There are plenty of cheap hosts available that offer a good service. WPEngine Contact
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll wish to have a look at our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, providing handled plans that are totally enhanced for the platform. Naturally, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely inexpensive. You’ll want to know whether this hosting service is worth the cost prior to making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to perform a thorough WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key features, support options, performance capabilities, 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 one of the leading managed WordPress hosting business in the market. Serial business owner 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 business has won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly adds to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to select WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, however these are tough to quantify. Some features stand out when you browse the interface, however, that can offer you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool created to assist you accelerate your WordPress website by using meaningful metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how quickly your page rendered, for how long it took to fill in its whole, and the total size of the page. It even consists of historical information on your website’s efficiency over the past six months and recommendations on how you can decrease 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 before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it permits your designers to make comprehensive changes to your website without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has an extensive list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably uncommon move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those typically limited are plugins that have actually been kept in mind to trigger efficiency issues and security holes. For crucial features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made alternatives offered that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only offers handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 various strategies readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans consist of endless information transfer. The plans vary based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made strategy includes dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority assistance
WP Engine consists of some unique functions for WordPress users that a lot of hosts don’t offer, or charge additional for. These unique features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly produce a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Leading edge innovations consisting of latest PHP version.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine offers the most advanced and detailed managed WordPress hosting functions.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s interface is expert and well set out, however the effective functions may suggest a steep learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect rules, you’ll be right in the house here, however otherwise you’ll need to spend a long time on the support website.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page filled in just over two seconds. This is one of the fastest reactions we’ve evaluated, with competitor Liquid Web just slightly behind.
Assistance
A managed WordPress service must use additional value through its assistance, and WP Engine delivers. The support website includes videos and posts of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with help on much deeper WordPress performance that lots of WordPress hosts don’t enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the reaction fasted and the representative experienced. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If website filling speed is a leading 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 prioritizes human demands over robot demands and provides load balancing, giving your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides site content to your visitors based upon their location to increase your website’s speed and decrease latency. You get this capability free of charge with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium rate for this service. WP Engine ensures 99.95% server uptime, approximately four 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 track of all the traffic going to your site and immediately spots and blocks potential attacks. In addition, the hosting service instantly updates and patches the WordPress core to eliminate potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine immediately backups your site every day and has a one-click repair function to get you back up and running rapidly. Lastly, this hosting service safeguards your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Extraordinary Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to connect with consumer care by means of chat. The support team has an exceptional knowledge base and can help you fix issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all plans except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat assistance on all strategies.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area enables 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 does not impact your live website. This feature enables designers to work on sites without interfering with the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this feature allows you to construct a website from your WP Engine account. You don’t have to wait on the customer to include you to their WordPress site. As soon as finished, you can transfer the site to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality conserves time if you routinely build sites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are utilizing any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine only deals with WordPress. From a company perspective, it makes sense to focus on a single market and deal exceptional services because location. Nevertheless, 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 email account and register your domain through your site host, you’ll require to look somewhere else. 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 prices structure. You will be penalized for exceeding your plan’s visitor limits. This may not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can always upgrade your strategy as your website grows. However, significant spikes in traffic throughout item launches or seasonal company can cost you considerable excess charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the cost? The answer lies in figuring out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the exact same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the cost. You can even get devoted hosting for the exact same rate as WP Engine. What you are really paying for here is security, performance, speed, and, most importantly, assurance. 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 paying for efficiency & not having to think excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s prices based on the functions you’re getting- you truly don’t get a great deal.
And if you are the type who will think of your site’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and typically visiting frequently), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unneeded.
Numerous shared hosting servers can manage the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the cost. My individual website a shared hosting plan from HostGator with standard caching) handled more than 15,000+ gos to in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a reputable VPS, you can definitely manage a lot more for much less. In fact, the website you are on deals with more than 110,000+ gos to per month with lots of room left to 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 strategy.
They are fairly transparent about how they count gos to, however it can still be rather a surprise for “little” site owners how rapidly they can enter into the $290 monthly tier. I have a customer who started with the Startup plan, however rapidly wound up with a custom strategy.
And as mentioned earlier that doesn’t even include many of the features you don’t get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limitations on regional media storage. Anything above the limits needs additional costs & technical application of Amazon cloud services.
And most significantly for me- you are restricted on your installs. If you have a few side projects or low-traffic test sites, you need to factor those into the cost. You can’t utilize them to expand the cost of your plan- particularly if you are hitting your visitor cap rather than your set up cap.
If you are looking to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your site files- WP Engine is a pricey choice, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Start-up
The Startup bundle is one of the most basic strategy and will set you back $25 per month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 sees each month.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One site consisted of.
WP Engine targets little websites and blog sites with this plan, however we believe it may be overkill for many people in this classification. You can get a far much better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t wish to take any possibilities with uptime or need a warranty that your site can manage 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d recommend this option to small companies, affiliate websites, and blogs making great money and want assurances that nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 per year or more months free if you pay each year.
Growth
The development strategy targets growing services and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 sees each month.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
Ten websites included a while.
This strategy is a fantastic 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 assistance. This addition will come in helpful if you have a complicated concern that you need to deal with quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or two months free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the very best value option. This one expenses $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to per month.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We suggest this option for a fast-growing blog or organization. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the assistance center.
You can save $580 or more months totally free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Customized
Lastly, if you have a mission-critical website or large business, the Custom plan may be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Millions of visits each month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites included.
You will need to talk to a sales rep to get your customized quote depending on your requirements. This plan also provides exclusive assistance needs to something fail.
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 three data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve site speeds by selecting to host your site on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks malicious attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that go into site speed, however the rule of thumb is that the more complicated your website is, the more complex the solutions to speed ended up being.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and fast. If you are running a mostly text site with a couple of fundamental plugins and a few little images, you’ll be fine with an economical shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s usually additional plugins, custom-made style files, lots of images, widgets, advertisements, forms and more.
All these functions integrated with good levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress installation.
A slow website doesn’t imply that you require a larger, better server. It does imply that you require to get smarter about speed. Often it’s as easy as getting a more powerful server, however sometimes it’s more about caching specific resources in a particular order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Imagine you are attempting to transport a trailer with a pickup truck. Picture your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s pointless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you may just require to eliminate the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress needs assistance to stay fast as you grow. There are lots of services … however either you or a designer must execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed issues. They have personalized servers with extremely aggressive caching and much more sophisticated “stack” than a typical 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 enable caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have actually such a tailored 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 additional work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my clients on WP Engine (who has a puffed up theme, extra scripts, too many uncompressed images, to name a few things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That measures how rapidly the server returned enough information to start loading the page.
It’s good to have that sort of speed right out of the box- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or complex the website 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 since you are totally free to focus on speed factors that you can quickly manage like image compression, use of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only offers an integrated CDN, but they likewise supply worldwide data 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 considering that they work on Google Cloud, you don’t have to worry about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include a global CDN (content delivery network).
The CDN will help your site load quickly for customers worldwide 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 firm. Frequently the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting sites is one of the fortes of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes several steps to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an upgraded firewall to block the most recent dangers.
All sites are supported daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can help you recover your site 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 support for any concerns relating to security.
They supply webinars on security.
They publish security guidelines and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine provides webinars, guides, article, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can learn how to:.
Introduce your first website.
Troubleshoot common problems.
Make improvements to your site.
Handle your hosting account with higher efficiency.
Both beginners and knowledgeable WordPress website owners will find the assistance documentation vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all membership costs is unique in the hosting market.
It allows you to try out the service in a safe method.
Keep in mind: this option is not readily available on custom hosting plans.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, but what is finest for you based upon your objectives, budget, resources & habits.
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 handled WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They use more features than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress website developers and/or high-traffic sites that do not wish to stress over hosting issues.
If handled hosting is a fit for you- then go have a look at WP Engine’s strategies 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.