Resources

ExpressionEngine is a specialist platform. The community of genuinely experienced EE developers is small, particularly in the UK, and the difference between someone who has worked with EE seriously and someone who has touched it once or twice is significant.

It is more common than most people realise. A business has been running an ExpressionEngine site for years, the relationship with the agency that built it gradually fades, and eventually there is no-one actively looking after the site. Understanding why this happens helps you know what to do about it.

Most business owners have no idea what state their ExpressionEngine site is in. They know it’s working, they can add content, and the contact form still sends emails. Beyond that, it’s a black box. Problems can accumulate quietly over a long period before they become visible.

Delaying an ExpressionEngine upgrade is easy to justify. The site still works, the budget is committed elsewhere, and nothing has broken yet. But delays in this area follow a predictable pattern, and the costs accumulate in ways that are not immediately visible.

PHP 8 is now the standard version running on most web hosting infrastructure. Many ExpressionEngine sites were built when PHP 7 was current and have never been reviewed for PHP 8 compatibility. If nobody has mentioned this to you, there is a reason for that, and it is worth understanding.

The question I get asked most often by business owners is some version of: what will this cost? It’s a fair question, and the honest answer is that it depends on things that are specific to your site. But there’s enough of a pattern to give you a useful framework.

If your website is running on ExpressionEngine 4 or 5, it may look fine on the surface. But underneath, you are carrying costs that most business owners do not see until something goes wrong. This is not about upgrading for the sake of it. It is about understanding what your current situation actually means.

Most businesses with an ExpressionEngine site didn’t choose ExpressionEngine themselves. A web agency built the site, recommended the CMS, and handled everything from launch onward. That arrangement works well until it doesn’t, and there are several ways it can stop working.

ExpressionEngine has changed hands several times over the years. The current owner, Packet Tide, acquired the platform and has been responsible for its ongoing development. If your business runs on ExpressionEngine, understanding who owns the platform and what their priorities are is worth knowing.

There’s no single answer to when you should upgrade your ExpressionEngine installation, but there are several clear signals that tell you it’s overdue. Most business owners don’t think about this until something goes wrong. By then, the upgrade is usually more involved than it would have been if it had been done earlier.