It’s official, ExpressionEngine is now open source, free to use, with no licence fees.
Rick Ellis, who originally created EE’s predecessor Pmachine, made the announcement today at the 2018 EE conference at Nashville USA.
Officially starting this November 2018 ExpressionEngine can be downloaded free of charge, although prices on the ExpressionEngine site have already been changed to $0.
This is good news on several fronts
- The barrier to entry has been lowered somewhat (who can complain about ‘free’!)
- It opens up ExpressionEngine to a wider audience of designers and developers
- It reduces the cost of developing and upgrading sites
For clients
This will mean saving a good chunk of change on new sites and upgrades, that’s a positive win for everyone. Although relatively small ($299) the saving could be made on a project or invested in site enhancements.
For developers
This could open up a whole new audience if the number of installs gains momentum. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out over the coming months/years. Hopefully a lot of abandoned add-ons with breath new life or have new replacements!
For everyone
This is a logical choice by Ellislab and will let ExpressionEngine compete with other popular open source CMS’s. I have to admit I have wondered if this would ever happen - today it has.
This is going to be a win win all round. Thank you Ellislab!