There are a lot of inexpensive hosts offered that offer a good service. Wp Engine Quick Links
However, what if you’re trying to find more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll want to take a look at our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, offering handled strategies that are fully enhanced for the platform. Obviously, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely low-cost. You’ll want to understand whether this hosting service is worth the cost before making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to conduct a thorough WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its essential features, support options, performance capabilities, and everything else you’ll require to understand. Let’s get going!
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 companies in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen began WP Engine when he saw a requirement for specialized WordPress hosting due to the rising popularity of WordPress.
WP Engine is Headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices in San Antonio (Texas), London (England), Limerick (Ireland), Brisbane (Australia), and Kraków (Poland).
The business has won numerous 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 dependability, efficiency, support, and management, however these are tough to measure. Some functions stand apart when you search the interface, however, that can offer you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool designed to help you accelerate your WordPress site by providing significant metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how rapidly your page rendered, how long it took to load in its entirety, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historical data on your website’s efficiency over the past 6 months and suggestions on how you can lower page load.
You can establish your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid embarrassing mistakes on your site by making changes to a copy of your website prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your developers to make extensive modifications to your site without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has an extensive list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably uncommon relocation, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can install. Those normally restricted are plugins that have actually been noted to cause efficiency issues and security holes. For crucial functions such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made options offered that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just provides handled WordPress hosting. There are five different plans offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies include limitless information transfer. The plans vary based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority assistance
WP Engine consists of some special functions for WordPress users that the majority of hosts don’t provide, or charge extra for. These special functions consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly create a copy of your website for testing
- Easy transferable installs from totally free to paid accounts
- Leading edge technologies including latest PHP version.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine provides the most sophisticated and thorough handled WordPress hosting functions.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s interface is expert and well set out, however the effective functions might mean a steep learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect guidelines, you’ll be right at home here, but otherwise you’ll need to spend a long time on the support site.
In our screening, the default WordPress home page filled in simply over two seconds. This is one of the fastest responses we’ve checked, with rival Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Support
A handled WordPress service must provide extra worth through its assistance, and WP Engine provides. The assistance website consists of videos and posts of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with assistance on much deeper WordPress functionality that many WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the reaction fasted and the agent knowledgeable. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If website packing speed is a leading priority, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s combination of customized NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology guarantee that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human requests over robot demands and offers load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN delivers website material to your visitors based upon their place to boost your site’s speed and reduce latency. You get this capability for free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s tough to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, which is why people continue to pay a premium cost for this service. WP Engine ensures 99.95% server uptime, roughly 4 and a half hours of downtime a year. You can even more increase your uptime to 99.99% with improved SLA, which equates to a little under an hour of downtime each year. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls listed below the guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps an eye on all the traffic going to your website and immediately identifies and blocks prospective attacks. In addition, the hosting service automatically updates and patches the WordPress core to get rid of potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine automatically backups your website every day and has a one-click repair function to get you back up and running quickly. Lastly, this hosting service protects your website against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Phenomenal Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to connect with consumer care via chat. The assistance group has an exceptional knowledge base and can assist you resolve issues rapidly. You get 24/7 phone support for all strategies other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all strategies.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area enables you to clone your website’s live version and make changes or check new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area does not affect your live website. This feature permits designers to deal with sites without interfering with the live site’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this feature enables you to construct a site from your WP Engine account. You don’t have to wait for the client to add you to their WordPress site. Once finished, you can move the website to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you regularly develop sites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine only deals with WordPress. From a company perspective, it makes good sense to focus on a single market and offer extraordinary services in that location. However, this design locks out lots of people who could otherwise benefit from WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you prefer to host your e-mail account and register your domain through your website host, you’ll require to look in other places. You’ll need to use third-party services for domain registration or email accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is reflected in its rates structure. You will be penalized for surpassing your strategy’s visitor limits. This might not be an issue if you have predictable traffic, and you can constantly update your strategy as your site grows. Substantial spikes in traffic during item launches or seasonal service can cost you significant excess charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the cost? The response lies in determining what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can manage the very same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the price. You can even get devoted hosting for the exact same price as WP Engine. What you are really paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, comfort. The ultimate 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 strategy, you are normally paying for efficiency & not having to think excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s prices based on the features you’re getting- you actually do not get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your site’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and normally visiting often), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unneeded.
Many shared hosting servers can handle the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the rate. My personal website a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with fundamental caching) managed more than 15,000+ gos to in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a trusted VPS, you can definitely manage a lot more for much less. In fact, the website you are on deals with more than 110,000+ gos to monthly with plenty of room left to 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 plan.
They are fairly transparent about how they count sees, but it can still be rather a surprise for “small” site owners how quickly they can enter the $290 each month tier. I have a client who started with the Startup plan, but rapidly wound up with a customized strategy.
And as pointed out previously that does not even include a lot of the features you do not get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limits on local 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 couple of side projects or low-traffic test websites, you need to factor those into the cost. You can’t use them to spread out the cost of your strategy- particularly if you are striking your visitor cap rather than your install cap.
If you are aiming to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your website files- WP Engine is an expensive alternative, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting options.
Startup
The Startup package is the most fundamental strategy and will set you back $25 monthly. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 gos to each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One site consisted of.
WP Engine targets little sites and blogs with this plan, however we believe it may be overkill for most people in this category. You can get a far much better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you do not want to take any opportunities with uptime or require a guarantee that your website can handle 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d recommend this option to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blog sites making great money and desire guarantees that nothing will change.
You can save $60 each year or 2 months totally free if you pay every year.
Growth
The development plan targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 visits each month.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
10 sites included a while.
This strategy is a terrific entry point for a growing organization, and it might be a while prior to you require to update. With this strategy, you also get 24/7 phone support in addition to day-and-night chat assistance. This addition will come in handy if you have an intricate concern that you require to deal with rapidly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or two months free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine markets its scale plan as the best worth option. This one costs $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 check outs per month.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
We suggest this alternative for a fast-growing blog site or business. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the support center.
You can save $580 or more months complimentary with yearly pre-paid billing.
Custom-made
Finally, if you have a mission-critical site or big company, the Custom plan might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Millions of gos to monthly.
400GB+ bandwidth each month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites included.
You will need to speak with a sales representative to get your individualized quote depending on your requirements. This strategy also offers proprietary support ought to something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine accomplishes over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network facilities.
The business likewise has three data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better site speeds by selecting to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks harmful attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that enter into site speed, but the guideline is that the more intricate your site is, the more complex the options to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is fairly lean and quick. If you are running a primarily text website with a few basic plugins and a couple of small images, you’ll be great with an economical shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s generally extra plugins, customized style files, great deals of images, widgets, advertisements, forms and more.
All these features integrated with good levels of traffic can begin to decrease your WordPress setup.
But a sluggish website does not suggest that you need a larger, better server. It does imply that you need to get smarter about speed. Often it’s as easy as getting a more powerful server, however in some cases it’s more about caching specific resources in a particular order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Envision you are attempting to carry a trailer with a pickup. Imagine your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s meaningless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you may just need to eliminate the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress requires aid to remain quick as you grow. There are a lot of options … but either you or a developer need to execute them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed issues. They have actually customized servers with incredibly aggressive caching and even more advanced “stack” than a typical web host. They also have trained support who will enter into your WordPress set up and recognize the precise chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even allow caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have actually such a personalized caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still succeed on their platform because their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for among my clients on WP Engine (who has a bloated theme, extra scripts, too many uncompressed images, to name a few things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That measures how rapidly the server returned enough data to begin loading the page.
It’s nice to have that sort of speed right out of package- and have it remain that way no matter how big or complicated the website gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are consumed about speed, you can get even much better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services since you are free to concentrate on speed aspects that you can quickly control like image compression, use of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only offers an incorporated CDN, but they likewise supply worldwide information centers in case your audience is primarily in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are attempting to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And because they run on Google Cloud, you don’t need to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies consist of a global CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will assist your site load fast for clients 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 sites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Securing websites is one of the fortes of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes numerous steps to safeguard WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They monitor an upgraded firewall to obstruct the most recent threats.
All sites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can help you recover your site in case of an attack.
The WP Engine website offers a guide on “Tips to Protect Your WordPress Site From Being Hacked.”.
You’ll have access to 24/7/365 technical assistance for any concerns regarding security.
They offer webinars on security.
They publish security standards and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it totally free.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can learn how to:.
Introduce your very first site.
Troubleshoot typical problems.
Make improvements to your website.
Handle your hosting account with higher efficiency.
Both novices and experienced WordPress site owners will find the assistance paperwork vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all membership fees is distinct in the hosting industry.
It enables you to try out the service in a safe way.
Keep in mind: this alternative is not available on customized hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, however what is finest for you based on your objectives, spending plan, resources & habits.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they provide a fantastic service with a strong product. As a managed WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They use more functions than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unmatched for savvy DIYers, WordPress site developers and/or high-traffic sites that don’t want to worry about hosting concerns.
If managed hosting is a suitable for you- then go take a look at WP Engine’s strategies here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back warranty. Do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Make certain to talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.