Practical writing on ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS from 19 years of specialist work. Articles cover maintenance, upgrades, and long-term support, written for business owners in plain terms.
Comparing quotes for ongoing website support usually means comparing two different pricing models: a fixed price for a defined piece of work, or a retainer that covers ongoing support each month. Business owners often pick based on which number looks smaller on the page, without weighing what each model actually protects against.
An unpatched CMS install carries known, publicly documented vulnerabilities that no longer get fixed. What that risk actually looks like, and how to check where you stand.
Most businesses check a web developer's portfolio and references before hiring them. Far fewer check whether that developer is actually insured, registered for data protection, or has any plan for what happens if they become unavailable. Those questions matter more than they might seem, especially for a site that handles customer data, payments, or anything the business depends on daily.
Most business owners assume their website has backups because someone, at some point, said it does. Very few have ever watched one get restored. That gap between assuming backups work and knowing they work is where a lot of businesses find out what a hosting failure or hacked site costs them.
Plenty of ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS sites run on a single relationship: a freelancer who built the site years ago and has quietly maintained it since, or an in-house hire who set everything up and never wrote any of it down. That works fine for years. Then that person goes on holiday during a launch, gets a new job, or stops replying to emails, and the business finds out how much depended on one inbox.
Slow responses from a web agency usually come down to capacity, not your website. Here's what causes the delay, what it costs a business-critical site, and how to tell if you're already exposed.
I started working with ExpressionEngine in 2007. At the time it was one of the most capable platforms available for complex content requirements, and the projects I was being handed reflected that: membership sites, booking systems, trade portals, internal tools built on top of a CMS.
ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS are not generic frameworks. A developer without platform experience can fix some things and quietly create others. Here is what platform specialism actually means when your site handles real business operations.
When a website handles live transactions, staff workflows, or customer accounts, the people responsible for it ask harder questions before bringing in external support. This is what procurement teams and IT managers typically check, and what it means in practice when you are looking for specialist ExpressionEngine or Craft CMS support.
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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 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 workThornfields has relied on Expression 37 for our ExpressionEngine website for a number of years now, and the level of service has consistently been excellent. The site is central to how we promote our training programmes, so reliability matters a great deal to us. Any issues are dealt with quickly, updates are handled without disruption, and Karl takes the time to understand what we actually need rather than just applying a generic fix. We would not hesitate to recommend Expression 37 to any organisation that needs a genuine specialist looking after their site.
Chris Ibbetson, Head of Training
Thornfields Primary Care Training