There are plenty of low-cost hosts readily available that provide a decent service. WPEngine Wordfence
However, what if you’re trying to find more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll want to check out our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, providing managed plans that are completely enhanced for the platform. Obviously, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t exactly cheap. You’ll want to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense prior to making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to carry out a comprehensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial functions, support choices, efficiency abilities, and everything else you’ll require to understand. Let’s get started!
WP Engine Video Review
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now one of the leading managed WordPress hosting business in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen started WP Engine when he saw a requirement for specialized WordPress hosting due to the increasing appeal of WordPress.
WP Engine is Headquartered in Austin, Texas with workplaces in San Antonio (Texas), London (England), Limerick (Ireland), Brisbane (Australia), and Kraków (Poland).
The company has actually won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly adds to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to pick WP Engine over less expensive WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, but these are hard to measure. Some features stand apart when you browse the user interface, however, that can offer you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool created to help you accelerate your WordPress site by using meaningful metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how rapidly your page rendered, the length of time it required to load in its entirety, and the total size of the page. It even includes historical information on your website’s performance over the past 6 months and recommendations on how you can reduce page load.
You can establish your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment before making the modifications live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid humiliating errors on your website by making changes to a copy of your website prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your designers to make extensive changes to your site without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has a thorough list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly uncommon relocation, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those normally restricted are plugins that have actually been noted to cause performance issues and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has actually made options offered that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just offers handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 various plans readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of endless data transfer. The strategies differ based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom plan includes dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority support
WP Engine includes some special functions for WordPress users that a lot of hosts do not provide, or charge extra for. These unique features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly create a copy of your website for testing
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Innovative innovations consisting of newest PHP version.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine uses the most innovative and comprehensive managed WordPress hosting features.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s user interface is expert and well laid out, but the powerful functions may imply a high knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and reroute guidelines, you’ll be right in the house here, but otherwise you’ll need to invest a long time on the support site.
In our screening, the default WordPress home page packed in just over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve evaluated, with competitor Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Support
A handled WordPress service must use additional value through its support, and WP Engine provides. The assistance website consists of videos and posts of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with aid on much deeper WordPress performance that numerous WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the reaction was quick and the representative educated. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If website packing speed is a top concern, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s combination of customized NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation ensure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human requests over robot requests and uses load balancing, providing your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN provides site material to your visitors based upon their location to improve your website’s speed and decrease latency. You get this capability free of charge with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s tough to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium cost for this service. WP Engine ensures 99.95% server uptime, roughly four and a half hours of downtime a year. You can further increase your uptime to 99.99% with enhanced SLA, which equates to a little under an hour of downtime annually. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls below the guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine monitors all the traffic going to your site and immediately spots and obstructs possible attacks. Furthermore, the hosting service automatically updates and patches the WordPress core to get rid of prospective vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine immediately backups your website every day and has a one-click restoration function to get you back up and running quickly. Lastly, this hosting service secures your site versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Remarkable Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to get in touch with client care via chat. The assistance team has an outstanding knowledge base and can assist you solve problems rapidly. You get 24/7 phone support for all strategies except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all strategies.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area permits you to clone your site’s live variation and make changes or test new plugins and styles. Anything you do in the staging area does not impact your live site. This function permits developers to work on sites without interfering with the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this feature enables you to develop a website from your WP Engine account. You don’t have to await the client to include you to their WordPress site. When completed, you can transfer the website to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality conserves time if you routinely build websites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are utilizing any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you run out luck. WP Engine only deals with WordPress. From an organization viewpoint, it makes sense to concentrate on a single market and deal remarkable services because location. This design locks out many people who could otherwise benefit from WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you choose to host your email account and register your domain through your website host, you’ll require to look somewhere else. You’ll need to utilize third-party services for domain registration or e-mail accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is reflected in its pricing structure. You will be punished for exceeding your plan’s visitor limits. This may not be a problem if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your plan as your site grows. Substantial spikes in traffic throughout item launches or seasonal business can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the expense? The answer lies in determining what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the very same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the price. You can even get dedicated hosting for the exact same cost as WP Engine. What you are actually spending for here is security, performance, speed, and, most notably, comfort. The supreme concern is just how much these things are worth to you.
Plans and Pricing
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
With a WP Engine plan, you are usually spending for efficiency & not having to think too much about upkeep, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s prices based upon the features you’re getting- you truly don’t get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think of your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress updated and generally visiting regularly), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is superfluous.
Lots of shared hosting servers can deal with the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the cost. My individual site a shared hosting plan from HostGator with fundamental caching) handled more than 15,000+ visits in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a reputable VPS, you can certainly handle a lot more for much less. In fact, the website you are on handles more than 110,000+ visits each month with lots of room delegated spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, e-mail, RSS apps, etc with an InMotion VPS. I spend for the VPS plus a CDN for less than WP Engine’s starter strategy.
They are relatively transparent about how they count check outs, but it can still be rather a surprise for “little” website owners how quickly they can get into the $290 monthly tier. I have a client who started with the Startup plan, but quickly ended up with a custom-made plan.
And as pointed out earlier that does not even consist of many of the functions you do not get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any e-mail from your servers. You have low limitations on regional media storage. Anything above the limits needs additional expenses & technical application of Amazon cloud services.
And most notably for me- you are restricted on your installs. If you have a few side projects or low-traffic test websites, you have to factor those into the price. You can’t use them to expand the cost of your strategy- specifically if you are striking your visitor cap instead of your set up cap.
If you are looking to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your website files- WP Engine is a pricey alternative, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Startup
The Startup package is the most standard plan and will set you back $25 per month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 gos to per month.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One website consisted of.
WP Engine targets small websites and blog sites with this plan, however we think it might be overkill for the majority of people in this classification. You can get a far much better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t wish to take any chances with uptime or need an assurance that your website can handle 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d suggest this option to small companies, affiliate sites, and blog sites making great cash and desire assurances that absolutely nothing will change.
You can save $60 annually or 2 months free if you pay annually.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing companies and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 sees each month.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
10 websites included a while.
This plan is a terrific entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while prior to you need to update. With this strategy, you also get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will come in useful if you have a complicated issue that you require to solve rapidly.
You can save a cool $230 or more months totally free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the very best value choice. This one expenses $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to monthly.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 sites included.
We advise this option for a fast-growing blog site or organization. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the assistance.
You can conserve $580 or two months totally free with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom-made
If you have a mission-critical website or large business, the Custom strategy may be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Countless check outs each month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites included.
You will need to talk to a sales rep to get your personalized quote depending upon your requirements. This plan likewise provides proprietary assistance needs to something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network infrastructure.
The business also has 3 data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve site speeds by selecting to host your site on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine obstructs malicious attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that go into website speed, however the guideline is that the more complicated your site is, the more complex the services to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is fairly lean and quick. If you are running a mostly text site with a few standard plugins and a few small images, you’ll be great with an affordable shared hosting strategy from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s normally additional plugins, custom-made theme files, lots of images, widgets, advertisements, forms and more.
All these features integrated with decent levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress installation.
However a slow website does not imply that you need a larger, much better server. It does suggest that you need to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as basic as getting a more effective server, however in some cases it’s more about caching specific resources in a certain order and enhancing your files. In other words- it gets complex.
Envision you are trying to haul a trailer with a pickup truck. Envision your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s pointless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might simply require to get rid of the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress requires help to remain quick as you grow. There are a lot of options … however either you or a developer should execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed issues. They have tailored servers with incredibly aggressive caching and even more sophisticated “stack” than a typical web host. They also have trained assistance who will go into your WordPress set up and recognize the exact chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even permit caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have actually such a tailored caching setup.
The fascinating thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still succeed on their platform since their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers on WP Engine (who has a bloated style, additional scripts, too many uncompressed images, among other things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That measures how rapidly the server returned enough information to start packing the page.
It’s nice to have that type of speed right out of package- and have it remain that way no matter how huge or intricate the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are consumed about speed, you can get back at much better numbers with WP Engine than you may get with other services given that you are complimentary to focus on speed elements that you can quickly control like image compression, use of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just offers an incorporated CDN, but they also provide worldwide information centers in case your audience is primarily in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are attempting to get top speeds without tinkering layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And since they work on Google Cloud, you do not need to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include a global CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will assist your website load quickly for customers worldwide by serving it to them from the network node that’s geographically closest to them.
Security and Backups
An estimated 78% of hacked sites are WordPress websites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Frequently the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Protecting sites is among the fortes of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The business takes numerous procedures to protect WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs everyday malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an upgraded firewall to obstruct the current hazards.
All sites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can assist you recover your website in case of an attack.
The WP Engine site provides a guide on “Tips to Protect Your WordPress Site From Being Hacked.”.
You’ll have access to 24/7/365 technical support for any concerns regarding security.
They offer webinars on security.
They release security standards and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it totally free.
Online Resources
WP Engine provides webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Introduce your first site.
Troubleshoot typical problems.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with greater effectiveness.
Both beginners and skilled WordPress site owners will find the support documentation important.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all subscription fees is unique in the hosting market.
It allows you to try out the service in a risk-free way.
Keep in mind: this alternative is not offered on custom-made hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, but what is finest for you based on your goals, spending plan, resources & routines.
If you are in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they provide a terrific service with a strong item. As a handled WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They provide more functions than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for smart DIYers, WordPress website developers and/or high-traffic sites that don’t want to stress over hosting problems.
If managed hosting is a suitable for you- then go check out WP Engine’s strategies here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back assurance. Do a test install and see what you believe of their backend. Make sure to chat w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.