There are a lot of inexpensive hosts offered that supply a good service. WPEngine Development
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll want to take a look at our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, providing handled strategies that are completely enhanced for the platform. Naturally, when compared to lots of other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t precisely low-cost. 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 perform an extensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial functions, support alternatives, performance capabilities, and whatever else you’ll need to understand. Let’s get going!
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 among the leading managed WordPress hosting business in the market. Serial business owner Jason Cohen began WP Engine when he saw a need for specialized WordPress hosting due to the increasing appeal 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 business has won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently adds to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to select WP Engine over less expensive WordPress hosting are increased reliability, efficiency, support, and management, however these are hard to quantify. Some features stand out when you search the user interface, nevertheless, 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 providing significant metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, how long it required to pack in its entirety, and the total size of the page. It even includes historical data on your website’s efficiency over the past six months and suggestions on how you can lower page load.
You can develop your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment before making the modifications live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid embarrassing errors on your website by making changes to a copy of your website prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it enables your designers to make substantial modifications to your website without affecting your clients.
WP Engine has an extensive list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a relatively unusual relocation, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those generally restricted are plugins that have been kept in mind to cause performance issues and security holes. For important functions such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made options available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just offers handled WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans include limitless information transfer. The strategies differ based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some unique functions for WordPress users that most hosts don’t offer, or charge extra for. These unique functions consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly develop a copy of your site for testing
- Easy transferable installs from totally free to paid accounts
- Cutting edge innovations consisting of newest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine provides the most innovative and thorough handled 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, but the powerful functions may suggest a steep learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and reroute rules, you’ll be right in the house here, however otherwise you’ll require to invest a long time on the support site.
In our screening, the default WordPress web page filled in just over 2 seconds. This is one of the fastest responses we’ve tested, with competitor Liquid Web only slightly behind.
Assistance
A managed WordPress service must offer additional worth through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The support website includes videos and posts of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with aid on much deeper WordPress functionality that many WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the reaction was quick and the representative well-informed. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If site packing speed is a leading priority, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s mix of custom NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation guarantee that your websites load quickly. NGINX extension prioritizes human requests over robotic requests and offers load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN delivers website material to your visitors based upon their place to increase your website’s speed and lower latency. You get this ability free of charge with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why people continue to pay a premium cost 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 per year. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls below the warranty.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps an eye on all the traffic going to your site and automatically detects and obstructs potential attacks. Additionally, the hosting service automatically updates and patches the WordPress core to eliminate possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine instantly backups your site every day and has a one-click repair function to get you support and running rapidly. Finally, this hosting service safeguards your website 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 by means of chat. The assistance group has an outstanding knowledge base and can help you resolve problems rapidly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all plans except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all strategies.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area permits you to clone your website’s live variation and make changes or test brand-new plugins and themes. Anything you do in the staging area does not impact your live website. This function allows designers to deal with sites without interfering with the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature allows you to construct a site from your WP Engine account. You do not have to wait for the client to add you to their WordPress site. When completed, you can transfer the website to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This performance conserves time if you regularly construct sites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine just works with WordPress. From a business point of view, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and deal remarkable services in that area. Nevertheless, this design locks out many individuals who could otherwise gain from WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you prefer to host your email account and register your domain through your site host, you’ll require to look somewhere else. You’ll have to utilize third-party services for domain registration or e-mail accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is shown in its rates structure. You will be punished for exceeding your strategy’s visitor limitations. This might not be a problem if you have predictable traffic, and you can always upgrade your strategy as your site grows. Nevertheless, significant spikes in traffic during product launches or seasonal company can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the cost? The response lies in determining what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can manage the exact same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the price. You can even get devoted hosting for the exact same price as WP Engine. What you are actually paying for here is security, performance, speed, and, most significantly, comfort. The ultimate concern is just 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 typically spending for efficiency & not having to think excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s rates based on the functions you’re getting- you really don’t get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your site’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and normally logging in frequently), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unneeded.
Many shared hosting servers can manage the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the rate. My personal website a shared hosting plan from HostGator with fundamental caching) dealt with more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a reliable VPS, you can certainly manage a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on manages more than 110,000+ gos to each month with a lot 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 strategy.
They are fairly transparent about how they count check outs, however it can still be rather a surprise for “little” website owners how quickly they can enter the $290 monthly tier. I have a client who began with the Startup strategy, however quickly wound up with a custom-made strategy.
And as pointed out earlier that doesn’t even consist of much of the features you do not get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limitations on local media storage. Anything above the limits needs extra expenses & technical execution of Amazon cloud services.
And most significantly for me- you are limited on your installs. If you have a few 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 plan- especially if you are striking your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are looking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & serve up your site files- WP Engine is a costly alternative, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Startup
The Startup package is the most standard plan and will set you back $25 monthly. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 check outs per month.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One site consisted of.
WP Engine targets small sites and blogs with this strategy, but we believe it may be overkill for most people in this category. You can get a far much better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t wish to take any opportunities with uptime or need a guarantee that your website can handle 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d recommend this alternative to small companies, affiliate sites, and blogs making good cash and want assurances that nothing will change.
You can save $60 per year or two months totally free if you pay each year.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing services and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 visits each month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
Ten sites consisted of a while.
This plan is a terrific entry point for a growing business, and it might be a while before you need to upgrade. With this plan, you likewise get 24/7 phone support in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will be available in handy if you have an intricate concern that you need to solve quickly.
You can save a cool $230 or more months free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine markets its scale plan as the best worth option. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 sees each month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
We advise this choice for a fast-growing blog or business. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the assistance center.
You can save $580 or two months totally free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Customized
Lastly, if you have a mission-critical website or large organization, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless sees each month.
400GB+ bandwidth each month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites included.
You will have to speak with a sales representative to get your individualized quote depending upon your requirements. This plan also offers proprietary assistance should something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network facilities.
The business likewise has 3 data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better site speeds by choosing to host your website on servers that are closest to your target audience.
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 intricate your website is, the more intricate the services to speed ended up being.
Out of the box- WordPress is fairly lean and fast. If you are running a mostly text website with a couple of fundamental plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be fine with an economical shared hosting plan from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few website owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s normally additional plugins, custom style files, lots of images, widgets, ads, forms and more.
All these features combined with good levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress setup.
However a slow site does not indicate that you need a larger, much better server. It does indicate that you require to get smarter about speed. Often it’s as easy as getting a more effective server, but often it’s more about caching certain resources in a certain order and optimizing your files. To put it simply- it gets complex.
Picture you are trying to haul a trailer with a pickup. Imagine your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s pointless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might just need to get rid of the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress requires help to remain quickly as you grow. There are plenty of services … but either you or a developer need to implement them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed issues. They have actually tailored servers with incredibly aggressive caching and much more advanced “stack” than a common web host. They likewise have trained support who will enter into your WordPress install and determine the exact chokepoint to get your site moving.
They do not even allow caching plugins on their installs since they have actually such a customized caching setup.
The fascinating thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still do well on their platform since their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my customers on WP Engine (who has a bloated style, extra scripts, a lot of uncompressed images, to name a few things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That determines how rapidly the server returned enough data to begin loading the page.
It’s great to have that type of speed right out of package- and have it stay that way no matter how big or intricate the website gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are obsessed about speed, you can get even 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 quickly control like image compression, usage of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just offers an incorporated CDN, but they likewise offer worldwide data centers in case your audience is primarily in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are attempting to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And considering that they work on Google Cloud, you don’t have to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include a worldwide CDN (content delivery network).
The CDN will assist your website load quickly for customers 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 websites are WordPress websites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting websites is one of the fortes of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The business takes numerous procedures to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They monitor an upgraded firewall software to block the latest hazards.
All sites are supported daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can help you recuperate 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 concerning security.
They provide webinars on security.
They release security standards and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine provides webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Introduce your first site.
Troubleshoot common issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with higher efficiency.
Both newbies and experienced WordPress website owners will discover the assistance paperwork important.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all subscription costs is special in the hosting market.
It allows you to check out the service in a risk-free method.
Keep in mind: this option is not available on customized hosting plans.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, however 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 offer a great service with a strong item. As a handled WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They provide more functions than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unequaled for smart DIYers, WordPress website designers and/or high-traffic websites that do not want to stress over hosting issues.
If handled hosting is a fit for you- then go check out WP Engine’s strategies here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back assurance. So do a test set up and see what you think about their backend. Make sure to talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.