That moment has finally come that I have dreaded for a long time: Expression Engine, my long time go-to CMS, has finally gone to a pay-only system.

For the last couple years, my clients have loved the fact that they could get a fully-functioning, robust, and feature filled CMS without paying anything more than the customization costs. On top of that, EE’s ease of use made training their employees a cinch since it handled content in a blog-style form which practically anyone could learn how to use. I loved EE, too. After quickly learning about the limitations of Wordpress, I moved on to EE and so it was the first CMS that I really learned the in’s and out’s of. It’s templating system was simple, practical, and highly modular. Pages could be broken into any number of sub-templates and conditions could be set so any number of sub-templates could be infinitely nested. And then there was the abundance of quality free, and cheap, modules and extensions that improved upon practically any foreseeable client need. Really, EE was a great CMS.

But now, like many successful tech companies, they have had to start charging for their product or else face the fact that expanding without steady income is a quick death warrant. So, upon the completion and debut of their new CodeIgniter-based version 2.0, I am saying my adieu.

The nail in the coffin is the new pricing scheme for EE2. The original pricing plans covered three tiers: a free community tier, a $100 non-profit tier, and a $250 enterprise tier. The new pricing scheme still offers three tiers but the community version is gone forever. The new tiers start at $75 for individual licenses with no member support, the second tier for non-profits is $150, and the enterprise tier is a whopping $300. Where I once could offer clients a simple, fully functional site for $500 built on the community version, I now would need to pass on the $300 to my clients for the for-profit version which is unreasonable. Not to mention it wouldn’t be truly open source if clients are forced to have an expensive proprietary CMS with a $300 entrance fee. Basing something on open source and being open source are two different things completely, and I no longer can support EE.

Now my top two options are Joomla and Drupal. I have always opposed Joomla due to its lack of features and overly simplistic CMS system, which really just leaves me Drupal. Lucky for me, Drupal is soon coming out with their newest release, version 7, which will bring Drupal down to a level that is easier to develop, and more importantly, easier to learn and maintain for my clients. Drupal 7 will also continue to be true to their open source beginnings and provide the full CMS at no cost. Whether they choose to provide specific features and support at different pay grades is welcome by me as that would provide Drupal with income for further development and also provide their customers with choice, and that’s what open source is all about.