There are a lot of inexpensive hosts readily available that supply a decent service. WPEngine Add Users
Nevertheless, what if you’re searching for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll want to have a look at our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, providing handled strategies that are fully optimized for the platform. Of course, when compared to lots of other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly cheap. Therefore, you’ll want to know whether this hosting service deserves the expense prior to making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to conduct a thorough WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key features, support options, performance abilities, and whatever else you’ll require to understand. Let’s start!
WP Engine Video Review
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now among the leading handled 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 rising popularity 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 won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to pick WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, however these are hard to measure. Some features stick out when you search the user interface, nevertheless, that can provide you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool created to assist you speed up your WordPress site by using meaningful metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how quickly your page rendered, the length of time it took to pack in its whole, and the total size of the page. It even includes historic data on your site’s efficiency over the past six months and recommendations on how you can lower page load.
You can develop your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment before making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid humiliating mistakes on your website by making changes to a copy of your website before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it enables your designers to make comprehensive 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 unusual relocation, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those generally limited are plugins that have actually been noted to trigger performance concerns and security holes. For crucial features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has actually made options available that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only uses handled WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of unlimited data transfer. The plans differ based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority support
WP Engine includes some special functions for WordPress users that many hosts don’t use, or charge additional for. These special features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately produce a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Leading edge innovations consisting of most current PHP version.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine offers the most innovative and extensive handled WordPress hosting features.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s user interface is professional and well set out, but the effective functions may mean a steep knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and reroute guidelines, you’ll be right in your home here, but otherwise you’ll require to spend a long time on the assistance site.
In our screening, the default WordPress home page loaded in simply over two seconds. This is among the fastest responses we’ve evaluated, with competitor Liquid Web just somewhat behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service ought to offer extra worth through its assistance, and WP Engine provides. The support site consists of videos and articles of a quality you ‘d anticipate from a paid training course, with help on deeper WordPress performance that numerous WordPress hosts don’t enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the action was quick and the representative educated. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If website loading speed is a leading concern, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s combination of custom NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology make sure that your web pages load quickly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robotic requests and provides load balancing, giving your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN delivers website material to your visitors based on their area to increase your site’s speed and minimize latency. You get this ability free of charge with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s hard to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium price for this service. WP Engine guarantees 99.95% server uptime, roughly four 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 annually. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls below the warranty.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps an eye on all the traffic going to your site and immediately discovers and blocks prospective attacks. Furthermore, the hosting service immediately updates and spots the WordPress core to eliminate potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine instantly backups your site every day and has a one-click remediation feature to get you support and running quickly. This hosting service secures your site versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Incredible Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact customer care by means of chat. The assistance team has an outstanding knowledge base and can assist you solve problems rapidly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all strategies except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat assistance on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area allows you to clone your website’s live version and make changes or check new plugins and themes. Anything you perform in the staging area does not affect your live site. This feature enables developers to deal with websites without disrupting 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 customer to include you to their WordPress website. As soon as completed, you can transfer the website to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you frequently build sites for customers.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine just works with WordPress. From a company point of view, it makes good sense to focus on a single market and offer exceptional services in that area. This model 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 need to look somewhere else. You’ll have to use third-party services for domain registration or email accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is shown in its rates 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 always upgrade your plan as your website grows. Nevertheless, substantial spikes in traffic during item launches or seasonal business can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the expense? The response lies in finding out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the same amount 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 spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, comfort. The supreme question is just how much these things deserve to you.
Plans and Pricing
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With a WP Engine strategy, you are normally spending for efficiency & not needing to believe too much about maintenance, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s pricing based on the functions you’re getting- you truly don’t get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress updated and typically logging in often), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is superfluous.
Numerous shared hosting servers can manage the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the cost. My personal website a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with basic caching) handled more than 15,000+ gos to in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a trustworthy VPS, you can certainly deal with a lot more for much less. The site you are on deals with more than 110,000+ visits per month with plenty of space 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 relatively transparent about how they count check outs, however it can still be quite a surprise for “little” website owners how rapidly they can get into the $290 monthly tier. I have a client who began with the Startup plan, however quickly ended up with a custom-made plan.
And as pointed out previously that doesn’t even consist of many of the features you don’t get with WP Engine’s strategies. 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 execution of Amazon cloud services.
And most importantly for me- you are restricted on your installs. If you have a couple of side projects or low-traffic test sites, you need to factor those into the price. You can’t use them to spread out the cost of your plan- specifically if you are hitting your visitor cap rather than your set up cap.
If you are seeking to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & serve up your website files- WP Engine is an expensive option, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting options.
Startup
The Startup package is one of the most fundamental plan and will set you back $25 monthly. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 gos to per month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One site included.
WP Engine targets little websites and blogs with this plan, but 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 wish to take any opportunities with uptime or require a warranty that your website can handle 25,000 visitors each month, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d suggest this choice to small companies, affiliate sites, and blogs making great cash and desire guarantees that nothing will change.
You can save $60 each year or two months complimentary if you pay yearly.
Growth
The growth strategy targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 sees monthly.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
Ten sites included a while.
This strategy is a great entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while before you require to upgrade. With this plan, you also get 24/7 phone support in addition to round-the-clock chat support. This addition will be available in convenient if you have an intricate problem that you need to solve rapidly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or more months complimentary with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the very best worth alternative. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 check outs per month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
We advise this choice for a fast-growing blog site or business. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the assistance.
You can save $580 or 2 months free with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom
Finally, if you have a mission-critical website or large organization, the Custom plan might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless check outs each month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
You will have to talk to a sales associate to get your personalized quote depending upon your requirements. This plan also provides exclusive support ought to something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network infrastructure.
The company also has 3 data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve site speeds by picking to host your site on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine blocks destructive attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that enter into site speed, however the rule of thumb is that the more intricate your site is, the more complex the services to speed become.
Out of the box- WordPress is relatively lean and fast. If you are running a mainly text site with a few basic plugins and a few small images, you’ll be fine with a budget-friendly shared hosting plan from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few website owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s typically additional plugins, customized theme files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, kinds and more.
All these features integrated with good levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress setup.
A sluggish site does not imply that you need a larger, better server. It does suggest that you require to get smarter about speed. In some cases it’s as easy as getting a more powerful server, however in some cases it’s more about caching certain resources in a particular order and enhancing your files. In other words- it gets complex.
Picture you are trying to transport a trailer with a pickup truck. Picture your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s pointless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might just require to remove the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress requires assistance to stay fast as you grow. There are plenty of services … but either you or a designer need to execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine looks after (nearly) all speed concerns. They have tailored servers with exceptionally aggressive caching and a lot more innovative “stack” than a common web host. They also have trained assistance who will enter into your WordPress install and determine the specific chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even allow caching plugins on their installs because they have actually such a customized caching setup.
The fascinating 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 one of my customers on WP Engine (who has a puffed up theme, additional scripts, too many uncompressed images, to name a few things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That determines how quickly the server returned enough information to begin loading the page.
It’s nice to have that kind of speed right out of the box- and have it remain that way no matter how huge or complicated the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are obsessed about speed, you can get back at better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services given that you are free to focus on speed elements that you can easily control like image compression, use of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only supplies an integrated CDN, but they also offer international data centers in case your audience is mainly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are trying to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And since they work on Google Cloud, you don’t have to worry about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans consist of an international CDN (content delivery network).
The CDN will help your website load quick for consumers all over the world 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. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Securing websites is among the strengths of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The company takes numerous procedures to safeguard WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They monitor an updated firewall software to obstruct the latest risks.
All sites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can assist you recover your site in case of an attack.
The WP Engine site supplies 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 designers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine offers webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Introduce your very first site.
Troubleshoot typical problems.
Make improvements to your site.
Manage your hosting account with greater performance.
Both newbies and knowledgeable WordPress website owners will find the assistance paperwork indispensable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all subscription costs is special in the hosting market.
It allows you to try out the service in a safe method.
Note: this choice is not readily available on custom-made 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 upon your goals, budget plan, resources & habits.
If you remain in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they use a fantastic service with a solid product. As a handled WordPress host, their prices is competitive. They provide more functions than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unrivaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress website developers and/or high-traffic websites that don’t want to fret about hosting issues.
If managed hosting is a fit for you- then go have a look at WP Engine’s plans here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back guarantee. So do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Make sure to chat w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.