There are lots of inexpensive hosts readily available that supply a decent service. WPEngine Optimize Database
However, what if you’re trying to find more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll want to take a look at our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, using managed plans that are completely enhanced for the platform. Of course, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly cheap. 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 perform a comprehensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key features, support choices, efficiency capabilities, and everything 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 entrepreneur 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 company has won several awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently adds to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to select WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased dependability, performance, assistance, and management, however these are tough to quantify. Some features stand out when you search the user interface, nevertheless, that can offer you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool developed to assist you accelerate your WordPress website by using meaningful metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how rapidly your page rendered, how long it took to load in its whole, and the total size of the page. It even includes historic information on your site’s efficiency over the past six 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 mistakes on your website by making changes to a copy of your site before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it enables your designers to make extensive modifications to your website without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has a detailed list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly unusual move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those typically limited are plugins that have been kept in mind to cause performance problems and security holes. For crucial functions such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has made options offered that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just uses handled WordPress hosting. There are five different strategies available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans include unrestricted data transfer. The strategies differ based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized strategy consists of dedicated dev. environments, customer success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some special features for WordPress users that the majority of hosts don’t offer, or charge additional for. These unique features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately create a copy of your site for testing
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Cutting edge innovations including newest PHP version.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we discovered that WP Engine provides the most innovative and detailed handled WordPress hosting functions.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s interface is professional and well set out, however the effective features might mean a high knowing curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect guidelines, you’ll be right in the house here, however otherwise you’ll require to spend a long time on the assistance site.
In our testing, the default WordPress web page packed in just over 2 seconds. This is one of the fastest responses we’ve tested, with rival Liquid Web just a little behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service should offer extra value through its support, and WP Engine provides. The support site includes videos and posts of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with assistance on much deeper WordPress functionality that many WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the response fasted and the representative well-informed. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If site loading speed is a leading priority, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s mix of custom-made NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology guarantee that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human requests over robot demands and uses load balancing, giving your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN delivers site material to your visitors based on their place to increase your website’s speed and minimize latency. You get this ability 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 ensures 99.95% server uptime, approximately four 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 each year. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls below the guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine monitors all the traffic going to your website and automatically discovers and obstructs possible attacks. Furthermore, the hosting service immediately updates and patches the WordPress core to get rid of potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine automatically backups your website every day and has a one-click restoration feature to get you back up and running rapidly. This hosting service safeguards your site versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Phenomenal Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to connect with customer care through chat. The assistance team has an exceptional knowledge base and can help you resolve issues rapidly. You get 24/7 phone support for all plans except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area enables you to clone your website’s live variation and make changes or evaluate brand-new plugins and themes. Anything you do in the staging area doesn’t impact your live website. This feature allows developers to deal with 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 have to await the customer to include you to their WordPress website. When completed, you can transfer the site to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you regularly develop 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 deals with WordPress. From an organization perspective, it makes good sense to focus on a single market and deal exceptional services because area. This design locks out numerous individuals who could otherwise benefit from 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 require to look somewhere else. You’ll have to utilize third-party services for domain registration or e-mail accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is reflected in its prices structure. You will be punished for surpassing your plan’s visitor limitations. This might not be an issue if you have predictable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your plan as your website grows. Significant spikes in traffic during item launches or seasonal organization can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the cost? The answer lies in determining what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the very same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the rate. You can even get committed hosting for the very same price as WP Engine. What you are actually paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most significantly, assurance. The ultimate question 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 generally paying for efficiency & not having to believe excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s rates based upon the functions you’re getting- you truly do not get a lot.
And if you are the type who will consider your site’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and generally visiting often), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is unnecessary.
Lots of shared hosting servers can manage the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the cost. My individual site a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with basic caching) dealt with more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a dependable VPS, you can definitely handle a lot more for much less. The site you are on handles more than 110,000+ sees per month with plenty of space left to spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, email, RSS apps, etc with an InMotion VPS. I spend for the VPS plus a CDN for less than WP Engine’s starter plan.
They are relatively transparent about how they count sees, however it can still be rather a surprise for “little” website owners how rapidly they can get into the $290 each month tier. I have a client who began with the Startup strategy, however rapidly ended up with a customized plan.
And as mentioned earlier that doesn’t even consist of much of the functions you do not get with WP Engine’s strategies. You can’t run any e-mail from your servers. You have low limits on regional media storage. Anything above the limits needs extra expenses & technical application of Amazon cloud services.
And most notably 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 cost. You can’t utilize them to expand the cost of your strategy- specifically if you are striking your visitor cap rather than your install cap.
If you are aiming to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & serve up your site files- WP Engine is an expensive choice, especially compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Startup
The Startup plan is the most fundamental strategy and will set you back $25 each month. With this package, you get:.
25,000 visits monthly.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One website included.
WP Engine targets little sites and blogs with this strategy, but we believe it might be overkill for many people in this category. You can get a far much better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t wish to take any possibilities with uptime or need a warranty that your site can handle 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d suggest this option to small companies, affiliate sites, and blogs making good cash and want guarantees that absolutely nothing will change.
You can save $60 each year or 2 months totally free if you pay annually.
Growth
The growth strategy targets growing businesses and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 visits per month.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
Ten sites consisted of a while.
This strategy is a fantastic entry point for a growing business, and it might be a while before you require to update. With this plan, you likewise get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will can be found in useful if you have an intricate concern that you need to resolve 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 choice. This one costs $241 each month. Here you get:.
400,000 visits per month.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 sites included.
We advise 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 support.
You can conserve $580 or more months complimentary with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom
If you have a mission-critical website or big organization, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Millions of visits per month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will have to talk to a sales representative to get your tailored quote depending upon your requirements. This plan also offers exclusive assistance needs to something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network facilities.
The business also has three data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better site speeds by choosing to host your site on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine obstructs destructive attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that enter into website speed, but the guideline is that the more complex your site is, the more complicated the services to speed ended up being.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and fast. If you are running a primarily text website with a couple of standard plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be fine with an economical shared hosting plan from someone 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, advertisements, types and more.
All these features integrated with decent levels of traffic can begin to decrease your WordPress installation.
A slow site does not suggest that you need a bigger, much better server. It does mean that you require 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 attempting to haul a trailer with a pickup truck. Envision your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s pointless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you might just require to remove the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress needs assistance to stay quick as you grow. There are plenty of solutions … however either you or a developer should implement them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed issues. They have actually tailored servers with extremely aggressive caching and much more advanced “stack” than a typical web host. They likewise have actually trained support who will enter into your WordPress install and recognize the precise chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even enable 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 do well on their platform because their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers 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 measures how rapidly the server returned enough information to begin packing the page.
It’s nice to have that kind of speed right out of the box- and have it remain that way no matter how huge or complex the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are consumed about speed, you can get back at much better numbers with WP Engine than you may get with other services given that you are complimentary to concentrate on speed aspects that you can easily manage like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only offers an incorporated CDN, however they likewise 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 precisely that. And because they work on Google Cloud, you do not need to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies include an international CDN (material shipment network).
The CDN will assist your website load quickly for consumers worldwide 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 websites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting websites is one of the strong suits of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The business takes numerous measures to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep track of an upgraded firewall to block the latest threats.
All websites 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 site provides a guide on “Tips to Protect Your WordPress Site From Being Hacked.”.
You’ll have access to 24/7/365 technical assistance for any concerns relating to security.
They supply webinars on security.
They publish security guidelines and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it free of charge.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can learn how to:.
Release your very first website.
Troubleshoot typical problems.
Make improvements to your website.
Handle your hosting account with greater effectiveness.
Both newbies and skilled WordPress website owners will find the assistance documentation indispensable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all membership costs is unique in the hosting market.
It enables you to try out the service in a safe way.
Note: this option is not offered on customized hosting strategies.
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 objectives, budget, resources & habits.
If you are in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they provide a terrific service with a solid item. As a managed WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They provide more features than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for smart DIYers, WordPress website designers and/or high-traffic sites that do not wish to worry about hosting issues.
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 warranty. Do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Make sure to talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.