There are plenty of inexpensive hosts readily available that offer a good service. WPEngine Domain Hosting
However, what if you’re trying to find more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll want to have a look at our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, using handled plans that are fully optimized for the platform. Naturally, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly cheap. You’ll desire to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense before making a purchase.
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, performance capabilities, and whatever else you’ll require to understand. Let’s start!
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 handled WordPress hosting business in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen started WP Engine when he saw a requirement for specialized WordPress hosting due to the increasing 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 actually won numerous awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently contributes to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to select WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased dependability, performance, assistance, and management, however these are tough to quantify. Some functions stand apart when you search the user interface, however, that can offer you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool created to help you speed up your WordPress site by using meaningful metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how rapidly your page rendered, how long it required to pack in its whole, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historical data on your site’s efficiency over the past 6 months and recommendations on how you can lower page load.
You can develop your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid embarrassing errors on your site by making changes to a copy of your website before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it permits your developers to make extensive changes to your website without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has a detailed list of plugins that are prohibited (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 been kept in mind to cause efficiency concerns and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has made alternatives offered that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just offers handled WordPress hosting. There are five different strategies offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of unlimited data transfer. The plans vary based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom plan includes dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some special features for WordPress users that the majority of hosts don’t provide, or charge additional for. These special features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly create a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Cutting edge innovations consisting of most current PHP version.
In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine provides the most innovative and thorough managed WordPress hosting functions.
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, however the powerful features may indicate a steep knowing curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect guidelines, you’ll be right in the house here, however otherwise you’ll require to spend some time on the support website.
In our screening, the default WordPress home page packed in simply over two seconds. This is one of the fastest responses we’ve checked, with rival Liquid Web just slightly behind.
Support
A handled 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 help on much deeper WordPress functionality that numerous WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the reaction was quick and the representative knowledgeable. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If website loading speed is a leading priority, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s mix of custom NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation ensure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human requests over robot demands and offers load balancing, giving your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides website material to your visitors based on their area to improve your website’s speed and lower latency. You get this ability for free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s hard 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 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 annually. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls below the guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine monitors all the traffic going to your website and immediately discovers and obstructs possible attacks. Furthermore, the hosting service automatically updates and spots the WordPress core to remove possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine immediately backups your site every day and has a one-click restoration feature to get you back up and running rapidly. Finally, this hosting service protects your website versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, strength efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Incredible Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact customer care via chat. The assistance team has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you fix issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all strategies other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat assistance on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area permits you to clone your site’s live variation and make changes or check brand-new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area doesn’t impact your live site. This feature permits designers to work on sites without interfering with the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature enables you to construct a site from your WP Engine account. You don’t have to await the customer to include you to their WordPress website. As soon as completed, you can move the website to the client or host the website on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you routinely develop websites 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 deals with WordPress. From a business perspective, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and offer extraordinary services in that area. Nevertheless, this design locks out many individuals who could otherwise take advantage of 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 somewhere else. You’ll have to use 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 a problem if you have predictable traffic, and you can always update your plan as your website grows. However, considerable spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal service can cost you considerable overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the expense? The response depends on figuring out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the rate. You can even get devoted hosting for the same price as WP Engine. What you are actually paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most importantly, peace of mind. The ultimate concern 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 strategy, you are usually spending for performance & not having to believe excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s prices based on the features you’re getting- you truly don’t get a lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your site’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress updated and generally visiting often), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unneeded.
Many shared hosting servers can deal with the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the rate. My individual site a shared hosting plan from HostGator with standard caching) managed more than 15,000+ check outs in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a trustworthy VPS, you can definitely handle a lot more for much less. In fact, the website you are on handles more than 110,000+ visits per month with plenty 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 check outs, however it can still be rather a surprise for “small” site owners how quickly they can enter into the $290 per month tier. I have a client who started with the Startup strategy, but quickly wound up with a custom-made plan.
And as pointed out earlier that does not even include a lot of the functions you do not get with WP Engine’s plans. 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 execution of Amazon cloud services.
And most significantly for me- you are restricted 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 spread out the cost of your plan- especially if you are hitting your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are aiming to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & serve up your website files- WP Engine is an expensive choice, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Start-up
The Startup bundle is the most fundamental strategy and will set you back $25 monthly. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 gos to monthly.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One website included.
WP Engine targets small websites and blogs with this strategy, however we believe it may be overkill for most people in this classification. You can get a far much better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t wish to take any possibilities with uptime or require a guarantee that your site can handle 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d advise this option to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blog sites making good cash and desire assurances that nothing will change.
You can conserve $60 per year or 2 months free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing services and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to monthly.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
Ten sites included a while.
This plan is a fantastic entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while prior to you require to update. With this plan, you likewise get 24/7 phone support in addition to day-and-night chat assistance. This addition will can be found in handy if you have a complex issue that you need to solve quickly.
You can save a cool $230 or two months free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the very best value choice. This one costs $241 each month. Here you get:.
400,000 sees monthly.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
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 support.
You can conserve $580 or two months totally free with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom
Finally, if you have a mission-critical site or big service, the Custom plan may be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless gos to per month.
400GB+ bandwidth each month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will have to speak to a sales rep to get your tailored quote depending on your requirements. This plan also uses exclusive support must something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong Uptime
WP Engine achieves over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network facilities.
The business also has 3 information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better site speeds by choosing to host your site on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine obstructs malicious attacks on your website.
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 solutions to speed ended up being.
Out of the box- WordPress is relatively lean and fast. If you are running a mainly text website with a few basic plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be fine with a cost effective shared hosting plan from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s generally additional plugins, custom style files, great deals of images, widgets, advertisements, types and more.
All these functions integrated with good levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress installation.
However a slow website does not imply that you require a bigger, better server. It does indicate that you require to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as easy as getting a more powerful server, but in some cases it’s more about caching particular resources in a specific order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Envision you are trying to transport a trailer with a pickup truck. Picture your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s meaningless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you might just need to eliminate the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress needs assistance to remain fast as you grow. There are lots of services … however either you or a developer need to execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine takes care of (almost) all speed issues. They have customized servers with very aggressive caching and a lot more innovative “stack” than a normal web host. They likewise have trained support who will enter into your WordPress set up and recognize the specific chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even permit caching plugins on their installs because they have actually such a tailored caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still succeed on their platform because their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers on WP Engine (who has a bloated theme, additional 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 quickly the server returned enough data to begin packing the page.
It’s nice to have that sort of speed right out of the box- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or complicated 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 since you are complimentary to focus on speed elements that you can easily manage like image compression, usage of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only offers an incorporated CDN, however they likewise supply worldwide 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 since they operate on Google Cloud, you don’t need to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include an international CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will assist your site load quick for consumers worldwide by serving it to them from the network node that’s geographically closest to them.
Security and Backups
An estimated 78% of hacked websites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting websites is among the strong suits of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The business takes a number of steps to safeguard WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They monitor an upgraded firewall program to block the current hazards.
All sites are supported daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can assist 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 assistance for any concerns regarding security.
They offer webinars on security.
They publish security standards and lists for developers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it free of charge.
Online Resources
WP Engine offers webinars, guides, blog posts, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Launch your first site.
Troubleshoot common issues.
Make improvements to your site.
Handle your hosting account with greater performance.
Both newbies and experienced WordPress site owners will discover the assistance documentation vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all membership costs is distinct in the hosting market.
It enables you to try out the service in a safe method.
Note: this alternative is not offered on custom-made hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, however what is best for you based on your goals, spending plan, resources & practices.
If you remain in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they use a fantastic service with a strong item. As a handled WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more functions than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for smart DIYers, WordPress website designers and/or high-traffic sites that do not want to fret about hosting issues.
If managed hosting is a suitable for you- then go take a look at WP Engine’s strategies here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back warranty. So do a test install and see what you think about their backend. Make certain to chat w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.