There are plenty of inexpensive hosts available that supply a good service. WPEngine Banned Plugins
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, providing handled plans that are fully optimized for the platform. Of course, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely inexpensive. Therefore, you’ll need to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense prior to buying.
To help you out, we’re going to perform an extensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its essential functions, support alternatives, performance abilities, and everything else you’ll need to know. Let’s get started!
WP Engine Video Review
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now among the leading handled 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 workplaces in San Antonio (Texas), London (England), Limerick (Ireland), Brisbane (Australia), and Kraków (Poland).
The company has actually won several awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to select WP Engine over less expensive WordPress hosting are increased dependability, efficiency, assistance, and management, but these are difficult to quantify. Some features stick out when you browse the user interface, however, that can give you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool developed to help you accelerate your WordPress website by using significant metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, the length of time it took to pack in its totality, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historic data on your site’s efficiency over the past 6 months and suggestions on how you can decrease page load.
You can establish your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment before making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid embarrassing errors on your website by making changes to a copy of your site prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it enables your designers to make substantial modifications to your site without impacting your consumers.
WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a relatively unusual relocation, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those typically restricted are plugins that have been kept in mind to cause efficiency problems and security holes. For crucial features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization 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 offers handled WordPress hosting. There are five different plans offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans consist of unlimited data transfer. The strategies differ based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some unique features for WordPress users that a lot of hosts don’t use, or charge additional for. These special features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly develop a copy of your website for testing
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Leading edge innovations including latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine provides the most advanced and detailed handled WordPress hosting features.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s interface is professional and well laid out, but the powerful features might imply a steep knowing 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 need to spend a long time on the assistance site.
In our screening, the default WordPress home page filled in simply over two seconds. This is among the fastest reactions we’ve evaluated, with rival Liquid Web just somewhat behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service must use additional worth through its support, and WP Engine provides. The support website includes videos and articles of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with assistance on much deeper WordPress performance that many WordPress hosts don’t go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the response fasted and the agent experienced. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If site loading speed is a top priority, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s mix of custom NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation ensure that your web pages load quickly. NGINX extension focuses on human demands over robotic demands and offers load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides site content to your visitors based on their area to boost your website’s speed and decrease latency. You get this ability totally free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s tough to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium cost 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 boosted SLA, which translates 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 track of all the traffic going to your site and instantly detects and blocks possible attacks. Additionally, the hosting service instantly updates and patches the WordPress core to remove possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine instantly backups your website every day and has a one-click repair function to get you support and running rapidly. Finally, this hosting service safeguards your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, strength attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Phenomenal Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to connect with consumer care through chat. The assistance group has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you resolve issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all strategies except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat assistance on all strategies.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area permits you to clone your site’s live version and make changes or test brand-new plugins and themes. Anything you perform in the staging area does not impact your live site. This function enables developers to work on sites without hindering the live website’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this function allows you to build a website from your WP Engine account. You do not have to wait for the customer to add you to their WordPress site. When completed, you can move the site to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you routinely construct websites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you run out luck. WP Engine only deals with WordPress. From a company perspective, it makes sense to focus on a single market and deal remarkable services in that location. However, this design locks out lots of people who might otherwise take advantage of WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you choose to host your e-mail account and register your domain through your site host, you’ll need to look elsewhere. You’ll have to use third-party services for domain registration or e-mail accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is reflected in its rates structure. You will be penalized for surpassing your plan’s visitor limitations. This might not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly update your strategy as your site grows. However, significant spikes in traffic throughout item launches or seasonal company can cost you significant excess charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the cost? The answer depends on figuring out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the exact same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the rate. You can even get devoted hosting for the very same price as WP Engine. What you are truly spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most importantly, peace of mind. The supreme question 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 typically spending for performance & not having to believe excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s prices based on the features you’re getting- you actually don’t get a lot.
And if you are the type who will consider your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress updated and generally logging in frequently), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unnecessary.
Lots of shared hosting servers can manage the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the price. My individual site a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with standard caching) managed more than 15,000+ gos to in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a reliable VPS, you can certainly handle a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on manages more than 110,000+ check outs per month with a lot of space 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 sees, but it can still be quite a surprise for “small” website owners how quickly they can enter the $290 per month tier. I have a client who began with the Startup strategy, however rapidly wound up with a customized strategy.
And as pointed out earlier that doesn’t even consist of a lot 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 limitations 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 sites, you have to factor those into the rate. You can’t utilize them to spread out the cost of your strategy- particularly if you are striking your visitor cap instead of your set up cap.
If you are looking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your site files- WP Engine is an expensive choice, especially compared to other non-managed hosting options.
Startup
The Startup plan is the most standard strategy and will set you back $25 monthly. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 check outs monthly.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One website included.
WP Engine targets little sites and blogs with this strategy, but we think it may be overkill for many people in this category. You can get a far much better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t want to take any possibilities with uptime or require a warranty that your site can manage 25,000 visitors each month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d suggest this option to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blogs making great money and want assurances that nothing will change.
You can save $60 each year or more months totally free if you pay every year.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing businesses and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 check outs monthly.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
10 sites included a while.
This plan is a great entry point for a growing organization, and it might be a while before you need to upgrade. With this strategy, you likewise get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to round-the-clock chat assistance. This addition will come in helpful if you have an intricate issue that you require to deal with rapidly.
You can save a cool $230 or more months complimentary with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale plan as the very best worth option. This one expenses $241 each month. Here you get:.
400,000 check outs per month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
We suggest this choice for a fast-growing blog site or organization. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the support center.
You can conserve $580 or two months free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Custom
Finally, if you have a mission-critical site or large organization, the Custom plan might be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Countless visits monthly.
400GB+ bandwidth each month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites included.
You will have to talk to a sales representative to get your personalized quote depending on your requirements. This plan also uses proprietary 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 company also has three information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve website speeds by selecting to host your site on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine obstructs harmful attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that go into website speed, however the general rule is that the more intricate your site is, the more complex the options to speed become.
Out of the box- WordPress is relatively lean and fast. If you are running a mainly text website with a few standard plugins and a few small images, you’ll be fine with a cost effective shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few website owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s usually extra plugins, custom theme files, great deals of images, widgets, advertisements, types and more.
All these features combined with decent levels of traffic can start to decrease your WordPress setup.
A slow website does not suggest that you need a bigger, better server. It does suggest that you require to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as basic as getting a more powerful server, however in some cases it’s more about caching particular resources in a particular order and enhancing your files. To put it simply- it gets complex.
Imagine you are attempting to haul a trailer with a pickup. Imagine your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s meaningless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might just 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 needs help to stay quickly as you grow. There are lots of services … but either you or a developer need to execute them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine takes care of (almost) all speed concerns. They have actually customized servers with very aggressive caching and even more innovative “stack” than a typical webhosting. They also have actually trained support who will enter into your WordPress set up and identify the precise chokepoint to get your website moving.
They don’t even allow caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have such a customized caching setup.
The intriguing thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still do well on their platform due to the fact that their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers 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 information to begin packing the page.
It’s good to have that sort of speed right out of package- and have it stay 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 back at much better numbers with WP Engine than you may get with other services given that you are complimentary 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 just supplies an incorporated CDN, but they also offer worldwide data centers in case your audience is mostly 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 considering that they work on Google Cloud, you do not have to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans consist of a global CDN (content delivery network).
The CDN will help your website load fast for customers 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 websites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Protecting sites is among the strengths of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes several steps to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep track of an upgraded firewall software to block the latest risks.
All websites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can assist you recover your website 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 questions concerning security.
They provide webinars on security.
They release security guidelines and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it free of charge.
Online Resources
WP Engine offers webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Release your first website.
Troubleshoot typical problems.
Make improvements to your website.
Handle your hosting account with higher performance.
Both novices and skilled WordPress website owners will discover the assistance documents indispensable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all membership costs is special in the hosting market.
It enables you to check 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 best overall, but what is best for you based on your goals, budget, resources & practices.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they use a fantastic service with a strong product. As a managed WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more features than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unrivaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress site developers and/or high-traffic sites that don’t wish to stress over hosting problems.
If handled 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 assurance. So do a test install and see what you think about their backend. Be sure to talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.