There are lots of cheap hosts offered that supply a good service. WPEngine Migration Plugin
Nevertheless, what if you’re trying to find 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 web host, providing handled plans that are completely optimized for the platform. Naturally, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t exactly inexpensive. You’ll desire to understand whether this hosting service is worth the expense 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, assistance choices, efficiency capabilities, and whatever else you’ll need to know. Let’s begin!
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 companies in the market. Serial business owner Jason Cohen began WP Engine when he saw a requirement for specialized WordPress hosting due to the rising 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 several awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to select WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased dependability, efficiency, support, and management, however these are hard to measure. Some functions stand out when you browse the user interface, however, that can provide you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool developed to help you speed up your WordPress site by using significant metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, for how long it took to fill in its totality, and the overall size of the page. It even consists of historical data on your site’s performance over the past 6 months and suggestions on how you can decrease page load.
You can develop your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment before making the modifications 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 designers to make comprehensive modifications to your site without impacting your clients.
WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly uncommon move, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can install. Those typically limited are plugins that have been noted to cause performance concerns and security holes. For important features 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 just offers handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 different plans readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of unrestricted information transfer. The plans vary based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made plan includes dedicated dev. environments, customer success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some special features for WordPress users that a lot of hosts don’t provide, or charge additional for. These special functions consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately produce a copy of your site for testing
- Easy transferable installs from totally free to paid accounts
- Innovative technologies including latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine offers the most sophisticated and detailed 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 laid out, however the powerful features may imply a high learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect rules, you’ll be right at home here, but otherwise you’ll need to invest a long time on the support website.
In our screening, the default WordPress web page packed in simply over two seconds. This is one of the fastest actions we’ve evaluated, with competitor Liquid Web just somewhat behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service must offer additional value through its support, and WP Engine provides. The assistance website consists of videos and posts of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with assistance on deeper WordPress functionality that numerous WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the action fasted and the representative experienced. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If site loading speed is a top concern, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s mix of custom NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology ensure that your websites load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human requests over robotic requests and provides load balancing, giving your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides website material to your visitors based upon their area to boost your website’s speed and decrease latency. You get this capability free of charge with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s tough to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, which is why people continue to pay a premium rate for this service. WP Engine guarantees 99.95% server uptime, approximately 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 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 discovers and blocks possible attacks. In addition, the hosting service automatically updates and spots the WordPress core to get rid of possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine immediately backups your website every day and has a one-click restoration feature to get you back up and running quickly. This hosting service secures your website against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Sensational Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact consumer care via chat. The assistance team has an outstanding knowledge base and can help you solve issues rapidly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all strategies except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area permits you to clone your website’s live version and make changes or check new plugins and themes. Anything you do in the staging area doesn’t impact your live website. This function enables developers to deal with sites without interfering with the live site’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature allows you to build a website from your WP Engine account. You don’t need to await the client to add you to their WordPress website. Once completed, you can move the site to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you routinely build sites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you run out luck. WP Engine only works with WordPress. From a business perspective, it makes sense to focus on a single market and deal exceptional services because location. Nevertheless, this design locks out many people who might otherwise gain 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 somewhere else. You’ll need 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 punished for surpassing your strategy’s visitor limits. This might not be a problem if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly update your strategy as your site grows. Nevertheless, considerable spikes in traffic throughout item launches or seasonal business can cost you significant overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the expense? The answer depends on determining what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can manage the same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the price. You can even get dedicated hosting for the very same rate as WP Engine. What you are actually paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, peace of mind. The ultimate 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 plan, you are generally spending for efficiency & not needing to think excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s rates based on the functions you’re getting- you really don’t get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think of your website’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and typically logging in often), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unneeded.
Numerous shared hosting servers can handle the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the cost. My personal site a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with fundamental caching) handled more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a trustworthy VPS, you can certainly handle a lot more for much less. The site you are on manages more than 110,000+ check outs per month with plenty of space 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 strategy.
They are relatively transparent about how they count visits, but it can still be quite a surprise for “little” website owners how rapidly they can enter into the $290 monthly tier. I have a client who began with the Startup strategy, but quickly ended up with a customized plan.
And as mentioned earlier that doesn’t even include a number of the functions you don’t get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limitations on local media storage. Anything above the limits requires additional expenses & technical execution of Amazon cloud services.
And most importantly for me- you are limited on your installs. If you have a few side projects or low-traffic test sites, you have to factor those into the price. You can’t utilize them to expand the cost of your strategy- particularly if you are hitting your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are wanting to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your website files- WP Engine is a costly alternative, especially compared to other non-managed hosting options.
Start-up
The Startup package is one of the most basic plan and will set you back $25 monthly. With this package, you get:.
25,000 visits each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One site included.
WP Engine targets little websites and blogs with this plan, but we think it may be overkill for many people in this classification. You can get a far much better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t wish to take any opportunities with uptime or require an assurance that your website can deal with 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d suggest this alternative to small businesses, affiliate sites, and blogs making great money and desire guarantees that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 per year or more months complimentary if you pay yearly.
Growth
The development plan targets growing services and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 check outs per month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
Ten sites included a while.
This strategy is a great entry point for a growing business, and it might be a while before you require to upgrade. With this strategy, you likewise get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to day-and-night chat assistance. This addition will come in helpful if you have a complicated problem that you need to resolve rapidly.
You can save a cool $230 or more months totally free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine markets its scale strategy as the best worth option. This one costs $241 each month. Here you get:.
400,000 visits per month.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We suggest this choice for a fast-growing blog or organization. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the support.
You can conserve $580 or more months complimentary with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom-made
If you have a mission-critical site or big service, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Millions of sees per month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will need to talk to a sales rep to get your customized quote depending on your requirements. This strategy also provides proprietary assistance should something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong Uptime
WP Engine accomplishes over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network infrastructure.
The business also has 3 information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better website speeds by selecting to host your website on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine obstructs malicious attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into website speed, however the guideline is that the more complex your website is, the more intricate the services to speed ended up being.
Out of the box- WordPress is fairly 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 great with a cost effective shared hosting strategy from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s generally extra plugins, custom-made theme files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, types and more.
All these features integrated with decent levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress setup.
A slow website doesn’t imply that you need a bigger, much better server. It does imply that you need to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as simple as getting a more effective server, but in some cases it’s more about caching certain resources in a particular order and enhancing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Envision you are attempting to transport a trailer with a pickup truck. Envision your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s meaningless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you may simply require to remove the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress needs help to remain quickly as you grow. There are a lot of solutions … however either you or a developer should implement them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed concerns. They have actually tailored servers with very aggressive caching and a lot more innovative “stack” than a common web host. They also have actually trained support who will go into your WordPress set up and recognize the precise chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even allow caching plugins on their installs since they have such a customized 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 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, to name a few things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That measures how quickly the server returned enough information to begin loading the page.
It’s good to have that type of speed right out of package- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or complicated the website 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 may get with other services given that you are totally free to concentrate on speed elements that you can quickly manage like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only supplies an incorporated CDN, however they likewise offer international information centers in case your audience is mainly 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 considering that they run on Google Cloud, you don’t need to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies include an international CDN (material delivery network).
The CDN will help your website 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 estimated 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 suits of WP Engine’s handled 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 program to block the current dangers.
All websites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can assist you recuperate 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 concerning security.
They provide webinars on security.
They publish security guidelines and lists for developers and engineers.
If your site 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 website.
Troubleshoot common issues.
Make improvements to your site.
Manage your hosting account with greater performance.
Both novices and knowledgeable WordPress site owners will discover the support documents invaluable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all subscription fees is special in the hosting market.
It enables you to experiment with the service in a safe method.
Note: this choice is not available on custom hosting plans.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, however what is best for you based upon your objectives, budget plan, resources & routines.
If you are in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they use an excellent service with a strong item. As a handled WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They provide more functions than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unrivaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress site designers and/or high-traffic websites that don’t want to fret about hosting concerns.
If managed 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 guarantee. Do a test install and see what you believe of their backend. Make certain to talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.