There are plenty of inexpensive hosts readily available that supply a decent service. WPEngine Att
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll wish to check out our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, offering handled plans that are fully enhanced for the platform. Of course, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t exactly inexpensive. You’ll desire to understand whether this hosting service is worth the expense prior to making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to carry out a thorough WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key functions, assistance choices, efficiency abilities, and whatever else you’ll require to know. Let’s get started!
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 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 increasing 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 company has won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly contributes to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to choose WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, however these are tough to quantify. Some features stick out when you search the interface, however, that can give you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool developed to assist you speed up your WordPress website by using significant metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how rapidly your page rendered, for how long it required to fill in its totality, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historical data on your website’s performance over the past 6 months and suggestions on how you can lower page load.
You can develop your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid awkward mistakes on your website by making changes to a copy of your website before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it permits your designers to make comprehensive modifications to your site without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has a detailed list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably unusual move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those usually restricted 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 alternatives readily available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just provides handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 various plans available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of limitless information transfer. The strategies differ based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom strategy consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority support
WP Engine includes some unique features for WordPress users that most hosts do not use, or charge additional for. These special features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly develop a copy of your site for testing
- Easy transferable installs from totally free to paid accounts
- Cutting edge technologies including most current PHP version.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we discovered that WP Engine uses the most innovative and thorough 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 professional and well laid out, however the effective features may mean a high learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect rules, you’ll be right in your home here, but otherwise you’ll require to spend some time on the support website.
In our screening, the default WordPress home page packed in just over 2 seconds. This is one of the fastest responses we’ve evaluated, with rival Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service should provide additional worth through its assistance, and WP Engine delivers. The assistance website consists of videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with aid on deeper WordPress performance that many WordPress hosts don’t go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the reaction fasted and the agent knowledgeable. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If site filling speed is a leading concern, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s mix of customized NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation guarantee that your websites load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human demands over robot demands and provides load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides site material to your visitors based upon their area to increase your website’s speed and decrease latency. You get this ability for free with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, which is why people continue to pay a premium rate for this service. WP Engine guarantees 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 monitors all the traffic going to your site and instantly spots and blocks possible attacks. Furthermore, the hosting service immediately updates and spots the WordPress core to remove possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine automatically backups your website every day and has a one-click remediation function to get you support and running rapidly. Finally, this hosting service protects your website against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, strength attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Sensational Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to connect with customer care by means of chat. The support group has an exceptional knowledge base and can assist you solve problems quickly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all strategies except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all strategies.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area allows you to clone your website’s live version and make changes or check new plugins and styles. Anything you carry out in the staging area doesn’t impact your live site. This function allows designers to work on websites without hindering the live website’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature enables you to construct a website from your WP Engine account. You do not have to wait on the customer to include you to their WordPress website. Once completed, you can move the website to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This performance conserves time if you routinely construct sites for customers.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you run out luck. WP Engine just deals with WordPress. From a business viewpoint, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and deal extraordinary services because location. This model locks out lots of people who might 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 utilize 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 exceeding your strategy’s visitor limitations. This might not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your plan as your site grows. Nevertheless, considerable spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal business can cost you substantial excess charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the cost? The response depends on figuring out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the price. You can even get dedicated hosting for the same price as WP Engine. What you are really spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, peace of mind. The ultimate question 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 plan, you are usually paying for performance & not having to believe excessive about maintenance, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s prices based on the functions you’re getting- you actually do not get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think of your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress updated and typically visiting often), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is unneeded.
Numerous shared hosting servers can manage the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the rate. My personal site a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with basic caching) managed more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a reliable VPS, you can definitely deal with a lot more for much less. The website you are on deals with more than 110,000+ gos to per month with plenty of room left to spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, email, 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 visits, but it can still be rather a surprise for “small” website owners how quickly they can get into the $290 per month tier. I have a customer who started with the Startup strategy, however quickly ended up with a custom-made 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 e-mail from your servers. You have low limitations on local media storage. Anything above the limits needs extra costs & technical application of Amazon cloud services.
And most significantly 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 rate. You can’t utilize them to expand the cost of your plan- specifically if you are striking your visitor cap rather than your install cap.
If you are wanting to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your site files- WP Engine is an expensive alternative, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Startup
The Startup bundle is the most standard plan and will set you back $25 each month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 visits each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One site consisted of.
WP Engine targets little sites and blog sites with this plan, but we think it may be overkill for many people in this category. You can get a far better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t want to take any opportunities with uptime or need a guarantee that your website can manage 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d suggest this option to small businesses, affiliate sites, and blogs making great cash and desire assurances that nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 each year or more months free if you pay every year.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing companies and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 check outs monthly.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
10 sites consisted of a while.
This strategy is an excellent entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while before you need to upgrade. With this plan, you also get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will be available in handy if you have an intricate issue that you need to resolve quickly.
You can save a cool $230 or two months free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine markets its scale plan as the best value option. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 sees per month.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We advise this alternative 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 totally free with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom
Lastly, if you have a mission-critical website or big business, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless visits each month.
400GB+ bandwidth each month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites included.
You will have to speak with a sales representative to get your personalized quote depending on your requirements. This plan likewise provides proprietary assistance should something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong Uptime
WP Engine achieves over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network infrastructure.
The business likewise has three information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better website speeds by picking to host your site on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine obstructs destructive attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into website speed, but 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 mostly text website with a couple of standard plugins and a few little images, you’ll be great with an economical shared hosting plan from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of website owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s generally extra plugins, customized theme files, lots of images, widgets, ads, kinds and more.
All these functions integrated with decent levels of traffic can start to decrease your WordPress installation.
A sluggish site doesn’t imply that you need a larger, much better server. It does suggest that you need to get smarter about speed. Often it’s as easy as getting a more effective server, however often it’s more about caching certain resources in a particular order and optimizing your files. To put it simply- it gets complex.
Picture 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 might just need to eliminate the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress requires help to stay fast as you grow. There are lots of services … however either you or a developer should execute them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine looks after (nearly) all speed issues. They have actually tailored servers with extremely aggressive caching and a lot more advanced “stack” than a normal web host. They also have trained support who will go into your WordPress set up and identify the precise chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even enable caching plugins on their installs since they have such a tailored caching setup.
The fascinating thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still do well on their platform because their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my clients 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 data to begin packing the page.
It’s good to have that kind of speed right out of the box- and have it remain that way no matter how big or intricate the website gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are consumed about speed, you can get back at better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services because you are complimentary to concentrate on speed elements that you can quickly control like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just offers an integrated CDN, however they also provide international data centers in case your audience is mostly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are trying to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does exactly that. And because they work on Google Cloud, you do not have to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans consist of a global CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will assist your website load quick for consumers 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 upgraded.
Securing sites is among the strong suits of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes numerous steps to safeguard WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They monitor an upgraded firewall to block the most recent dangers.
All websites are supported daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can assist you recuperate your website in case of an attack.
The WP Engine site 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 questions concerning security.
They offer webinars on security.
They release security guidelines and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it totally free.
Online Resources
WP Engine provides webinars, guides, article, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Introduce your very first site.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your site.
Handle your hosting account with higher efficiency.
Both newbies and skilled WordPress site owners will discover the support documents important.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all membership costs is special in the hosting industry.
It allows you to try the service in a safe way.
Note: this option is not readily available on custom-made hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, but what is finest for you based on your objectives, budget plan, resources & routines.
If you remain in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they provide a great service with a strong item. As a managed WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more functions than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unrivaled for smart DIYers, WordPress site developers and/or high-traffic sites that do not wish to worry about hosting problems.
If managed hosting is a fit for you- then go check out WP Engine’s plans here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back guarantee. Do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Be sure to chat w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.