Liferay CE vs Liferay DXP: Key Differences & How to Choose

When teams start working with Liferay, one question comes up almost immediately:

Should you use Liferay CE or Liferay DXP?

Liferay offers two editions:

• Liferay CE (Community Edition) – free and open source
• Liferay DXP (Digital Experience Platform) – enterprise-grade with licensed features and support

Both editions help organizations build portals, intranets, and digital experience platforms. But they are designed for very different project sizes, risk levels, and business expectations.

This guide explains the CE vs DXP differences in simple terms, with real-world examples, so you can confidently choose the right edition for your project.

What Is Liferay CE (Community Edition)?

Imagine you need a simple internal portal:

• Employees share documents and announcements
• Teams collaborate across departments
• Downtime is inconvenient, but not business-critical

This is where Liferay CE fits best.

Liferay CE is the free, open-source version of Liferay. You can download it, customize it, and deploy without paying any license fees. It provides a solid foundation for portals, dashboards, and internal tools-especially if your team is technically capable.

When Liferay CE Makes Sense

• Internal employee portals
• Department-level dashboards
• Proofs of concept (PoCs)
• Learning or experimentation projects
• Cost-sensitive initiatives

Trade-offs to Consider

Because CE is community-driven:

• There is no official vendor support
• Bug fixes and updates are not guaranteed
• Your team must troubleshoot issues independently

For many organizations, CE works well when supported by experienced backend teams-often Java engineers with portal and integration experience. In such cases, teams commonly scale faster by working with dedicated Java developers.

What Is Liferay DXP (Digital Experience Platform)?

Now imagine a different scenario.

Your portal is:

• Customer-facing or partner-facing
• Integrated with CRMs, ERPs, or core systems
• Used daily by thousands of users
• Directly tied to revenue, service delivery, or compliance

In this case, Liferay DXP is the better strategic choice.

Liferay DXP includes everything in CE, plus enterprise-grade capabilities such as advanced security, scalability, analytics, and official Liferay support with SLAs.

What Liferay DXP Adds

• Guaranteed vendor support and response times
• Advanced role-based access control (RBAC)
• Built-in analytics and personalization
• High availability through clustering
• Stronger governance and integration tooling

For enterprise-grade DXP implementations, organizations typically rely on specialized Liferay engineers who understand performance tuning, security hardening, and large-scale integrations. This is where teams often engage dedicated Liferay developers

Liferay CE vs Liferay DXP: Core Differences

Before comparing both editions, here are a few common terms explained in plain language.

Headless APIs

Use Liferay as a backend for content, users, and permissions, while building modern frontends using React, mobile apps, or custom UIs.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Users get permissions based on roles like “Admin,” “Employee,” or “Customer,” ensuring sensitive data stays protected.

Clustering & Stability

Run Liferay across multiple servers so traffic spikes or hardware failures don’t bring the platform down.

With these concepts in mind, here’s a quick side‑by‑side view of Liferay CE and Liferay DXP.

Licensing, Total Cost of Ownership, and Long-Term Risk

While Liferay CE is free, its total cost of ownership (TCO) depends heavily on internal engineering maturity.

Typical CE costs include:

• Developer time for maintenance and upgrades
• Custom fixes for security issues
• Manual performance tuning
• Risk mitigation when production issues arise

With Liferay DXP, the license cost is offset by:

• Predictable upgrade paths
• Regular security patches
• Reduced downtime via clustering
• Faster issue resolution through SLAs

For business-critical platforms, enterprises often find that DXP’s license cost is lower than the hidden operational cost of running CE at scale.

Real-World Use Cases: 

Use Case 1: Internal Knowledge Portal (CE) A mid-size company builds an internal knowledge base. Usage is limited, integrations are minimal, and downtime is acceptable. → Liferay CE is sufficient.

Use Case 2: Customer Self-Service Portal (DXP) Customers access accounts, support workflows, and documentation. Downtime impacts trust and revenue. → Liferay DXP is the safer choice.

Use Case 3: Partner Ecosystem Platform (DXP) Multiple partners access role-based data integrated with CRM and ERP systems. → DXP’s security and governance are essential.

Headless, API-First, and Future-Ready Architectures

Both editions support APIs - but maturity differs.

With CE, headless implementations require more custom governance and lifecycle management.

With DXP, organizations benefit from:

• API governance and consistency
• Multi-channel delivery
• Enterprise content workflows
• Long-term platform evolution support

For composable and microservices-based architectures, DXP provides stronger guardrails without sacrificing flexibility.

How to Decide: CE or DXP?

Here’s a simple decision framework.

Choose Liferay CE if:

• Budget is tight
• Project risk is low
• The portal is internal
• Your team can self-support

Choose Liferay DXP if:

• Downtime impacts customers or revenue
• Security and compliance matter
• You need guaranteed support
• The platform must scale reliably

Many organizations start with CE and later upgrade to DXP as their platform grows in size, integrations, and business impact.

If you’re evaluating Liferay at a strategic level, it also helps to understand why enterprises choose Liferay in the first place. This is covered in detail in Why Liferay? Why Enterprises Use It as Their Digital Backbone 

Final Thoughts

Liferay CE and Liferay DXP are designed for different stages of platform maturity.

• CE helps you move fast, experiment, and control costs
• DXP helps you scale safely, securely, and with confidence

The real question is not “Which one is better?” but:

How critical is this platform to my business?

If the answer is “very,” DXP is usually the right investment.