There are lots of inexpensive hosts available that provide a good service. WPEngine Environment Variables
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll wish to have a look at our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, offering managed strategies that are fully optimized for the platform. Of course, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t exactly low-cost. You’ll desire to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense prior to making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to conduct an extensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its essential functions, assistance choices, 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 began WP Engine when he saw a need 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 regularly adds to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to select WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased dependability, performance, support, and management, but these are difficult to quantify. Some features stick out when you browse the interface, however, that can provide you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool developed to help you accelerate your WordPress site by providing significant metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, the length of time it took to fill in its entirety, and the overall size of the page. It even consists of historical data on your website’s performance 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 prior to making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid embarrassing mistakes on your site by making changes to a copy of your website before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it enables your developers to make comprehensive changes to your site without impacting your customers.
WP Engine has a thorough list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly uncommon move, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those usually limited are plugins that have actually been noted to cause performance problems and security holes. For essential features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has actually made alternatives readily available that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just provides managed WordPress hosting. There are 5 various plans available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans consist of unlimited information transfer. The plans vary based on:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some unique features for WordPress users that most hosts do not use, or charge additional for. These special features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately develop a copy of your site for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Leading edge innovations including latest PHP version.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we discovered that WP Engine uses the most advanced 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 interface is professional and well laid out, however the effective features may imply a high knowing curve for unskilled 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 need to spend some time on the assistance site.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page filled in simply over two seconds. This is among the fastest reactions we’ve evaluated, with competitor Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Assistance
A managed WordPress service ought to offer extra value through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The support site includes videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with aid on much deeper WordPress performance that lots of WordPress hosts do not go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the response fasted and the representative well-informed. For all strategies except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If site loading speed is a leading concern, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s combination of custom-made NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation make sure that your web pages load quickly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robot demands and uses load balancing, offering your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN provides website material to your visitors based upon their place to improve your website’s speed and decrease latency. You get this capability free of charge with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s tough to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, 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 enhanced 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 an eye on all the traffic going to your site and instantly discovers and obstructs possible attacks. Furthermore, the hosting service instantly updates and patches the WordPress core to eliminate potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine automatically backups your website every day and has a one-click repair function to get you back up and running quickly. Lastly, this hosting service protects your website versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, strength attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Phenomenal Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact customer care through chat. The assistance team has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you resolve problems rapidly. 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 allows you to clone your website’s live variation and make changes or test brand-new plugins and styles. Anything you carry out in the staging area doesn’t affect your live website. This feature allows designers to deal with websites without interfering with the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this feature enables you to construct a website from your WP Engine account. You do not have to await the customer to add you to their WordPress site. When completed, you can move the website to the client or host the site on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you regularly develop sites 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 just works with WordPress. From a company point of view, it makes sense to focus on a single market and deal extraordinary services because area. However, this design locks out many people who could otherwise benefit from WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you choose to host your e-mail account and register your domain through your website host, you’ll require to look in other places. You’ll need to use 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 strategy’s visitor limits. This may not be a problem if you have predictable traffic, and you can always upgrade your plan as your site grows. Nevertheless, significant spikes in traffic throughout item launches or seasonal business can cost you considerable excess charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the expense? The answer lies in figuring out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the very same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the rate. You can even get devoted hosting for the exact same rate as WP Engine. What you are truly paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most significantly, peace of mind. The ultimate 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 typically paying for performance & not needing to think excessive about maintenance, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s prices 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 updated and typically visiting often), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unneeded.
Lots of shared hosting servers can deal with the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the price. My individual website a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with fundamental caching) managed more than 15,000+ check outs in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a trustworthy VPS, you can definitely manage a lot more for much less. In fact, the website you are on handles more than 110,000+ visits each month with a lot of room delegated spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, e-mail, RSS apps, etc with an InMotion VPS. I spend for the VPS plus a CDN for less than WP Engine’s starter strategy.
They are relatively transparent about how they count gos to, however it can still be rather a surprise for “small” site owners how rapidly they can get into the $290 each month tier. I have a client who began with the Startup strategy, however quickly ended up with a custom plan.
And as mentioned earlier that doesn’t even include a number 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 limits on local media storage. Anything above the limits needs extra expenses & technical execution 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 websites, you need to factor those into the rate. You can’t utilize them to expand the expense of your plan- especially if you are striking your visitor cap instead of your set up cap.
If you are seeking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your site files- WP Engine is a costly choice, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting options.
Start-up
The Startup bundle is the most basic plan and will set you back $25 monthly. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 sees monthly.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One site included.
WP Engine targets little sites and blogs with this plan, however we believe it may be overkill for many people in this classification. You can get a far better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t want to take any opportunities with uptime or need an assurance that your site can manage 25,000 visitors each month, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d suggest this alternative to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blog sites making good cash and desire guarantees that absolutely nothing will change.
You can conserve $60 annually or 2 months complimentary if you pay annually.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing services and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 sees per month.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
Ten websites included a while.
This plan is a great entry point for a growing company, and it might be a while prior to you require to update. With this plan, you also get 24/7 phone support in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will be available in convenient if you have a complex issue that you need to resolve quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or 2 months totally free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the best value choice. This one expenses $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 visits each month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
We recommend this alternative for a fast-growing blog or company. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the support center.
You can save $580 or more months totally free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Customized
If you have a mission-critical site or large service, the Custom plan may be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Millions of gos to monthly.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will need to talk to a sales rep to get your tailored quote depending upon your requirements. This strategy likewise offers exclusive support must something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine accomplishes over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network facilities.
The company also has three data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve website speeds by picking 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 lot of variables that enter into website speed, however the guideline is that the more intricate your site is, the more intricate the services to speed become.
Out of the box- WordPress is fairly lean and fast. If you are running a primarily text website with a couple of standard plugins and a couple of small images, you’ll be fine with a cost effective shared hosting strategy from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of website owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s usually extra plugins, custom-made theme files, lots of images, widgets, ads, kinds and more.
All these functions combined with good levels of traffic can begin to decrease your WordPress installation.
A slow website does not indicate that you require a larger, much better server. It does suggest that you need to get smarter about speed. In some cases it’s as easy as getting a more effective server, but sometimes it’s more about caching specific resources in a particular order and optimizing your files. In other words- it gets complex.
Envision you are attempting to haul a trailer with a pickup truck. Envision your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s meaningless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you may simply require to get rid of the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress requires aid to remain fast as you grow. There are lots of solutions … but either you or a developer must implement them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine takes care of (almost) all speed issues. They have actually customized servers with extremely aggressive caching and even more sophisticated “stack” than a normal webhosting. They also have actually trained assistance who will go into your WordPress set up and recognize the precise chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even permit caching plugins on their installs since they have such a tailored caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still do well on their platform due to the fact that their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my clients on WP Engine (who has a bloated theme, extra scripts, a lot of 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 data to begin packing the page.
It’s great to have that kind of speed right out of the box- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or intricate the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are consumed about speed, you can get back at better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services because you are complimentary to concentrate on speed elements that you can easily control like image compression, use of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just offers an integrated CDN, but they also offer global data centers in case your audience is mainly 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 considering that they run on Google Cloud, you don’t need to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans consist of an international CDN (content delivery network).
The CDN will assist your site load fast for consumers 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 firm. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting websites is one of the strong points of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes numerous procedures to protect WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an updated firewall software to obstruct the latest hazards.
All websites are supported daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can assist you recover your website in case of an attack.
The WP Engine website provides a guide on “Tips to Protect Your WordPress Site From Being Hacked.”.
You’ll have access to 24/7/365 technical assistance for any questions relating to security.
They supply webinars on security.
They release security guidelines and checklists for designers and engineers.
If your website 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 find out how to:.
Release your very first website.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with greater performance.
Both newbies and knowledgeable WordPress site owners will find the support documents vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all membership fees is special in the hosting industry.
It allows you to check out the service in a safe way.
Note: 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, but what is finest for you based upon your goals, spending plan, resources & habits.
If you are in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they use a great service with a solid item. As a managed WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They offer more features than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unmatched for savvy DIYers, WordPress website designers and/or high-traffic sites that do not want to stress over hosting issues.
If managed 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 about their backend. Make sure to chat w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.