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. If your site runs on ExpressionEngine and you need ongoing development or support, knowing what to look for can save you a considerable amount of time and money.
The most straightforward indicator is whether the developer has recent, relevant ExpressionEngine work they can point to. Not just sites that were built on EE five years ago, but active projects on current versions of the platform. EE has changed substantially across major versions, and experience on EE 2 or EE 3 doesn’t automatically transfer to working with EE 6 or 7.
Ask specifically what version of EE they’ve been working with most recently.
ExpressionEngine has its own ecosystem of addons, its own patterns for template development, and its own approach to content modelling. A developer who knows EE well should be able to talk fluently about the addons they rely on, how they approach channel structures, and how they handle common challenges like caching, image manipulation, and form handling.
If someone claims EE expertise but can’t name the addons they typically use or can’t explain how the template engine works, that’s a red flag.
EE sites don’t exist in isolation. They depend on a server environment, a hosting configuration, a PHP version, and in most cases a set of third-party integrations. A developer who only thinks about the EE layer and leaves the server and hosting to someone else will struggle with the kind of problems that actually affect business-critical sites.
Look for someone who understands PHP version requirements, can assess hosting configurations, and knows how to work within the constraints of a live production environment.
This matters as much as technical ability. A developer working on a business-critical site needs to communicate clearly about what they’re doing and why, flag problems proactively rather than waiting for you to notice them, and be honest about the scope and cost of work before they start it.
In a small specialist field like EE development, reputation matters. Ask for references from existing clients.
There are many capable web developers who could work with ExpressionEngine if asked to. The question is whether you want a generalist who will figure it out or a specialist who already knows it.
For a site that’s purely informational and doesn’t change much, a generalist may be fine. For a site that’s integral to your business operations, that handles sensitive data, that depends on custom functionality and third-party integrations, the specialist is the better investment.
The ExpressionEngine developer pool is small enough that finding the right person takes some effort, but the right person is worth finding.
If you are hiring an ExpressionEngine developer and want a second opinion on what to look for, get in touch with Karl.
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Expression 37 works with a small number of clients at any one time. These are some of them.
Karl founded Expression 37 in 2007 and has worked exclusively with ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS ever since. He does not take on work in other platforms and does not hand work to other developers. Expression 37 is deliberately small, because the kind of support that matters to clients with business-critical sites is specific to their site, not something that scales in the conventional sense. If you work with Expression 37, you work with Karl.
Find out how we workKarl was very helpful in providing us with essential insights into the inner workings of our ExpressionEngine driven site. His knowledge level with the ExpressionEngine platform is very impressive and we look forward to dealing with Karl again in the future.
Tim Cullum - Digital Comms Media
David H. Murdock Research Institute