There are lots of low-cost hosts offered that supply a good service. WPEngine Object Cache
Nevertheless, 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 evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, using handled strategies that are fully optimized for the platform. Naturally, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly inexpensive. You’ll want to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense before making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to conduct a comprehensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial functions, assistance options, efficiency capabilities, and everything 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 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 rising 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 actually 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 less expensive WordPress hosting are increased dependability, efficiency, assistance, and management, however these are hard to quantify. Some features stick out when you search the interface, nevertheless, that can give you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool designed to help you speed up your WordPress website by providing significant metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how quickly your page rendered, how long it took to load in its totality, and the overall 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 decrease page load.
You can establish your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the modifications live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid awkward errors on your website by making changes to a copy of your site before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it enables your developers to make substantial changes to your website without impacting your clients.
WP Engine has a thorough 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 been kept in mind to cause efficiency problems and security holes. For crucial functions such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made options available that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just offers managed WordPress hosting. There are 5 different plans offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans include unlimited information transfer. The plans vary based upon:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made plan includes dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some distinct features for WordPress users that many hosts do not use, or charge extra for. These unique features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately develop a copy of your website for testing
- Easy transferable installs from totally free to paid accounts
- Cutting edge innovations consisting of most current PHP variation.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine uses 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 interface is expert and well set out, but the effective 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 in the house here, but otherwise you’ll need to spend a long time on the support website.
In our testing, the default WordPress web page filled in just over two seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve evaluated, with rival Liquid Web just somewhat behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service need to use additional worth through its support, and WP Engine provides. The support website includes videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with aid 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 testing, the response fasted and the agent educated. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If site filling speed is a top priority, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s combination of custom-made NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation ensure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robot requests and uses load balancing, offering your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides website content to your visitors based on their location to increase your website’s speed and reduce latency. You get this capability free of charge with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s tough to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, 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 improved SLA, which translates to a little under an hour of downtime each year. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls below the guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps an eye on all the traffic going to your website and automatically detects and obstructs potential attacks. In addition, the hosting service automatically updates and spots the WordPress core to eliminate possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine instantly backups your site every day and has a one-click restoration feature to get you back up and running quickly. This hosting service safeguards your website versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Incredible Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to connect with client care via chat. The support team has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you solve issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all strategies other than 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 evaluate new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area doesn’t impact your live site. This feature allows designers to work on websites without disrupting the live site’s performance 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 await the client to add you to their WordPress website. As soon as completed, you can transfer the site to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality conserves time if you routinely build websites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine just works with WordPress. From a business viewpoint, it makes good sense to focus on a single market and deal remarkable services in that area. This model 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 require to look elsewhere. 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 prices structure. You will be penalized for surpassing your plan’s visitor limits. This might not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your strategy as your website grows. However, substantial spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal organization can cost you considerable overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the cost? The response lies in figuring out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can manage the same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the cost. You can even get devoted hosting for the exact same rate as WP Engine. What you are truly paying for here is security, performance, speed, and, most notably, comfort. The ultimate concern 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 strategy, you are usually spending for performance & not having to believe excessive about maintenance, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s prices based on the features you’re getting- you actually do not get a lot.
And if you are the type who will consider your site’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and usually visiting 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 rate. My individual website a shared hosting plan from HostGator with fundamental caching) dealt with more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a reliable VPS, you can definitely manage a lot more for much less. The website you are on manages more than 110,000+ visits per month with plenty of space left to spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, email, 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 fairly transparent about how they count check outs, but it can still be rather a surprise for “small” website owners how quickly they can enter the $290 per month tier. I have a client who started with the Startup plan, but quickly wound up with a customized plan.
And as pointed out earlier that does not even consist of much of the features you don’t get with WP Engine’s strategies. You can’t run any e-mail from your servers. You have low limits on local media storage. Anything above the limits requires additional 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 websites, you have to factor those into the cost. You can’t utilize them to expand the cost of your plan- particularly if you are striking your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are wanting to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your website files- WP Engine is a pricey choice, especially compared to other non-managed hosting options.
Startup
The Startup package is one of the most basic plan and will set you back $25 each month. With this package, you get:.
25,000 visits each month.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One website included.
WP Engine targets small websites and blog sites with this strategy, however we believe it might be overkill for the majority of people in this category. You can get a far better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you do not want to take any chances with uptime or need a guarantee that your website can deal with 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d advise this choice to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blogs making good money and want guarantees that nothing will alter.
You can save $60 annually or 2 months free if you pay every year.
Growth
The development plan targets growing businesses and will cost you $95 each month. Here you get:.
100,000 sees per month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
10 websites included a while.
This strategy is a fantastic entry point for a growing organization, 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 be available in helpful if you have a complex issue that you require to solve quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or two months free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale plan as the best worth option. This one expenses $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 visits monthly.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
We suggest this option for a fast-growing blog or business. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the assistance.
You can conserve $580 or 2 months totally free with annual pre-paid billing.
Customized
Finally, if you have a mission-critical site or big service, the Custom plan may be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless sees each month.
400GB+ bandwidth each month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
You will need to speak to a sales associate to get your personalized quote depending upon your requirements. This plan likewise offers proprietary support needs to something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong Uptime
WP Engine accomplishes over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network infrastructure.
The company also 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 market.
WP Engine obstructs harmful attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that enter into site speed, but the general rule is that the more complicated your website is, the more complicated the solutions to speed ended up being.
Out of the box- WordPress is fairly lean and quick. If you are running a mostly text website with a few basic plugins and a few little images, you’ll be fine with an affordable shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few website owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s normally additional plugins, custom theme files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, kinds and more.
All these functions combined with decent levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress setup.
But a slow website doesn’t imply that you need a larger, 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 sometimes it’s more about caching certain resources in a certain order and optimizing your files. In other words- it gets complex.
Picture you are trying to transport a trailer with a pickup. Imagine your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s meaningless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you may simply need to eliminate the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress needs assistance to stay quick as you grow. There are plenty of services … but either you or a designer should execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine looks after (nearly) all speed issues. They have actually customized servers with exceptionally aggressive caching and much more innovative “stack” than a typical web host. They also have trained support who will go into your WordPress install and identify the exact chokepoint to get your website moving.
They don’t even permit caching plugins on their installs because they have such a customized caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still succeed on their platform due to the fact that their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my clients 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 determines how quickly the server returned enough information to start packing the page.
It’s nice to have that type of speed right out of the box- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or intricate the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are obsessed about speed, you can get even better numbers with WP Engine than you may get with other services considering that you are free to focus on speed aspects that you can easily manage like image compression, usage of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just offers an integrated CDN, but they also provide worldwide data 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 precisely that. And since they work on Google Cloud, you do not have to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include an international CDN (material delivery network).
The CDN will assist your website 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 sites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting sites is one of the fortes of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The business takes numerous procedures to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They monitor an upgraded firewall to block the most recent threats.
All websites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can help you recover your website in case of an attack.
The WP Engine website supplies 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 guidelines and checklists for designers and engineers.
If your site 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 find out how to:.
Release your first website.
Troubleshoot common issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with higher efficiency.
Both newbies and skilled WordPress site owners will discover the support documentation invaluable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all membership fees is distinct in the hosting industry.
It enables you to check out the service in a safe method.
Keep in mind: this option is not readily available on customized 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 on your goals, budget plan, resources & habits.
If you are in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they provide a terrific service with a strong product. As a handled WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They use more features than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unrivaled for smart DIYers, WordPress website developers and/or high-traffic sites that do not want to stress over hosting concerns.
If handled hosting is a suitable for you- then go check out WP Engine’s plans here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back assurance. So do a test install and see what you think about their backend. Make sure to talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.