There are plenty of low-cost hosts readily available that supply a decent service. WPEngine File Upload Limit
However, what if you’re trying to find more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll wish to take a look at our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, using handled plans that are fully optimized for the platform. Obviously, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely inexpensive. You’ll want to know whether this hosting service is worth the cost before making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to conduct a comprehensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial features, support options, efficiency capabilities, and whatever else you’ll require to understand. Let’s start!
WP Engine Video Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oklmdvSL7s
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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 requirement for specialized WordPress hosting due to the increasing 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 company has won several awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly adds to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to pick WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, assistance, and management, however these are difficult to quantify. Some functions stick out when you browse the user interface, however, that can offer you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool developed to assist you speed up your WordPress website by providing meaningful metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, how long it required to fill in its entirety, and the total size of the page. It even consists of historical data on your site’s efficiency over the past six months and recommendations on how you can lower page load.
You can develop your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the modifications live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid embarrassing mistakes 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 extensive modifications to your site without affecting your clients.
WP Engine has a detailed list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably uncommon move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those normally limited are plugins that have been kept in mind to trigger performance problems and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has actually made alternatives available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only provides managed WordPress hosting. There are five various plans available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of limitless information transfer. The plans differ based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some unique functions for WordPress users that many hosts don’t use, or charge additional for. These unique features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately produce a copy of your site for screening
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Innovative technologies consisting of most current PHP variation.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine offers the most innovative 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 may mean a high learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and reroute guidelines, you’ll be right at home here, but otherwise you’ll require to spend a long time on the support site.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page filled in just over two seconds. This is among the fastest reactions we’ve tested, with rival Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service should provide additional value through its assistance, and WP Engine provides. The support website consists of videos and posts of a quality you ‘d anticipate from a paid training course, with assistance on much deeper WordPress performance that many 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 experienced. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If site filling speed is a leading concern, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s combination of custom-made NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology guarantee that your websites load quickly. NGINX extension prioritizes human requests over robot demands and provides load balancing, providing your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN delivers site material to your visitors based on their location to boost your site’s speed and lower latency. You get this capability for free with all WP Engine strategies.
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 guarantees 99.95% server uptime, approximately 4 and a half hours of downtime a year. You can even more increase your uptime to 99.99% with enhanced SLA, which translates to a little under an hour of downtime per year. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls listed below the guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps an eye on all the traffic going to your site and immediately detects and obstructs potential attacks. Additionally, the hosting service instantly updates and spots the WordPress core to remove possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine automatically backups your site every day and has a one-click restoration function to get you back up and running rapidly. Lastly, this hosting service protects your site versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, strength attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Sensational Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to get in touch with client care through chat. The assistance group has an outstanding knowledge base and can assist you solve problems rapidly. You get 24/7 phone support for all plans except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat assistance on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area allows you to clone your website’s live version and make changes or test new plugins and themes. Anything you do in the staging area does not impact your live website. This function permits designers to work on websites without disrupting the live site’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 have to wait on the client to add you to their WordPress website. When finished, you can move the site to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This performance conserves 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 run out luck. WP Engine only deals with WordPress. From an organization point of view, it makes sense to focus on a single market and deal remarkable services because area. This design locks out numerous individuals who could otherwise benefit from 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 elsewhere. 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 reflected in its prices structure. You will be penalized for surpassing your plan’s visitor limitations. This might not be an issue if you have predictable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your strategy as your website grows. Considerable spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal service can cost you considerable overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the expense? The answer depends on finding out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the exact same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the price. You can even get devoted hosting for the same cost as WP Engine. What you are truly paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most significantly, comfort. 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 spending for performance & not needing to believe too much about maintenance, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s rates based on the functions you’re getting- you really do not get a lot.
And if you are the type who will think of your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and typically visiting often), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is superfluous.
Many shared hosting servers can deal with the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the rate. 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 dependable VPS, you can definitely handle a lot more for much less. The site you are on deals with more than 110,000+ gos to per month with plenty of room left to 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 plan.
They are relatively transparent about how they count visits, but it can still be rather a surprise for “little” website owners how rapidly they can enter into the $290 per month tier. I have a client who started with the Startup plan, however quickly wound up with a customized plan.
And as discussed previously that doesn’t even include a number of the features you do not get with WP Engine’s strategies. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limitations on regional media storage. Anything above the limits requires additional expenses & technical application 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 sites, you need to factor those into the price. You can’t use them to expand the expense of your plan- specifically if you are hitting your visitor cap rather than your set up cap.
If you are wanting to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your site files- WP Engine is a pricey option, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Start-up
The Startup bundle is the most fundamental plan and will set you back $25 per month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 sees each month.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One website consisted of.
WP Engine targets small sites and blogs with this plan, but we believe it might be overkill for the majority of people in this classification. You can get a far better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you do not want to take any possibilities with uptime or need a warranty that your site can handle 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d suggest this option to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blog sites making good cash and want guarantees that nothing will change.
You can conserve $60 annually or 2 months free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The development plan targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 each month. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to per month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
10 sites included a while.
This strategy is a terrific entry point for a growing business, and it might be a while before you require to update. With this plan, you likewise get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to round-the-clock chat support. This addition will come in useful if you have a complex concern that you need to deal with rapidly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or 2 months free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the best worth option. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 sees each month.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 sites included.
We recommend 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 support.
You can save $580 or two months totally free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Customized
If you have a mission-critical site or large service, the Custom plan might be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Countless gos to per month.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
You will have to talk to a sales rep to get your personalized quote depending on your requirements. This plan also offers exclusive support should something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network facilities.
The business likewise 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 harmful attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that go into website speed, however the rule of thumb is that the more complicated your website is, the more complicated the solutions to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and fast. If you are running a primarily text website with a couple of standard plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be great with a cost effective shared hosting plan from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few website owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s normally extra plugins, customized theme files, lots of images, widgets, ads, kinds and more.
All these functions combined with good levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress installation.
But a slow site doesn’t imply that you need a larger, much better server. It does imply that you need to get smarter about speed. Often it’s as simple as getting a more powerful server, however in some cases it’s more about caching particular resources in a certain order and optimizing your files. In other words- it gets complex.
Envision you are trying to transport a trailer with a pickup. Imagine your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s meaningless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you might just require 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 aid to stay quickly as you grow. There are lots of services … however either you or a developer should execute them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed concerns. They have actually personalized servers with incredibly aggressive caching and much more advanced “stack” than a common webhosting. They likewise have actually trained assistance who will enter into your WordPress set up and determine the specific chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even allow caching plugins on their installs since they have actually such a customized caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up 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 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 measures how rapidly the server returned enough data to begin loading the page.
It’s nice to have that sort of speed right out of package- and have it remain that way no matter how huge or complex the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are consumed about speed, you can get back at much better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services given that you are free to concentrate on speed elements that you can quickly control like image compression, usage of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just offers an integrated CDN, but they likewise supply global data centers in case your audience is primarily 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 run on Google Cloud, you do not need to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies include a global CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will help your site 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 suits of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes a number of procedures to safeguard WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They monitor an updated firewall software to block the current risks.
All sites are supported daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can help you recover 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 questions regarding security.
They supply webinars on security.
They publish security guidelines and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine offers webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Introduce your first site.
Troubleshoot typical problems.
Make improvements to your site.
Manage your hosting account with higher performance.
Both newbies and experienced WordPress site owners will find the support documentation invaluable.
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 the service in a safe way.
Keep in mind: this option is not available on custom-made hosting plans.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, but what is best for you based on your goals, budget plan, resources & routines.
If you remain in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they use a terrific service with a strong item. As a handled WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more features than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress site designers and/or high-traffic sites that don’t wish to fret about hosting problems.
If managed hosting is a fit for you- then go have a look at WP Engine’s strategies here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back assurance. Do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Make certain to talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.