There are lots of inexpensive hosts offered that offer a decent service. WPEngine Download Backup
Nevertheless, what if you’re searching for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll wish to take a look at our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, offering handled plans that are totally enhanced for the platform. Of course, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t precisely low-cost. Therefore, you’ll want to know whether this hosting service is worth the cost prior to buying.
To assist you out, we’re going to perform an extensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key features, assistance options, efficiency capabilities, and everything 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 handled WordPress hosting companies in the market. Serial entrepreneur 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 offices 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 adds to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to choose WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased dependability, performance, assistance, and management, but these are tough to measure. Some functions stand apart when you browse the user interface, however, that can give you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool created to help you speed up your WordPress website by using significant metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how rapidly your page rendered, the length of time it took to fill in its whole, and the total size of the page. It even includes historic information on your website’s efficiency over the past 6 months and suggestions on how you can reduce 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 site by making changes to a copy of your website before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it permits your designers to make substantial modifications to your website without impacting your clients.
WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably unusual move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those typically restricted are plugins that have been noted to cause efficiency problems and security holes. For important functions such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has actually made alternatives available that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only offers handled WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans consist of endless data transfer. The plans vary based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom strategy includes dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some distinct functions for WordPress users that a lot of hosts do not provide, or charge additional for. These unique features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly create a copy of your site for screening
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Leading edge technologies consisting of latest PHP version.
In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine uses the most sophisticated and extensive 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 professional and well set out, but the effective features might imply a high knowing curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect guidelines, you’ll be right in your home here, but otherwise you’ll need to invest a long time on the support website.
In our testing, the default WordPress web page filled in just over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve tested, with competitor Liquid Web just a little behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service must provide additional value through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The support site includes videos and articles of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with help on much deeper WordPress functionality that numerous WordPress hosts don’t go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the action fasted and the representative educated. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If website loading 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 guarantee that your websites load quickly. NGINX extension prioritizes human requests over robot demands and uses load balancing, offering your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN provides site content to your visitors based upon their area to increase your site’s speed and lower latency. You get this ability for free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s tough to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why people continue to pay a premium cost for this service. WP Engine ensures 99.95% server uptime, approximately 4 and a half hours of downtime a year. You can further increase your uptime to 99.99% with boosted 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 below the warranty.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps track of all the traffic going to your website and instantly detects and obstructs possible attacks. Furthermore, the hosting service immediately updates and spots the WordPress core to get rid of possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine automatically backups your website every day and has a one-click repair function to get you support and running quickly. Finally, this hosting service protects your website versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Incredible Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to connect with customer care by means of chat. The assistance group has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you solve issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all plans other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area allows you to clone your website’s live variation and make changes or evaluate new plugins and styles. Anything you perform in the staging area does not affect your live site. This feature permits designers to deal with sites without disrupting the live website’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this function permits you to construct a site from your WP Engine account. You do not need to wait on the client to include you to their WordPress website. As soon as completed, you can transfer the site to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This performance conserves time if you routinely develop sites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are utilizing any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you run out luck. WP Engine just works with WordPress. From a company viewpoint, it makes sense to concentrate on a single market and offer remarkable services in that area. However, this model locks out many people who might 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 website host, you’ll need to look in other places. You’ll need to utilize 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 punished for surpassing your strategy’s visitor limits. This may not be a problem if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can always update your plan as your website grows. However, substantial spikes in traffic throughout item launches or seasonal organization can cost you considerable overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the cost? The response depends on figuring out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can manage the same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the rate. You can even get committed hosting for the very same price as WP Engine. What you are actually spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, assurance. The supreme question is 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 usually paying for efficiency & not having to believe excessive about maintenance, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s pricing based on the features you’re getting- you really don’t get a great deal.
And if you are the type who will think of your website’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress updated and generally visiting regularly), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is superfluous.
Many shared hosting servers can deal with the very same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the cost. My individual website a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with fundamental caching) managed more than 15,000+ check outs in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a reliable VPS, you can definitely deal with a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on handles more than 110,000+ check outs monthly with a lot of room delegated spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, email, 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, but it can still be rather a surprise for “small” website owners how quickly they can get into the $290 per month tier. I have a client who began with the Startup plan, but quickly wound up with a custom-made strategy.
And as discussed earlier that does not even consist of much of the features you don’t 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 needs extra expenses & technical implementation of Amazon cloud services.
And most importantly for me- you are restricted on your installs. If you have a couple of side projects or low-traffic test websites, you have to factor those into the price. You can’t utilize them to spread out the cost of your plan- specifically if you are hitting your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are aiming to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your site files- WP Engine is a pricey option, especially compared to other non-managed hosting options.
Start-up
The Startup plan is one of the most standard strategy and will set you back $25 monthly. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 gos to monthly.
50GB bandwidth monthly.
10GB storage.
One site included.
WP Engine targets small websites and blogs with this plan, however we think it may be overkill for the majority of people in this category. You can get a far much better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you do not wish to take any chances with uptime or need an assurance that your site can deal with 25,000 visitors each month, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d recommend this alternative to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blogs making great money and want guarantees that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 each year or 2 months free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The development strategy targets growing companies and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to each month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
10 sites consisted of a while.
This strategy is a terrific entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while before you require to upgrade. With this plan, you also get 24/7 phone support in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will come in handy if you have a complex issue that you need to deal with quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or 2 months complimentary with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine markets its scale plan as the best value choice. This one costs $241 each month. Here you get:.
400,000 sees monthly.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
We advise 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 support center.
You can save $580 or two months complimentary with yearly pre-paid billing.
Customized
Finally, if you have a mission-critical site or big business, the Custom plan may be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Countless visits monthly.
400GB+ bandwidth each month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
You will have to speak to a sales rep to get your tailored quote depending upon your requirements. This strategy also provides proprietary assistance should something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network facilities.
The business likewise has three data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve site speeds by selecting to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks harmful attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into website speed, but the general rule is that the more intricate your site is, the more intricate the options to speed ended up being.
Out of the box- WordPress is fairly lean and quick. If you are running a mainly text website with a couple of fundamental plugins and a couple of small images, you’ll be great with a budget friendly shared hosting strategy from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s generally extra plugins, customized theme files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, types and more.
All these features integrated with good levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress installation.
A sluggish website does not mean that you need a larger, much better server. It does imply that you require to get smarter about speed. In some cases it’s as easy as getting a more effective server, however sometimes it’s more about caching specific resources in a specific order and enhancing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Picture you are trying to carry a trailer with a pickup. Imagine 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 get rid of the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress needs aid to stay quickly 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 (nearly) all speed concerns. They have actually personalized servers with extremely aggressive caching and even more advanced “stack” than a typical web host. They also have actually trained support who will enter into your WordPress set up and determine the specific chokepoint to get your site moving.
They do not even permit caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have such a personalized caching setup.
The fascinating thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs 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 style, additional 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 information to start filling the page.
It’s nice to have that type of speed right out of package- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or complex the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are obsessed about speed, you can get even much better numbers with WP Engine than you may get with other services given that 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 just provides an integrated CDN, but they likewise supply international data 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 given that they work on Google Cloud, you don’t need to worry about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include an international CDN (material delivery network).
The CDN will assist your website load quickly for consumers around the world 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. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting websites is among the strong points of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes numerous measures to protect WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an upgraded firewall software to obstruct the current threats.
All websites are supported daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can help 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 assistance for any concerns regarding security.
They supply webinars on security.
They release security guidelines and lists for developers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it totally free.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, blog posts, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can find out how to:.
Launch your very first website.
Troubleshoot typical problems.
Make improvements to your site.
Manage your hosting account with higher effectiveness.
Both newbies and experienced WordPress website owners will discover the support documentation important.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all membership fees is unique in the hosting market.
It enables you to check out the service in a risk-free way.
Note: this option is not readily 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 upon your goals, budget, resources & routines.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they offer a terrific service with a solid item. As a handled WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They use more functions than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for smart DIYers, WordPress website developers and/or high-traffic websites that don’t wish to worry about hosting problems.
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 warranty. So do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Be sure to talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.