There are lots of inexpensive hosts available that supply a decent service. WPEngine Advanced Network
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 webhosting, using handled plans that are totally optimized for the platform. Of course, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t exactly cheap. You’ll want to understand whether this hosting service is worth the expense before making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to carry out a thorough WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial features, assistance alternatives, performance capabilities, and whatever else you’ll require to understand. Let’s begin!
WP Engine Video Review
Sign up for a WP Engine plan and receive the Genesis Framework and 35+ StudioPress Themes free!
About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now among the leading handled WordPress hosting companies in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen started WP Engine when he saw a need for specialized WordPress hosting due to the rising 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 consistently contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to select WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased dependability, efficiency, assistance, and management, but these are difficult to measure. Some features stand apart when you search the interface, nevertheless, that can offer you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool developed to assist you accelerate your WordPress site by offering meaningful metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how rapidly your page rendered, for how long it required to load in its entirety, and the total size of the page. It even includes historical information on your site’s efficiency over the past six months and recommendations on how you can reduce page load.
You can develop your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the modifications live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid embarrassing errors on your site by making changes to a copy of your site prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your developers to make extensive modifications to your website without impacting your clients.
WP Engine has a detailed list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably unusual move, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those typically limited are plugins that have actually been noted to cause performance concerns and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has made alternatives readily available that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just uses managed WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of unrestricted information transfer. The plans differ based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made plan includes dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority support
WP Engine includes some unique functions for WordPress users that the majority of hosts don’t provide, or charge additional for. These unique features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly create a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from totally free to paid accounts
- Leading edge innovations consisting of latest PHP version.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine offers the most advanced and thorough managed WordPress hosting functions.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
User interface and in use
WP Engine’s user interface is expert and well set out, however the effective features might imply a steep learning curve for unskilled 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 require to invest a long time on the support website.
In our screening, the default WordPress home page filled in just over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest reactions we’ve tested, with competitor Liquid Web only slightly behind.
Support
A handled WordPress service must provide additional worth through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The assistance website includes videos and posts of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with assistance 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 response was quick and the agent educated. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If website filling speed is a leading priority, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s mix of custom-made NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation guarantee that your websites load quickly. NGINX extension prioritizes human requests over robotic demands and uses load balancing, giving your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN provides website material to your visitors based on their location to enhance your website’s speed and reduce latency. You get this ability for free 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 price for this service. WP Engine guarantees 99.95% server uptime, approximately 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 below the warranty.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps an eye on all the traffic going to your site and automatically finds and blocks possible attacks. In addition, the hosting service automatically updates and patches the WordPress core to get rid of possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine immediately backups your website every day and has a one-click remediation function to get you support and running rapidly. Finally, this hosting service safeguards your site versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Sensational Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to get in touch with client care by means of chat. The support group has an outstanding knowledge base and can assist you resolve problems rapidly. You get 24/7 phone support for all plans 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 site’s live variation and make changes or check brand-new plugins and themes. Anything you do in the staging area doesn’t affect your live website. This function permits designers to work on websites without interfering with the live website’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this feature permits you to construct a site from your WP Engine account. You do not need to wait on the customer to add you to their WordPress website. Once completed, you can move the site to the client or host the site on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you routinely develop websites 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 just deals with WordPress. From a company viewpoint, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and deal extraordinary services in that location. This design locks out numerous individuals who might otherwise benefit from WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you prefer to host your email account and register your domain through your site host, you’ll need to look in other places. You’ll need to utilize third-party services for domain registration or email accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is reflected in its pricing 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 always upgrade your strategy as your website grows. Significant spikes in traffic during product launches or seasonal business can cost you significant overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the expense? The response depends on finding out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the very same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the rate. You can even get committed hosting for the same cost as WP Engine. What you are actually spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most importantly, comfort. The ultimate concern is how much these things deserve to you.
Plans and Pricing
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
With a WP Engine strategy, you are generally spending for performance & not having to think too much about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s pricing based on the features you’re getting- you really do not get a great deal.
And if you are the type who will think of your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and usually visiting often), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is superfluous.
Numerous shared hosting servers can handle the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the rate. My personal website a shared hosting plan from HostGator with basic caching) dealt with more than 15,000+ visits in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a trustworthy VPS, you can certainly manage a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on manages more than 110,000+ sees each month with lots of room delegated spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, e-mail, RSS apps, etc with an InMotion VPS. I pay for the VPS plus a CDN for less than WP Engine’s starter plan.
They are fairly transparent about how they count gos to, but it can still be rather a surprise for “small” website owners how quickly they can enter the $290 per month tier. I have a client who started with the Startup plan, however rapidly wound up with a customized plan.
And as pointed out previously that doesn’t even consist of much of the features you don’t get with WP Engine’s strategies. You can’t run any e-mail from your servers. You have low limits on regional media storage. Anything above the limits requires 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 sites, you need to factor those into the price. You can’t utilize them to spread out the cost of your plan- particularly if you are hitting your visitor cap rather than your install cap.
If you are aiming to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your website files- WP Engine is an expensive alternative, especially compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Startup
The Startup package is one of the most fundamental strategy and will set you back $25 each month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 sees each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One website included.
WP Engine targets small sites and blog sites with this strategy, but we believe it may be overkill for most people in this classification. You can get a far better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t wish to take any possibilities with uptime or need an assurance that your site can handle 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d recommend this alternative to small companies, affiliate sites, and blog sites making great cash and want assurances that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 per year or two months free if you pay each year.
Growth
The growth strategy targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to per month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
Ten websites consisted of a while.
This strategy is a great entry point for a growing organization, and it might be a while before you require to update. With this plan, you also get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to round-the-clock chat assistance. This addition will be available in convenient if you have a complex concern that you need to fix quickly.
You can save a cool $230 or 2 months free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the best value option. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to monthly.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
We advise this option for a fast-growing blog site or company. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the assistance center.
You can conserve $580 or two months complimentary with yearly pre-paid billing.
Customized
If you have a mission-critical website or large business, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Millions of gos to each month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites included.
You will need to talk to a sales representative to get your customized quote depending on your requirements. This strategy likewise offers exclusive support ought to something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong 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 website speeds by selecting to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine obstructs harmful attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into website speed, however the general rule is that the more complex your website is, the more intricate the services to speed ended up being.
Out of the box- WordPress is relatively lean and quick. If you are running a mainly text site with a couple of standard plugins and a few small images, you’ll be great with a cost effective shared hosting plan from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s generally extra plugins, custom-made style files, lots of images, widgets, ads, forms and more.
All these features combined with good levels of traffic can begin to decrease your WordPress setup.
A sluggish website does not suggest that you require a bigger, much better server. It does mean that you need to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as easy as getting a more effective server, but in some cases it’s more about caching certain resources in a particular order and enhancing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Picture you are attempting to transport a trailer with a pickup truck. Picture your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s pointless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you might simply require to get rid of the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress requires help to stay fast as you grow. There are plenty of options … however either you or a designer should implement them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed concerns. They have actually customized servers with exceptionally aggressive caching and even more sophisticated “stack” than a typical webhosting. They likewise have trained assistance who will enter into your WordPress set up and identify the specific chokepoint to get your website moving.
They don’t even enable caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have such a personalized caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still do well 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, additional scripts, a lot of uncompressed images, to name a few things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That determines how rapidly the server returned enough data to begin loading the page.
It’s nice to have that sort of speed right out of the box- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or complicated the website 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 totally free to concentrate on speed aspects that you can quickly manage like image compression, use of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just provides an incorporated CDN, however they likewise supply worldwide information centers in case your audience is mainly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are attempting to get top speeds without tinkering layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does exactly that. And since they run on Google Cloud, you don’t have to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include a global CDN (material shipment network).
The CDN will assist your website load quickly for consumers around the globe by serving it to them from the network node that’s geographically closest to them.
Security and Backups
An approximated 78% of hacked websites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Protecting websites is among the strong suits of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The business takes a number of procedures to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an updated firewall to obstruct the most recent threats.
All sites are supported daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can assist you recuperate your site 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 concerning security.
They provide webinars on security.
They publish security guidelines and checklists for designers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it totally free.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, blog posts, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can learn how to:.
Launch your very first site.
Troubleshoot common problems.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with greater performance.
Both newbies and skilled WordPress site owners will discover the assistance documentation important.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all membership costs is unique in the hosting market.
It enables you to experiment with the service in a risk-free method.
Note: this choice is not readily available on custom-made hosting plans.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, however what is finest for you based on your goals, spending plan, resources & practices.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they offer a fantastic service with a strong item. As a handled WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more features than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unrivaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress website designers and/or high-traffic websites that do not wish to worry about hosting problems.
If handled 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 guarantee. Do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Make sure to talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.