Modern content management systems (CMS) helps you manage, create, and update content on your website without demanding you to be a coding wizard!
While there are multiple options out there for CMS, ExpressionEngine has a unique league. It may not be the most popular or widely used platform on the web, but it is immensely powerful.
How?
Let’s find out!
What is ExpressionEngine?
ExpressionEngine is a premium CMS developed by EllisLab. It’s written in technologies like PHP and utilizes the MySQL database. Therefore, it supports almost every hosting platform out there.
From powerful tools for content publishing to spam deterrents, typography flexibility, and security features, ExpressionEngine polishes your site to meet your exact requirements.
Not to mention, the people who built this CMS are the same ones who crafted CodeIgniter, a popular PHP framework that developers love. They made ExpressionEngine with far-fetched ideas like flexibility and scalability. It’s where you don’t have to be limited with templates and functionalities like any other CMS.
Features of ExpressionEngine
ExpressionEngine stores your website content in channels or data containers consisting of fields for different types of data. You can make channels for blogs, product and service descriptions, news, document downloads, team bios, and more.
It provides a wide range of templates containing JavaScript, PHP, HTML, etc. for a dynamic experience. Run multiple websites by installing a single ExpressionEngine application each uniquely.
You can check the live preview of your content and avoid guesswork. ExpressionEngine offers one-click site updates to save your time. With member management features, you can also manage permissions and roles, member fields, and create registration forms, profile pages, discussion forums, etc.
For security, it offers spam detection, CAPTCHA tests, and blacklists, session management, along with periodic security updates. It offers privacy and consent tools that allow you to implement GDPR compliance, cookie consent, etc. Besides, its customer support is decent, with excellent customer satisfaction rates.
ExpressionEngine works fantastic on any device you use, allowing you to publish from anywhere. It offers traffic statistics, data caching, and useful free and paid add-ons, modules, and plugins to simplify your workflow.
However, it does not mean that CMS like WordPress, Drupal, etc. are not powerful. All of them have proved their excellence from building blogs to publishing operators for large enterprises. It’s just that not every CMS is the perfect fit for every website, as requirements are different.
So, why, ExpressionEngine?
Most of the things that ExpressionEngine does can be achieved with WordPress, but the former is way more capable and empowers your developers to build templates and workflows and manage even heterogeneous content.
As a result, designers and developers can craft custom content websites easily using this platform. You can publish content in any type of layout with the freedom of organizing content the way you want.
In a nutshell, it is interminably flexible.
So, if you are ready to choose ExpressionEngine as your CMS, the next thing that you would require is selecting a reliable hosting service.
Here it goes!
Nexcess
Expand the flexibility of ExpressionEngine by combining it with Nexcess. It is an official hosting partner of ExpressionEngine focused on providing a high performing CMS applicability. The Nexcess Cloud can adjust automatically with your website traffic and respond well during user concurrency.
It offers superior performance by implementing advanced technologies like NGINX, Apache 2.4, PHP, etc. Maximize your site’s uptime and speed, leveraging the optimized cloud environment.
Nexcess gives you the option to include your own SSL certificate or buy its certificates with options to choose from standard, premium, Wildcard, EV, multiple domains, etc. Additionally, it migrates your ExpressionEngine website for free.
Add a CDN and increase your website’s SEO rankings, and tackle server load. Also, it backs up your site daily and even stores the data for 30 days. You can even utilize its email hosting to enjoy extended benefits.
Nexcess is a PCI and SSAE-18 compliant hosting service. It also assists you in setting up your licensing and provides 24/7 US-based customer support for proactive site monitoring, hardening its security, and implementing firewalls.
It includes a free 30-day trial. The price starts at $29/month for 50 GB storage, 1 TB bandwidth, ten secondary domains, and 20 concurrent user handling capacity.
A2 Hosting
Do you want an all-round hosting service?
A2 Hosting can be the one for all your website needs!
Host your website on its high-performing SwiftServer platform to experience blazing fast page loading speed up to 20 times faster than other hosts in order to improve SEO rankings and bounce rates. It lets you choose your desired server, which is optimized for speed and offers SSD for free.
A2 Hosting offers developer-friendly software. And, you have the option to choose your preferred PHP version. Besides, it offers free access to SSH, along with free and paid SSL certifications.
Security measures like free HackScan Protection, Kernelcare updates, double firewalls, Brute Force defense, and more are included to prevent you from being the next cyberattack victim. Even during advanced security threats, security technologies like Reinforced DDoS protection can improve your site’s uptime.
Seek the help of its knowledgeable Guru Crew customer support team available always to cater to your needs. They will help you in setting up the ExpressionEngine software for you. Moreover, free website migration and 99.9% uptime is what you can expect more from A2 Hosting.
Its price starts at $2.99/month for one site and 100GB SSD storage.
Krystal
Enjoy great features, superlative support, and unlimited bandwidth with Krystal hosting. Maximize the performance of your website by utilizing SSD disks and LiteSpeed Caching to make it 16x faster, requiring no code changes.
Every ExpressionEngine plan of Krystal includes a free SSL certificate that you can activate through the cPanel to let you add https:// in the URL bar. It provides secure transactions with 256-bit encryption for payment and customer data. Besides, it gives you the option to upgrade SSL to EV for added protection.
For security, it offers malicious detection, a firewall, antivirus filter, 2-Factor authentication, CloudLinux OS, encrypted email and cPanel access, and more. Developer tools like PHP, Git, phpMyAdmin, Ruby, Python, PERL, etc. are also included along with analytics software like Google Analytics and Awstats visitor.
Krystal data center is located in the UK, which is perfect for serving the Europian market and complying with the local regulatory.
It offers managed sites and email migration from start to finish. It does not matter what control panel you use; their experts can transition your data into Krystal flawlessly. They administer your site all the time to monitor uptime and also release security patches for the smooth running of your website.
Krystal offers PCI-compliant hosting, which is beneficial, especially when your business involves credit card payments. They have an award-winning support team with native English speakers to solve your issues via live chats, phone calls, and ticket support.
The hosting plan includes a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Cloudways
Employ the feature-rich platform of Cloudways to make the most of ExpressionEngine. You can even have full control over all your applications, website, and server along with improved load times.
You can select your desired server provider, location, and specifications to launch your server. Cloudways supports AWS, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud, and Vultr.
Deliver superb user experience with Cloudways CDN and faster speed irrespective of where your users are accessing the website. It also includes built-in caches like Redis, Memcached, and Varnish; HTTP/2 powers its servers for great performance.
For security, Cloudways offers dedicated firewalls regularly maintained to filter potentially harmful traffic. It also provides auto-healing servers to fix technical issues along with automated backups on demand. You get quick installation for SSL certificates, sophisticated IP whitelisting, and two-factor authentication to secure your data.
Using Git integration, you can deploy your updates codes quickly to live servers. You have the option to clone applications and the entire server along with staging URLs to test updates before going live—update an application and access cloud servers securely through SFTP and SSH access.
With Cloudways, you don’t have to worry about site migration as its support team is an expert at this. With its CloudwaysBot smart assistant, get notifications with changes and issues concerning your applications and managed server.
FastComet
Host your ExpressionEngine site on FastComet and leverage its far-fetched technologies, support, and features.
With an SSD-powered cloud, you can access your database and files up to 300% faster. It gives you a free CDN by Cloudflare so you can distribute your website content anywhere in the globe. FastComet offers the powerful and popular control panel for web hosting – cPanel to manage your hosting account with ease.
Backup your website daily and weekly completely free in order to safeguard your data.
With FastGuard security, servers can inform one another about malicious actions and create a global defense network to counteract attacks. You get Bruteforce protection, account isolation, free SSL encryption, DDoS detection, botnet filter, malware scans, and reports along with 30-day daily backups for free.
The price starts at $2.95/month. If you are not satisfied with the services, you can claim a 45-day money-back guarantee.
Conclusion
The theory of “one size fits for all” is not necessarily applicable when it comes to website hosting, as different sites have different requirements. To meet the demands of large websites with diversified challenges, traffic, complexities, and business needs, ExpressionEngine is worth investing in.
Thus, go for the above-mentioned hosting services to tackle your bottlenecks and experience the true sense of flexibility and support for your website.
