There are plenty of inexpensive hosts offered that offer a decent service. WPEngine Bandwidth
However, what if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll want to take a look at our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, offering managed plans that are totally enhanced for the platform. Of course, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely inexpensive. For that reason, you’ll want to know whether this hosting service deserves the expense prior to making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to perform a comprehensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its essential features, assistance choices, performance abilities, and whatever else you’ll need to understand. Let’s begin!
WP Engine Video Review
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now among the leading managed WordPress hosting business 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 numerous awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly contributes to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to pick WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased dependability, efficiency, assistance, and management, however these are hard to measure. Some features stand apart when you browse the user interface, however, that can give you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool designed to help you accelerate your WordPress site by providing meaningful metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how rapidly your page rendered, how long it took to fill in its entirety, and the total size of the page. It even includes historic information on your site’s efficiency over the past 6 months and suggestions on how you can reduce page load.
You can establish your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment before making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid humiliating errors 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 impacting your customers.
WP Engine has a thorough list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly uncommon move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those usually limited are plugins that have actually been kept in mind to trigger performance concerns and security holes. For essential functions such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has made options available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only provides handled WordPress hosting. There are five different plans available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies include limitless information transfer. The plans vary based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made plan includes dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority assistance
WP Engine consists of some unique functions for WordPress users that many hosts do not 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
- Cutting edge innovations consisting of latest PHP version.
In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine provides the most advanced and thorough handled 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 professional and well set out, however the powerful functions might indicate a steep knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect guidelines, you’ll be right in the house here, but otherwise you’ll require to spend a long time on the support site.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page packed in simply over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest reactions we’ve checked, with rival Liquid Web only slightly behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service should offer additional value through its assistance, and WP Engine provides. The support website includes videos and posts of a quality you ‘d anticipate from a paid training course, with aid on deeper WordPress functionality that lots of WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the response was quick and the representative experienced. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If website packing speed is a top 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 rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human requests over robotic requests and uses load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN delivers website content to your visitors based on their area to boost your website’s speed and reduce latency. You get this capability free of charge with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s difficult 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 further 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 assurance.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps an eye on all the traffic going to your website and instantly spots and blocks prospective attacks. In addition, the hosting service immediately updates and patches the WordPress core to eliminate potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine immediately backups your site every day and has a one-click repair feature to get you support and running rapidly. Lastly, this hosting service protects your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Phenomenal Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to connect with customer care through chat. The assistance group has an exceptional knowledge base and can assist you resolve problems quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all strategies other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area permits you to clone your website’s live variation and make changes or check new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area does not affect your live site. This function allows developers to work on websites without hindering the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this feature enables you to develop a site from your WP Engine account. You do not have to await the customer to include you to their WordPress website. Once finished, you can transfer the site to the client or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality saves 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 are out of luck. WP Engine only works with WordPress. From a service point of view, it makes sense to concentrate on a single market and deal exceptional services in that area. Nevertheless, this design locks out many people who could otherwise gain 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 need to look elsewhere. 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 shown in its rates structure. You will be punished 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. Considerable spikes in traffic during item launches or seasonal organization can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the cost? The answer 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 committed hosting for the exact same rate as WP Engine. What you are actually spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, peace of mind. 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 normally spending for performance & not needing to believe too much about maintenance, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s prices based upon the features you’re getting- you truly do not get a lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your site’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress updated and usually logging in often), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is unnecessary.
Many shared hosting servers can manage the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the price. My personal site a shared hosting plan from HostGator with basic caching) dealt with more than 15,000+ check outs in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a trustworthy VPS, you can certainly handle a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on deals with more than 110,000+ gos to per month with lots of room delegated spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, email, 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 relatively transparent about how they count check outs, but it can still be quite a surprise for “small” website owners how rapidly they can enter into the $290 monthly tier. I have a client who started with the Startup strategy, however quickly wound up with a customized plan.
And as mentioned earlier that doesn’t even include a number of the functions you don’t get with WP Engine’s strategies. You can’t run any email 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 importantly for me- you are restricted on your installs. If you have a couple of side projects or low-traffic test sites, you have to factor those into the price. You can’t use them to expand the expense of your strategy- specifically if you are striking your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are aiming to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your site files- WP Engine is a costly alternative, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Start-up
The Startup bundle is one of the most fundamental strategy and will set you back $25 each month. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 gos to each month.
50GB bandwidth monthly.
10GB storage.
One website consisted of.
WP Engine targets little websites and blog sites with this strategy, however we believe it may be overkill for most people in this category. You can get a far better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t want to take any opportunities with uptime or require an assurance that your site can manage 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d suggest this choice to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blogs making great money and want guarantees that nothing will change.
You can conserve $60 each year or more months totally free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The growth strategy targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 each month. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to monthly.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
Ten websites included a while.
This plan is a terrific entry point for a growing business, and it might be a while before you need to update. With this plan, you likewise get 24/7 phone support in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will be available in helpful if you have an intricate problem that you require to fix quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or 2 months complimentary with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale plan as the best worth option. This one costs $241 each month. Here you get:.
400,000 visits monthly.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 sites included.
We suggest this alternative for a fast-growing blog or service. 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 free with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom
Finally, if you have a mission-critical website or big company, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless visits per month.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will have to speak with a sales associate to get your customized quote depending upon your requirements. This plan likewise uses proprietary support should something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network facilities.
The company also has 3 data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve website speeds by choosing to host your site on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks malicious attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that go into site speed, but the general rule is that the more intricate your website is, the more complex the options to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is fairly lean and quick. If you are running a mainly text site with a few standard plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be great with a cost effective shared hosting plan from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s usually additional plugins, custom theme files, lots of images, widgets, ads, kinds and more.
All these functions combined with decent levels of traffic can start to slow down your WordPress installation.
A sluggish site does not indicate that you require a bigger, much better server. It does imply that you require to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as basic as getting a more powerful server, however often it’s more about caching particular resources in a particular order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Imagine you are trying to carry a trailer with a pickup. Picture your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s pointless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might simply need to remove the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress needs assistance to remain quick as you grow. There are a lot of options … but either you or a designer must implement them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed concerns. They have personalized servers with very aggressive caching and even more advanced “stack” than a normal web host. They likewise have actually trained support who will go into your WordPress install and identify the exact chokepoint to get your website moving.
They don’t even allow caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have actually such a personalized caching setup.
The fascinating thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still succeed on their platform due to the fact that their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers on WP Engine (who has a puffed up theme, extra scripts, too many uncompressed images, among other things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That determines how quickly the server returned enough information to begin packing the page.
It’s great to have that sort of speed right out of the box- and have it stay that way no matter how big or complicated the site 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 may get with other services given that you are totally free to concentrate on speed aspects that you can easily manage like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only offers an incorporated CDN, however they also offer global data centers in case your audience is primarily 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 run on Google Cloud, you do not have to worry about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies include a global CDN (material delivery network).
The CDN will assist your website load quick for clients all over the world by serving it to them from the network node that’s geographically closest to them.
Security and Backups
An approximated 78% of hacked sites are WordPress websites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting websites is among the strong points of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes a number of steps to safeguard WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep track of an upgraded firewall program to block the current dangers.
All sites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can help you recuperate your website 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 support for any questions regarding security.
They supply webinars on security.
They publish security standards and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Release your first website.
Troubleshoot common issues.
Make improvements to your site.
Manage your hosting account with greater effectiveness.
Both newbies and skilled WordPress website owners will discover the support paperwork vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all membership charges is distinct in the hosting industry.
It allows you to try the service in a safe way.
Note: this choice is not offered on custom hosting plans.
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 objectives, budget, resources & practices.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they use a fantastic service with a solid item. As a managed WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They provide more features than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unmatched for smart DIYers, WordPress website developers and/or high-traffic websites that do not wish to fret about hosting problems.
If managed hosting is a suitable 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 set up and see what you believe of their backend. Be sure to chat w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.