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.
Unlike WordPress, ExpressionEngine is not something most web agencies pick up as a side competency. It requires proper familiarity to work with well. As the market for WordPress and Shopify development has grown, many agencies that once worked across multiple platforms have consolidated their offering. ExpressionEngine expertise has become rarer, which means that if your original agency pivots away from it, finding a replacement with genuine platform knowledge is harder.
The agency that built your site five years ago may have changed ownership, changed focus, lost key staff, or scaled back to a smaller team. The individual developer who understood your site inside and out may have left. The agency may still technically exist but no longer have the expertise to support your specific platform and configuration.
When an agency relationship ends, a proper handover should include documentation, credentials, and a briefing on the site's architecture. In practice, this rarely happens in a structured way. More often, the relationship simply drifts to an end. The business is left with access to the site but without the context that made the agency's support valuable.
The first step is to establish what you have. That means gathering all credentials, identifying the hosting provider, determining the current EE version, and taking stock of which addons are installed and what they do. A structured audit of this kind gives you a baseline from which a new support arrangement can begin.
The second step is to find specialist support. A generalist web developer who does not know ExpressionEngine is not the right answer. The platform has its own conventions, its own upgrade path, and its own ecosystem of addons. Working with someone who understands that will cost less in the long run than working with someone who is learning the platform on your budget.
If you currently have agency support and are reading this because the relationship feels uncertain, the sensible thing to do is not to wait until the relationship ends. A proper transition or a documented support arrangement, established while the existing agency is still engaged, is considerably less disruptive than trying to reconstruct context after the fact.
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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.
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.
Most clients come to us when their site has started to feel like a risk rather than an asset. Whether the agency relationship has ended, an upgrade has been delayed, or the site has simply grown beyond what it can handle, a conversation costs nothing.
Get in touch with KarlTrusted by established businesses and growing brands across the UK
Expression 37 works with a small number of clients at any one time. These are some of them.
Karl is the founder of Expression 37 Ltd and has been working exclusively with ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS since 2007. In eighteen years he has supported more than 80 clients across the UK, from long-term retainer arrangements to emergency rescues when something has gone wrong at the worst possible moment. Every piece of work is handled personally by Karl, with no account managers or junior developers between you and the person doing it.
Find out how we workUpon completion of the Thornfields Primary Care Trust website, we had no hesitation on asking Expression 37 to help out with some further development updates with our main company website. As with the Thornfields project Karl and his team turned around our requests with flawless speed and efficiency, often adding further advice and guidance on how to best implement the features required. If you are looking for a tried and trusted ExpressionEngine specialist we strongly recommend these guys.
Chris Ibbetson - FPM Group General Manager.
First Practice Management Ltd.