There are plenty of inexpensive hosts available that provide a good service. WPEngine Cpanel
However, what if you’re trying to find more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll wish to have a look at our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, providing handled strategies that are completely optimized for the platform. Obviously, when compared to lots of other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t exactly cheap. For that reason, you’ll need to know whether this hosting service deserves the expense before buying.
To help you out, we’re going to carry out a comprehensive WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial functions, assistance options, efficiency capabilities, and whatever else you’ll need to know. Let’s begin!
WP Engine Video Review
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now among the leading handled WordPress hosting business in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen began WP Engine when he saw a requirement 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 business has won numerous awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to choose WP Engine over less expensive WordPress hosting are increased dependability, efficiency, assistance, and management, however these are tough to measure. Some functions stand apart when you browse the user interface, nevertheless, that can give you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool designed to help you speed up your WordPress website by using significant metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how quickly your page rendered, the length of time it required to load in its whole, and the total size of the page. It even consists of historical information on your site’s performance over the past six months and suggestions on how you can minimize page load.
You can develop your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment before making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid humiliating mistakes on your website by making changes to a copy of your site prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it permits your designers to make substantial changes to your site without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a relatively unusual move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those usually restricted are plugins that have been kept in mind to trigger performance issues and security holes. For crucial features such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has actually made alternatives offered that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just provides managed WordPress hosting. There are five various plans readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of endless information transfer. The plans differ based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized plan includes dedicated dev. environments, customer success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some unique features for WordPress users that most hosts don’t offer, or charge additional for. These unique features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly create a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Innovative innovations consisting of latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine provides the most sophisticated 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 laid out, however the effective features might 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 at home here, but otherwise you’ll require to spend some time on the assistance site.
In our screening, the default WordPress web page loaded in just over two seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve evaluated, with rival Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Assistance
A managed WordPress service should use additional worth through its assistance, and WP Engine delivers. The support website includes videos and articles of a quality you ‘d anticipate from a paid training course, with help on deeper WordPress functionality that lots of WordPress hosts do not go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the reaction fasted and the representative well-informed. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If website filling speed is a top concern, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s mix of custom-made NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation ensure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robot requests and provides load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN delivers website content to your visitors based on their location to increase your website’s speed and reduce latency. You get this ability for free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s hard 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 four and a half hours of downtime a year. You can even more increase your uptime to 99.99% with enhanced SLA, which equates to a little under an hour of downtime annually. 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 site and automatically identifies and obstructs potential attacks. In addition, the hosting service immediately updates and spots the WordPress core to eliminate possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, 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 protects your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, strength efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Sensational Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact consumer care via chat. The support team has an exceptional knowledge base and can help you resolve problems quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all strategies except 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 site’s live version and make changes or evaluate new plugins and themes. Anything you perform in the staging area doesn’t affect your live website. This feature enables developers to work on websites without disrupting the live site’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this function enables you to develop a website from your WP Engine account. You do not have to wait for the customer to add you to their WordPress website. When completed, you can transfer the website to the client or host the site on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you regularly develop websites 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 service perspective, it makes good sense to focus on a single market and deal exceptional services in that location. Nevertheless, this model locks out many people 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 website 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 reflected in its pricing structure. You will be penalized for exceeding your plan’s visitor limitations. This may not be a problem if you have predictable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your plan as your site grows. Significant spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal company can cost you significant overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the expense? The answer lies in finding out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the very same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the price. You can even get dedicated hosting for the same rate as WP Engine. What you are actually spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most importantly, peace of mind. The supreme 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 generally spending for efficiency & not having to believe excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s pricing based on the functions you’re getting- you actually don’t get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will consider your website’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress updated and typically logging in often), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is superfluous.
Many shared hosting servers can handle the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the cost. 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 trusted VPS, you can certainly manage a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on handles more than 110,000+ gos to each month with plenty of space 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 relatively transparent about how they count check outs, however it can still be quite a surprise for “little” site owners how rapidly they can get into the $290 each month tier. I have a customer who began with the Startup plan, however quickly ended up with a custom-made strategy.
And as mentioned previously that doesn’t even consist of a number of the functions you do not get with WP Engine’s strategies. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limits on local media storage. Anything above the limits requires extra expenses & technical application of Amazon cloud services.
And most notably for me- you are limited on your installs. If you have a couple of side projects or low-traffic test websites, you need to factor those into the cost. You can’t use them to expand the cost of your plan- specifically if you are hitting your visitor cap rather than your set up cap.
If you are seeking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your site files- WP Engine is a pricey choice, especially compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Start-up
The Startup plan is one of the most fundamental strategy and will set you back $25 per month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 gos to monthly.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One site consisted of.
WP Engine targets little websites and blog sites with this strategy, however we believe it might be overkill for most people in this classification. You can get a far better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you do not want to take any chances with uptime or need a guarantee that your site can handle 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d advise this choice to small companies, affiliate sites, and blog sites making great cash and want assurances that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can save $60 per year or 2 months free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The development plan targets growing businesses and will cost you $95 each month. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to per month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
Ten websites consisted of a while.
This plan is a fantastic entry point for a growing organization, and it might be a while before you need to update. With this strategy, you also get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will can be found in convenient if you have a complicated issue that you need to fix rapidly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or 2 months totally free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale strategy as the very best worth choice. This one expenses $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 visits monthly.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We advise this choice for a fast-growing blog site or company. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the assistance.
You can save $580 or 2 months complimentary with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom-made
If you have a mission-critical website or big service, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Countless check outs each month.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will need to speak with a sales rep to get your individualized quote depending upon your requirements. This strategy also uses proprietary support ought to something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine achieves over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network infrastructure.
The business also has three information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better site speeds by selecting to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks destructive attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that enter into website speed, however the general rule is that the more complex your site is, the more complex the options to speed ended up being.
Out of the box- WordPress is relatively lean and quick. If you are running a mostly text site with a couple of fundamental plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be fine with an inexpensive shared hosting strategy from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of site owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s usually additional plugins, custom-made style files, lots of images, widgets, advertisements, types and more.
All these features combined with decent levels of traffic can start to slow down your WordPress setup.
A sluggish site doesn’t mean that you need a larger, better server. It does mean that you need to get smarter about speed. Often it’s as simple as getting a more powerful server, however often it’s more about caching specific resources in a certain order and optimizing your files. In other words- it gets complex.
Picture you are trying to transport a trailer with a pickup truck. Envision your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s pointless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you might simply need to eliminate the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress requires aid to remain quick as you grow. There are a lot of services … however either you or a designer must execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed concerns. They have customized servers with exceptionally aggressive caching and a lot more advanced “stack” than a normal webhosting. They likewise have actually trained assistance who will go into your WordPress install and identify the exact chokepoint to get your website moving.
They don’t even permit 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 sets up still succeed 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 puffed up theme, extra scripts, a lot of 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 package- and have it remain that way no matter how huge or complicated the site 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 may get with other services given that you are free to focus on speed factors that you can easily manage like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only provides an integrated CDN, however they likewise provide worldwide information centers in case your audience is mostly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are trying to get top speeds without tinkering layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And because they operate on Google Cloud, you don’t need to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies consist of an international CDN (material delivery network).
The CDN will help your website load quickly for clients 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. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Protecting websites is one of the strong points of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The company takes a number of procedures to protect WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an upgraded firewall program to obstruct the current dangers.
All sites are supported daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can assist you recover your site 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 assistance for any concerns regarding security.
They supply webinars on security.
They release security guidelines and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, article, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can learn how to:.
Launch your very first site.
Troubleshoot common issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Handle your hosting account with higher efficiency.
Both novices and knowledgeable WordPress website owners will find the support documentation invaluable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all membership charges is distinct in the hosting market.
It enables you to try the service in a safe method.
Note: this choice is not readily available on customized hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, but what is finest for you based upon your objectives, spending plan, resources & routines.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they provide a great service with a strong item. As a managed WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They use more features than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unmatched for smart DIYers, WordPress site designers and/or high-traffic sites that do not wish to stress over hosting concerns.
If managed hosting is a fit for you- then go take a look at 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 talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.