There are lots of low-cost hosts readily available that provide a decent service. WPEngine Let’s Encrypt
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll want to check out our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, using handled plans that are totally optimized for the platform. Naturally, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t precisely inexpensive. You’ll desire to understand whether this hosting service is worth the cost prior to making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to perform a thorough WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its essential functions, support options, efficiency abilities, and whatever else you’ll require to understand. Let’s begin!
WP Engine Video Review
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now among the leading handled WordPress hosting business in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen began WP Engine when he saw a need for specialized WordPress hosting due to the increasing appeal 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 several awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently contributes to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to choose WP Engine over less expensive WordPress hosting are increased dependability, performance, assistance, and management, but these are tough to quantify. Some functions stand out when you browse the user interface, nevertheless, that can provide you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool designed to help you accelerate your WordPress site by using significant metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how quickly your page rendered, for how long it took to load in its totality, and the overall size of the page. It even consists of historical information on your site’s efficiency over the past six months and recommendations on how you can reduce page load.
You can establish your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment before 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 allows your developers to make substantial changes to your website without impacting your customers.
WP Engine has a detailed list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly unusual move, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can install. Those generally limited are plugins that have been noted to cause performance concerns and security holes. For essential functions such as caching, backups, and seo 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 offers handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 various plans readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of limitless information transfer. The strategies vary based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized plan includes dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some special features for WordPress users that a lot of hosts don’t provide, or charge additional for. These unique features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately produce a copy of your website for testing
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Innovative innovations consisting of latest PHP version.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine offers the most innovative and extensive handled WordPress hosting functions.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s user interface is professional and well set out, but the powerful features might mean a steep 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, however otherwise you’ll require to spend some time on the support site.
In our screening, the default WordPress home page filled in just over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest responses we’ve evaluated, with competitor Liquid Web just slightly behind.
Assistance
A managed WordPress service should use extra value through its support, and WP Engine provides. The assistance website consists of videos and posts of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with help on deeper WordPress functionality that numerous WordPress hosts do not go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the response fasted and the agent experienced. For all strategies except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If site filling speed is a top concern, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s mix of custom NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology guarantee that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human requests over robotic demands and provides load balancing, giving your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides site material to your visitors based upon their area to improve your website’s speed and reduce latency. You get this ability for free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s hard to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, which is why people continue to pay a premium price for this service. WP Engine guarantees 99.95% server uptime, roughly 4 and a half hours of downtime a year. You can even more increase your uptime to 99.99% with enhanced SLA, which equates to a little under an hour of downtime annually. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls below the guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps track of all the traffic going to your website and immediately identifies and blocks potential attacks. Additionally, the hosting service immediately updates and spots the WordPress core to remove prospective vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine automatically backups your website every day and has a one-click repair feature to get you back up and running rapidly. Lastly, this hosting service secures your website against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, strength attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Remarkable Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact consumer care by means of chat. The assistance group has an outstanding knowledge base and can assist you fix problems quickly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all plans except 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 site’s live variation and make changes or check brand-new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area does not affect your live website. This function permits designers to work on websites without interfering with the live site’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this function permits you to build a site from your WP Engine account. You don’t have to wait for the client to add you to their WordPress website. When completed, you can transfer the site to the client or host the site on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you routinely construct sites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are utilizing any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine only works with WordPress. From a company perspective, it makes sense to concentrate on a single market and deal remarkable services in that area. Nevertheless, this design locks out many individuals who could otherwise take advantage of 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 somewhere else. You’ll need 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 pricing structure. You will be punished for exceeding your plan’s visitor limits. This might not be a problem if you have predictable traffic, and you can always upgrade your strategy as your website grows. Nevertheless, significant spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal business can cost you significant excess charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the expense? The answer depends on figuring out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the very same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the price. You can even get committed hosting for the very same price as WP Engine. What you are really spending for here is security, performance, speed, and, most importantly, peace of mind. The supreme question is 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 usually spending for performance & not needing to think excessive about maintenance, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s rates based on the features you’re getting- you truly do not get a lot.
And if you are the type who will think of your website’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress updated and generally logging in 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 price. My personal site a shared hosting plan from HostGator with standard caching) managed more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a reputable VPS, you can certainly handle a lot more for much less. The site you are on manages more than 110,000+ sees 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 pay for the VPS plus a CDN for less than WP Engine’s starter plan.
They are fairly transparent about how they count visits, however it can still be rather a surprise for “little” site owners how rapidly they can enter into the $290 each month tier. I have a client who started with the Startup strategy, but rapidly ended up with a custom strategy.
And as pointed out earlier that does not 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 limitations on regional media storage. Anything above the limits needs 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 websites, you need to factor those into the price. You can’t use them to expand the cost of your plan- especially if you are hitting your visitor cap rather than your set up cap.
If you are seeking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your site files- WP Engine is a costly choice, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Startup
The Startup bundle is the most fundamental plan and will set you back $25 per month. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 gos to each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One website included.
WP Engine targets little websites and blogs with this plan, but we believe it may be overkill for many people in this category. You can get a far much better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you do not want to take any chances with uptime or require a guarantee that your site can deal with 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d advise this option to small businesses, affiliate sites, and blogs making good cash and desire assurances that nothing will alter.
You can save $60 per year or 2 months totally free if you pay annually.
Growth
The development plan targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 check outs per month.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
10 sites consisted of a while.
This strategy is a fantastic entry point for a growing company, and it might be a while before you require to update. With this strategy, you likewise get 24/7 phone support in addition to round-the-clock chat assistance. This addition will can be found in useful if you have a complex problem that you need to resolve rapidly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or more months complimentary with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine markets its scale plan as the best value alternative. This one costs $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 check outs monthly.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We recommend this alternative for a fast-growing blog site 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 two months free with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom-made
If you have a mission-critical site or big company, the Custom strategy may be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Millions of sees each month.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will have to speak with a sales representative to get your customized quote depending upon your requirements. This plan likewise uses proprietary support needs to 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 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 site on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine obstructs harmful attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into site speed, but the guideline is that the more complicated your site is, the more complicated the options to speed ended up being.
Out of package- WordPress is fairly lean and quick. If you are running a mostly text website with a couple of basic plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be fine with an inexpensive shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s typically extra plugins, custom-made style files, lots of images, widgets, ads, forms and more.
All these functions combined with good levels of traffic can start to decrease your WordPress installation.
A sluggish website doesn’t indicate that you need a bigger, much better server. It does indicate that you require to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as basic as getting a more effective server, but often it’s more about caching certain resources in a particular order and optimizing your files. To put it simply- it gets complex.
Envision you are trying to haul a trailer with a pickup truck. Imagine your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s meaningless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you might simply need to get rid of the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress requires assistance to remain quickly as you grow. There are a lot of options … however either you or a developer should execute them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine takes care of (almost) all speed issues. They have customized servers with very aggressive caching and a lot more innovative “stack” than a normal webhosting. They also have trained support who will enter into your WordPress install and determine the exact chokepoint to get your website moving.
They don’t even permit caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have such a tailored caching setup.
The fascinating thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still succeed on their platform since their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for among my clients on WP Engine (who has a puffed up theme, additional scripts, too many uncompressed images, to name a few things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That determines how rapidly the server returned enough information to begin packing the page.
It’s great to have that sort of speed right out of package- and have it remain that way no matter how big or intricate 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 might get with other services because you are totally free to focus on speed elements that you can easily manage like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only supplies an incorporated CDN, but they likewise provide global information centers in case your audience is primarily in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are attempting to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And given that they operate on Google Cloud, you don’t need to worry about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies consist of 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 websites are WordPress websites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Frequently the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Protecting websites is among the strong points of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes several steps to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep track of an updated firewall software to block the latest dangers.
All sites are supported 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 provides 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 concerning security.
They offer webinars on security.
They publish security guidelines and lists for designers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it free of charge.
Online Resources
WP Engine offers webinars, guides, article, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Release your first website.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Handle your hosting account with higher efficiency.
Both newbies and skilled WordPress site owners will find the assistance documents invaluable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all membership fees is special in the hosting industry.
It enables you to experiment with the service in a risk-free method.
Keep in mind: this alternative is not offered 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 goals, budget plan, resources & practices.
If you are in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they offer a terrific service with a solid item. As a managed WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more functions than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unmatched for savvy DIYers, WordPress site developers and/or high-traffic sites that do not want to worry about hosting issues.
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 set up and see what you believe of their backend. Make certain to chat w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.