There are a few alternatives to Adobe ColdFusion, and when I say “alternatives”, I mean ColdFusion engines other than Adobe’s official ColdFusion engine, not language alternatives like Ruby or PHP.

If you are developing for a large organization or company that can afford Adobe’s licensing (or actually needs some of the advanced features that only come with Adobe’s version of ColdFusion), then I certainly recommend sticking with Adobe. You will get strong support from Adobe, there may be newer features that you can get first while other engines play catch-up with Adobe, it is easy to install and get running, and it is the de facto standard. However, some of us are independent developers or [very] small businesses that don’t have the financial clout nor the need for advanced features that you see in Adobe’s editions of ColdFusion. There are alternatives for us.

BlueDragon from New Atlanta is probably the most popular alternative engine because it is cheaper but still a commercial product with support. Thus, this is a great alternative for a company that can stand to make the purchase but might sweat at Adobe’s price tag. Additionally, BlueDragon is available in a free edition for non-commercial, non-SSL use. If that fits your needs, BlueDragon is a great solution for you, still being easy to install and get running, and benefiting from the fine-tuning of a commercial product.

Railo is similar to BlueDragon in that it is a commercial product with a free edition, although the free edition seems a bit more crippled than BlueDragon. Admittedly, of all the ColdFusion alternatives, I know the least about Railo. Being that the company is based out of Switzerland, the pricing is not available in dollars, and the allowances for the free edition are a bit more confused, I am reluctant to experiment or recommend Railo. None of these barriers are technological and my conclusion is thus no reflection on the quality of the product.

Finally, Smith is a free ColdFusion engine. There are no licensing costs whatsoever. It is built upon several open source initiatives and, although it itself is not currently an open source project, it is offered as freeware. This is a great way to get your server running ColdFusion at a low cost, but recognize that nothing is free. What you save in product cost could just end up being at least partially reallocated to a cost in person-hours; Smith is [understandably] not as straightforward to configure as CFMX or BlueDragon. Smith does have its own web-based administration just like CFMX and BlueDragon, but it is not as thorough, and a deeper understanding of Tomcat or Jetty and other open source tools may be required to get your sites configured how you want. This may be a barrier for some, a deterrent for others. But if you have the technical strength to manage it and you don’t need the features it lacks, Smith is a great opportunity to save some money on a ColdFusion solution.

Which solution is right for you? It depends on your needs and your pocketbook. Smith is a great free solution but may require more hours for setup and maintenance; BlueDragon is a great solution to save a bit of money but still have an extremely polished product with good support; Adobe’s ColdFusion is obviously the industry standard and is ideal if you can swing it. These evaluations are considering very generic needs and do not consider other extenuating circumstances, such as driver support, .Net support, and so on. No solution is a “silver bullet” when considering your cost/feature ratio. Nevertheless, it is good to see the options growing.