Broadsign vs. ExpressionEngine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Broadsign
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Broadsign in Montreal offers a suite of digital signage products for various purposes including Broadsign Control for content distribution across a network of digital signs with content automation and scheduling. Broadsign Creator provides tools to support the creation of compliant brand content to be created locally or distributed across a network. Finally Broadsign Direct supports advertising sales and Broadsign Reach is the company's supply side platform.N/A
ExpressionEngine
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
ExpressionEngine is a content management system from EllisLab in 2002, a successor to pMachine Pro, a blogging system, which is written in object-oriented PHP and uses MySQL for data storage. ExpressionEngine is their flagship Content Delivery Platform.
$299
One Time Fee
Pricing
BroadsignExpressionEngine
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
License
$299.00
One Time Fee
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BroadsignExpressionEngine
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BroadsignExpressionEngine
Features
BroadsignExpressionEngine
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Broadsign
-
Ratings
ExpressionEngine
10.0
Ratings
21% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Broadsign
-
Ratings
ExpressionEngine
9.4
Ratings
21% above category average
API00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Broadsign
-
Ratings
ExpressionEngine
8.9
Ratings
14% above category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Broadsign
-
Ratings
ExpressionEngine
9.4
Ratings
24% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BroadsignExpressionEngine
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Zoom Rooms
Zoom Rooms
Score 8.7 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises

No answers on this topic

RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BroadsignExpressionEngine
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
5.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
2.8
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.2
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.9
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BroadsignExpressionEngine
Likelihood to Recommend
Very suitable for large networks and projects requiring enhanced functionality. less suitable for small networks as the learning curve might be considerable.
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For someone with a limited budget, it's hard to recommend ExpressionEngine simply because of the cost of the license and any add-ons just to get up and running. As a developer, the budget needs to be a certain amount before I can even consider ExpressionEngine - no matter how appropriate it is for the site. Besides that, I recommend ExpressionEngine for those who have a lot of content, have a need for a certain level of flexibility, or who have special feature requests. There are a number of ExpressionEngine add-on developers who are willing to help build (for a fee) custom add-ons to fulfill that need.
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Pros
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  • ExpressionEngine has no preconceived ideas about how your content should look or what code is generated.
  • A robust template engine makes integrating designs and content a breeze.
  • The control panel can be customized to control what content managers have access to.
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Cons
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  • Can be too cumbersome for smaller projects, takes time to pair down the built in functionality so our clients have to sift through unused features
  • Large queries take significant processing power, recommended use of a cache module to store this data and speed up page load
  • Backend can be overwhelming for clients, lots of things to manage in the control panel
  • No way to repeat custom page fields or groups of fields, meaning page layout must be pretty established and not customizable from the control panel
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
I'm satisfied with the way that my site runs on EE. My primary concern is that support is now a profit center for EE's publisher and so they've consequently gutted their community support boards. However, a good EE community is developing at StackExchange. At this stage, I don't think that EE is a good choice for an individual site owner. WordPress or SquareSpace would be a better choice unless you have a budget for support.
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Usability
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ExpressionEngine is very powerful and flexible. With this flexibility comes a bit of a learning curve. There are some great online resources for getting up to speed with EE, but the control panel can be a bit daunting. A lot of EE's installation process involves settings, configurations and flipping of switches. It is tedious, but well worth it as you ultimately have a very robust, secure and scalable CMS. Also, as of version 2.9.2, the control panel isn't responsive natively. You'll want to have a big enough screen to see the full control panel UI. Personally, I think the control panel would benefit from a major overhaul. It would be nice to see the colors and UI controls "modernized" and be able to more effectively customize the layout. Yes, some of this is built-in, and there are third-party add-ons to help, but maybe we'll see more refinement in future versions.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
Never experienced an issue like this with it
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Performance
No answers on this topic
The admin section would slow to a crawl the larger the tag section grew. There were many areas where better pagination would've helped improve performance. Nothing complicated, which made the lag so frustrating
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
I have personally never found any complications when trying to receive support from EllisLab in regards to ExpressionEngine when using the support plans they offer. I have always been responded to promptly and received satisfactory help with whatever my needs were in an extremely timely manner. This makes rating the support offered an easy job for me
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
After installing the system a few times, you can see a pattern of things that have to be done to work the way you want them (settings, paths, etc.). By knowing what you want, you can put together some scripts that prepare the file system for installation, adjust post installation configuration settings, and install initial templates.
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Alternatives Considered
We analyzed other solutions in 2008 but were convinced from the get go Broadsign would be a perfect fit for our needs in the long run. 15 years later our choice has been proven right.
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ExpressionEngine outweighs most all of its competitors by being so flexible. If you can imagine it, then you can build it with EE (ExpressionEngine). Most competitors lock you in with certain ways to build your website or use only their tools; ExpresionEngine gives you the freedom to build how you would like and decide how you want your site to run and operate. The ease of use for clients to go in and edit their content is great, and I am able to control the way they edit that content to make it the easiest for them. The feature set and plugins for EE are great, and I am able to provide top service for my clients by using EE.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
Maybe it's scale-able from the content user perspective, but it was very limited from the programmers perspective. So many custom hacks were necessary that it reached a point it would be impossible to upgrade to a newer version
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Return on Investment
No answers on this topic
  • Being able to be recognized as a leader within the ExpressionEngine development community has led to us being sought out by those customers seeking expert guidance.
  • We tend to specialize in using ExpressionEngine for our customers, so it has been easier to ramp new resources up on our development process, as well as be able to seek out independent experts to use as sub contractors or freelancers.
  • As we have been using ExpressionEngine almost exclusively for a number of years, we have built a reusable repository of proprietary code that makes our development process much more efficient and decreases the effort required for our projects.
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ScreenShots