EE vs MT
An apparently thorough comparison of EE and MT by an experienced user of both for blogging-type applications concludes with the following (edited by me) support for EE:
What EE Can Do That MT Can’t
EE has built-in mailing lists, a full wiki module, direct database query capability, and a photo gallery that’s able to do some really nice batch processing, rotating, cropping, and organizing. It has user-notifications of comments, email-a-friend tools and a much more sophisticated search tool than MT.
I love EE’s entry and template versioning — try something and roll back when it (inevitably) blows up. There are built-in statistics that let you track user views of entries, index pages and more.
EE has a forums module that’s a separate purchase for US$50 personal / US$100 commercial that integrates directly with blog entries and your site’s member database. Commerce: EE has a built-in PayPal integration component that lets you handle basic sales of virtual and real goods. Integration: EE has an XML parsing plugin that can pull in feeds from other sites and reformat them for your own page — be the next Google News!
What MT Can Do That EE Can’t
EE’s search mechanism caches search results, so you can’t bookmark a search result page. In MT you can. Automatic saving of post drafts. The native ratings framework currently supports rating posts and comments, and the list will grow. A file manager for uploading and reusing media assets. Open-ID support and Typekey authentication. WYSIWYG blog entry.
Final Analysis
There are lots of reasons to go with Movable Type, especially now that release 4.0 has demonstrated that Six Apart is again committed to the platform. Not the least of these reasons is that your boss might just demand that you do. MT has explicitly chosen to focus on business and enterprise blogging, and has been successful with that strategy. If you need LDAP integration, support for an Oracle database, or you want to give a blog to everyone in your school or company, MT, actually the MT Enterprise Solution is the way to go.
For most small operations who are price sensitive, it’s not a slam dunk either way — the price points and the products are similar enough that a decision really will depend on your specific needs. If you are price sensitive and your organization is growing then in the long run EE will become the price leader. That’s something to keep in mind.
When it comes to functionality, EE clearly stands out. If you look at EE’s feature list, it seems almost overwhelmingly flexible. Conversely, if you look at the list of 47 new features of MT 4.0, more than half are things that EE already does, and roughly 20% are marketing speak, such as “Completely reinvented user interface!”, which while meaningful, have a rather subjective element to the net impact. MT is still a more specialized product.
For me and my clients, with the exception of the blog entry WYSIWYG editor, there’s not many areas where this latest version of MT surpasses the current incarnation of EE, just areas where it offers a functionality down a path EE hasn’t yet gone. If one of those might be the deal breaker (like static output files or LDAP support, for instance), go with MT. But if you don’t have a unique feature driving your decision, I’d click over to EllisLab and take a serious look at ExpressionEngine.