There are plenty of low-cost hosts readily available that offer a decent service. WPEngine Geoip
What if you’re looking for 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, offering handled plans that are fully optimized for the platform. Obviously, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t exactly inexpensive. Therefore, you’ll would like to know whether this hosting service deserves the expense before purchasing.
To help you out, we’re going to conduct a comprehensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial features, support alternatives, efficiency abilities, and whatever else you’ll require to know. 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 handled WordPress hosting companies in the market. Serial business owner Jason Cohen started 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 business has won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to pick WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased reliability, efficiency, support, and management, however these are hard to measure. Some functions stand apart when you search the interface, nevertheless, that can provide you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool developed to help you speed up your WordPress site by providing meaningful metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, how long it took to fill in its entirety, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historic information on your site’s efficiency over the past 6 months and recommendations on how you can decrease page load.
You can establish your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid awkward 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 designers to make comprehensive changes to your website without affecting your clients.
WP Engine has an extensive list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly unusual relocation, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those usually limited are plugins that have actually been kept in mind to trigger efficiency issues and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has made options available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only provides handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 various strategies offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans consist of unrestricted information transfer. The plans differ based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some unique features for WordPress users that the majority of hosts do not use, or charge extra for. These unique functions include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly develop a copy of your site for testing
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Leading edge innovations consisting of latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine provides the most sophisticated and comprehensive handled WordPress hosting functions.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s interface is expert and well set out, however the effective functions may imply a steep knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and reroute rules, you’ll be right at home here, however otherwise you’ll need to spend some time on the support website.
In our testing, the default WordPress web page loaded in simply over two seconds. This is among the fastest responses we’ve tested, with competitor Liquid Web just a little behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service must provide extra worth through its support, and WP Engine provides. The assistance website consists of videos and articles of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with assistance on deeper WordPress functionality that lots of WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the action was quick and the representative experienced. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If website loading speed is a top concern, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s combination of custom-made NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology make sure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robot demands and offers load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides site content to your visitors based upon their place to enhance your site’s speed and reduce latency. You get this capability free of charge with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium rate for this service. WP Engine guarantees 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 per 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 site and immediately identifies and blocks potential attacks. In addition, the hosting service instantly updates and patches the WordPress core to remove prospective vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine instantly backups your website every day and has a one-click restoration function to get you support and running quickly. This hosting service secures your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Incredible Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to get in touch with consumer care via chat. The support group has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you resolve problems quickly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all plans except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat assistance on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area enables you to clone your website’s live variation and make changes or check new plugins and styles. Anything you do in the staging area doesn’t impact your live site. This function allows developers to work on sites without interfering with the live site’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this function allows you to develop a website from your WP Engine account. You don’t need to wait on the client to add 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 conserves time if you regularly construct sites 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 business viewpoint, it makes sense to focus on a single market and offer exceptional services because area. This model locks out lots of people 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 site host, you’ll need to look somewhere else. You’ll have to use third-party services for domain registration or e-mail accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is shown in its rates structure. You will be penalized for exceeding your strategy’s visitor limitations. This might not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your strategy as your site grows. Nevertheless, considerable spikes in traffic during product launches or seasonal service can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the cost? The response lies in determining what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can manage the same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the price. You can even get committed hosting for the exact same cost as WP Engine. What you are actually paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, peace of mind. The ultimate concern is just 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 strategy, you are usually paying for performance & not needing to think excessive about maintenance, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s prices based upon the features you’re getting- you truly do not get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and typically visiting frequently), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is superfluous.
Lots of shared hosting servers can deal with the very same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the cost. My personal site a shared hosting plan from HostGator with standard caching) dealt with more than 15,000+ check outs in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a trusted VPS, you can certainly manage a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on manages more than 110,000+ sees monthly with plenty of space delegated 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, but it can still be quite a surprise for “small” site owners how rapidly 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 customized strategy.
And as discussed earlier that doesn’t even include much of the functions you do not get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limits on local media storage. Anything above the limits needs extra costs & technical execution 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 sites, you need to factor those into the price. You can’t utilize them to spread out the expense of your strategy- particularly if you are hitting your visitor cap instead of your set up cap.
If you are looking to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & serve up your website files- WP Engine is a costly option, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Start-up
The Startup plan is the most fundamental strategy and will set you back $25 each month. With this package, 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 strategy, but we think 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 do not wish to take any opportunities with uptime or need an assurance that your site can handle 25,000 visitors each month, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d suggest this alternative to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blogs making great money and desire guarantees that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 per year or two 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 visits per month.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
Ten websites included a while.
This strategy is an excellent entry point for a growing business, and it might be a while before you require to upgrade. With this plan, you likewise get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will come in helpful if you have a complex concern that you require to fix quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or 2 months complimentary with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale strategy as the best value option. This one costs $241 each month. Here you get:.
400,000 check outs monthly.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We suggest this choice for a fast-growing blog or business. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the assistance center.
You can save $580 or 2 months totally free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Customized
If you have a mission-critical site or big company, the Custom strategy may be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Millions of visits each month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites included.
You will have to speak to a sales associate to get your personalized quote depending on your requirements. This plan also provides proprietary assistance ought to something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network infrastructure.
The business likewise has 3 data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better website speeds by choosing to host your website on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine obstructs destructive attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into website speed, however the rule of thumb is that the more complex your website is, the more complex the solutions to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and fast. If you are running a mainly text site with a few standard plugins and a few little images, you’ll be fine 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 normally extra plugins, customized style files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, forms and more.
All these functions combined with decent levels of traffic can begin to decrease your WordPress setup.
But a slow site doesn’t suggest that you require a larger, much better server. It does suggest that you require to get smarter about speed. In some cases it’s as simple as getting a more powerful server, but in some cases it’s more about caching particular resources in a particular order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Envision you are trying to haul a trailer with a pickup. Picture your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s pointless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you may just require to eliminate the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress requires help to stay fast as you grow. There are plenty of services … but either you or a designer need to implement them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine looks after (nearly) all speed concerns. They have personalized servers with incredibly aggressive caching and a lot more advanced “stack” than a typical webhosting. They also have trained assistance who will go into your WordPress set up and determine the specific chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even permit caching plugins on their installs because they have such a customized caching setup.
The fascinating 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 clients on WP Engine (who has a puffed up style, extra scripts, a lot of uncompressed images, among other things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That determines how rapidly the server returned enough information to start loading the page.
It’s good to have that sort of speed right out of package- and have it remain that way no matter how big or complicated the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are obsessed about speed, you can get back at much better numbers with WP Engine than you may get with other services since you are free to focus on speed factors that you can easily manage like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just supplies an incorporated CDN, but they also offer international information centers in case your audience is mainly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are trying to get top speeds without tinkering layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does exactly that. And since they run on Google Cloud, you do not need to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies include an international CDN (content delivery network).
The CDN will assist your site load quickly 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 sites are WordPress websites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Protecting websites is among the strong suits of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes numerous procedures to protect WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They monitor an updated firewall to block the latest risks.
All websites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can help you recuperate your site 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 regarding security.
They provide 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 provides webinars, guides, article, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Introduce your first website.
Troubleshoot common issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with greater efficiency.
Both beginners and skilled WordPress website owners will discover the support documentation important.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all membership charges is distinct in the hosting market.
It allows you to try out the service in a safe method.
Keep in mind: this alternative is not available on custom 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 objectives, budget plan, resources & routines.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they use an excellent service with a solid product. As a managed WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They provide more functions than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unrivaled for smart DIYers, WordPress site developers and/or high-traffic websites that don’t wish to worry about hosting issues.
If handled hosting is a suitable 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 believe of their backend. Be sure to talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.