el — 16:22 on 02.16.2009

Ryan,

I just noticed - the title has a typo:
commerical versus commercial

I think its a cute typo but you may want to correct

Ryan Irelan — 17:01 on 02.16.2009

Thanks, el! All fixed.

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