There are plenty of cheap hosts available that provide a good service. WPEngine Free Trial
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 web host, offering managed plans that are fully optimized for the platform. Of course, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly low-cost. You’ll want to know whether this hosting service is worth the cost before making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to carry out a comprehensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial functions, support options, efficiency capabilities, and whatever else you’ll need to understand. Let’s get going!
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 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 company 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 pick WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased dependability, performance, support, and management, but these are tough to quantify. Some features stick out when you browse the interface, nevertheless, that can offer you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool created to help you speed up your WordPress site by offering 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 fill in its totality, and the total size of the page. It even includes historic data on your site’s performance over the past six months and suggestions on how you can lower page load.
You can establish your WordPress site 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 enables your developers to make extensive modifications to your site without affecting your consumers.
WP Engine has an extensive list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably uncommon move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those usually restricted are plugins that have been kept in mind to cause efficiency problems and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has actually made options readily available that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just offers handled WordPress hosting. There are five different plans readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans consist of unrestricted data transfer. The plans differ based upon:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom strategy consists of dedicated dev. environments, customer success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some distinct features for WordPress users that a lot of hosts do not provide, or charge extra for. These special features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly produce a copy of your website for testing
- Easy transferable installs from totally free to paid accounts
- Leading edge technologies consisting of most current PHP version.
In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine provides the most advanced and detailed managed WordPress hosting features.
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 laid out, but the effective functions may indicate 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 your home here, however otherwise you’ll need to spend some time on the assistance site.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page filled in just over two seconds. This is one of the fastest actions we’ve tested, with rival Liquid Web only a little behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service should use extra value through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The support site consists of videos and posts of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with assistance on much deeper WordPress performance that many WordPress hosts do not go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the response was quick and the agent experienced. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If website filling speed is a top concern, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s mix of customized 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 requests and offers load balancing, offering your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN provides site content to your visitors based upon their location to boost your website’s speed and lower latency. You get this capability for free with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s hard to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium rate for this service. WP Engine ensures 99.95% server uptime, roughly four and a half hours of downtime a year. You can even more increase your uptime to 99.99% with boosted SLA, which translates to a little under an hour of downtime annually. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls below the assurance.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps track of all the traffic going to your website and automatically discovers and blocks potential attacks. Furthermore, the hosting service instantly updates and patches the WordPress core to eliminate prospective vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine immediately backups your site every day and has a one-click restoration function to get you back up and running rapidly. Finally, this hosting service safeguards your site versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, strength efforts, 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 excellent knowledge base and can assist you fix problems quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all strategies other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all strategies.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area enables you to clone your website’s live variation and make changes or test brand-new plugins and styles. Anything you perform in the staging area doesn’t affect your live website. This function allows designers to deal with websites without hindering the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature enables you to build a website from your WP Engine account. You do not need to await the customer to include you to their WordPress website. When completed, you can transfer the website to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you regularly construct websites for customers.
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 service perspective, it makes sense to focus on a single market and offer extraordinary services in that location. This design locks out many individuals who might otherwise benefit from WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you choose to host your email account and register your domain through your website host, you’ll require to look somewhere else. You’ll have to utilize third-party services for domain registration or email 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 predictable traffic, and you can constantly update your strategy as your site grows. Considerable spikes in traffic during item launches or seasonal business can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the expense? The response lies in finding out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the exact same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the rate. You can even get committed hosting for the exact same rate as WP Engine. What you are actually paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most significantly, peace of mind. The supreme 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 strategy, you are normally spending for efficiency & not needing to think excessive about maintenance, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s rates based upon the functions you’re getting- you actually don’t get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your site’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and typically visiting regularly), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is unneeded.
Numerous shared hosting servers can deal with the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the price. My individual website a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with basic caching) handled more than 15,000+ visits in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a trusted VPS, you can certainly handle a lot more for much less. In fact, the website you are on manages more than 110,000+ gos to each month with lots of room left to 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 plan.
They are relatively transparent about how they count visits, however it can still be rather a surprise for “small” website owners how rapidly they can get into the $290 per month tier. I have a customer who began with the Startup strategy, but quickly ended up with a custom-made plan.
And as pointed out previously that doesn’t even consist of much of the features you don’t get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limitations on regional media storage. Anything above the limits needs additional costs & 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 need to factor those into the rate. You can’t utilize them to spread out the cost of your strategy- specifically if you are striking your visitor cap rather than your install cap.
If you are aiming to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your website files- WP Engine is an expensive option, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Startup
The Startup bundle is one of the most basic strategy and will set you back $25 per month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 check outs each month.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One site consisted of.
WP Engine targets small websites and blogs with this plan, however we believe it may be overkill for most people in this category. You can get a far much better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t want to take any chances with uptime or need an assurance that your website can handle 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d suggest this option to small businesses, affiliate sites, and blog sites making good money and want assurances that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can save $60 annually or more months complimentary if you pay each year.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing services and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 sees per month.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
Ten websites consisted of a while.
This strategy is an excellent entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while prior to you need to update. With this strategy, you also get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to round-the-clock chat assistance. This addition will come in handy if you have a complicated issue that you need to resolve quickly.
You can save a cool $230 or 2 months complimentary with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine markets its scale strategy as the best worth alternative. This one expenses $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 check outs monthly.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
We recommend this choice for a fast-growing blog or service. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the support center.
You can save $580 or two months complimentary with annual pre-paid billing.
Customized
Finally, if you have a mission-critical website or big company, the Custom strategy may be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Millions of check outs per month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will have to speak to a sales representative to get your personalized quote depending on your requirements. This strategy likewise offers proprietary support should something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine achieves over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network infrastructure.
The company likewise has three data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve website speeds by picking to host your site on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine obstructs harmful attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into site speed, but the general rule is that the more intricate your website is, the more complicated the services to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and quick. If you are running a mostly text site with a few fundamental plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be fine with an inexpensive shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of website owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s normally additional plugins, customized style files, lots of images, widgets, ads, types and more.
All these functions integrated with good levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress setup.
But a sluggish site doesn’t mean that you require a larger, better server. It does indicate that you require to get smarter about speed. In some cases it’s as basic as getting a more powerful server, but sometimes it’s more about caching particular resources in a specific order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Imagine you are trying to carry a trailer with a pickup truck. Picture your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s pointless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you may simply require to eliminate the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress requires aid to stay quick as you grow. There are plenty of services … however either you or a developer must execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine looks after (nearly) all speed concerns. They have tailored servers with extremely aggressive caching and much more advanced “stack” than a common webhosting. They also have actually trained support who will enter into your WordPress install and recognize the specific chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even enable caching plugins on their installs since they have such a personalized caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still succeed on their platform because their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my clients on WP Engine (who has a bloated style, additional scripts, too many 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 begin loading the page.
It’s good to have that type of speed right out of the box- and have it remain that way no matter how huge or complicated the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are obsessed about speed, you can get back at better numbers with WP Engine than you may get with other services considering that you are free to concentrate on speed aspects that you can quickly control like image compression, use of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just provides an incorporated CDN, however they likewise offer international 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 precisely that. And given that they run on Google Cloud, you don’t need to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include an international CDN (content delivery network).
The CDN will help your site load fast for clients around 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 sites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Protecting sites is one of the strong points of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes numerous steps to protect WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep track of an updated firewall to block the current risks.
All sites 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 website 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 relating to security.
They provide webinars on security.
They release security standards and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it totally free.
Online Resources
WP Engine provides webinars, guides, blog posts, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can learn how to:.
Introduce your very first website.
Troubleshoot common issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with greater effectiveness.
Both newbies and experienced WordPress website owners will find the assistance documents vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all membership costs is distinct in the hosting market.
It allows you to check out the service in a risk-free method.
Keep in mind: this alternative is not offered on custom hosting plans.
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, spending plan, resources & routines.
If you are in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they use a fantastic service with a solid item. As a managed WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more features than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unmatched for savvy DIYers, WordPress site designers and/or high-traffic sites that do not wish to fret about hosting concerns.
If handled hosting is a suitable for you- then go take a look at WP Engine’s plans here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back guarantee. Do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Be sure to talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.