There are plenty of inexpensive hosts offered that supply a decent service. WPEngine Outage
Nevertheless, what if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll wish to have a look at our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, providing handled strategies that are fully optimized for the platform. Naturally, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely cheap. You’ll want to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense prior to making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to carry out a comprehensive WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial functions, support alternatives, performance capabilities, and everything else you’ll require to know. Let’s get going!
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 started 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 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 community.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to select WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, assistance, and management, but these are difficult to quantify. Some functions stand apart when you search the user interface, however, that can provide you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool developed to assist you speed up your WordPress website by using significant metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, how long it required to pack in its entirety, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historical information on your site’s efficiency over the past six months and recommendations on how you can minimize page load.
You can establish your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment before making the modifications live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid awkward mistakes on your website by making changes to a copy of your site prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it enables your designers to make substantial changes to your site without affecting your consumers.
WP Engine has a detailed list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly uncommon relocation, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those usually limited are plugins that have actually been noted to cause performance problems and security holes. For crucial functions such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made alternatives readily available that do not 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 plans consist of unrestricted data transfer. The plans differ based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, customer success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some distinct features for WordPress users that a lot of hosts don’t use, or charge additional for. These unique features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly create a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Innovative innovations including most current PHP version.
In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine offers the most advanced and comprehensive managed WordPress hosting functions.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
User interface and in use
WP Engine’s interface is professional and well set out, however the powerful features might imply a steep knowing 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 assistance site.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page loaded in simply over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve tested, with rival Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service need to provide additional value through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The assistance website consists of videos and articles of a quality you ‘d anticipate from a paid training course, with assistance on deeper WordPress functionality that lots of WordPress hosts do not go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the reaction fasted and the agent knowledgeable. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If website loading speed is a leading priority, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s combination of custom-made NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology make sure that your websites load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robot demands and offers load balancing, offering your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN delivers website material to your visitors based on their location to boost your website’s speed and reduce latency. You get this ability for free with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s tough to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why people continue to pay a premium cost 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 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 website and automatically detects and obstructs possible attacks. Additionally, the hosting service immediately updates and spots the WordPress core to get rid of prospective vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine automatically backups your website every day and has a one-click restoration feature to get you support and running rapidly. This hosting service safeguards your website versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Remarkable Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to connect with customer care via chat. The assistance group has an exceptional knowledge base and can assist you solve issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all plans other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area allows you to clone your website’s live version and make changes or test brand-new plugins and themes. Anything you perform in the staging area doesn’t affect your live website. This feature permits designers to work on websites without hindering the live website’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature allows you to build a site from your WP Engine account. You do not need to await the client to include you to their WordPress site. Once completed, you can transfer the website to the client or host the website on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you regularly construct websites for customers.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine only works with WordPress. From a business viewpoint, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and deal remarkable services because location. This design locks out many people who might 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 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 punished for surpassing your strategy’s visitor limitations. This might not be an issue if you have predictable traffic, and you can always update your strategy as your site grows. However, significant spikes in traffic during product launches or seasonal business can cost you substantial excess charges.
There is no other way 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 manage the same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the rate. You can even get devoted hosting for the same cost as WP Engine. What you are truly paying for here is security, performance, speed, and, most importantly, peace of mind. The ultimate question is just 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 typically paying for efficiency & not having to think excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s pricing based upon the functions you’re getting- you really don’t get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think of your site’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress updated and normally visiting regularly), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is unneeded.
Lots of shared hosting servers can manage the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the rate. My personal site a shared hosting plan from HostGator with basic caching) dealt with more than 15,000+ gos to in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a dependable VPS, you can certainly handle a lot more for much less. The website 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 sees, but it can still be quite a surprise for “little” website owners how rapidly they can enter the $290 each month tier. I have a client who started with the Startup plan, but rapidly wound up with a custom plan.
And as discussed previously that does not even include much 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 local media storage. Anything above the limits requires extra expenses & technical application of Amazon cloud services.
And most notably for me- you are limited on your installs. If you have a few side projects or low-traffic test sites, you need to factor those into the cost. You can’t utilize them to expand the expense of your strategy- particularly if you are hitting your visitor cap rather than your install cap.
If you are looking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your site files- WP Engine is a pricey alternative, especially compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Startup
The Startup plan is the most basic strategy and will set you back $25 monthly. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 check outs each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One site included.
WP Engine targets small sites and blogs with this strategy, but we think it might be overkill for the majority of people in this classification. You can get a far better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you do not wish to take any possibilities with uptime or need a guarantee that your website can handle 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d suggest this choice to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blog sites making good money and desire guarantees that nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 annually or two months free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 each month. Here you get:.
100,000 check outs monthly.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
10 websites consisted of a while.
This strategy is a terrific entry point for a growing business, and it might be a while prior to you need to update. With this plan, you likewise get 24/7 phone support in addition to round-the-clock chat assistance. This addition will can be found in helpful if you have an intricate issue that you require to deal with rapidly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or more months totally free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the best value option. This one costs $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 check outs per month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We suggest this choice for a fast-growing blog site or service. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the support center.
You can save $580 or more months free with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom
Finally, if you have a mission-critical site or large service, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Countless gos to per month.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites included.
You will need to speak to a sales representative to get your personalized quote depending on your requirements. This plan also offers proprietary assistance must something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine accomplishes over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network infrastructure.
The business also has 3 data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve website speeds by selecting to host your site on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks harmful attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that go into website speed, however the rule of thumb is that the more complicated your site is, the more complex the solutions to speed ended up being.
Out of the box- WordPress is fairly lean and fast. If you are running a primarily text site with a few fundamental plugins and a few little images, you’ll be great with a cost effective shared hosting strategy from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of website owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s generally extra plugins, custom-made theme 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 installation.
A slow site doesn’t imply that you need a larger, much better server. It does imply that you need to get smarter about speed. In some cases it’s as basic as getting a more powerful server, however sometimes it’s more about caching specific resources in a specific order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Imagine you are attempting to carry a trailer with a pickup truck. Picture your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s pointless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might just require to eliminate the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress needs aid to stay fast as you grow. There are lots of solutions … but either you or a developer need to execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting comes 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 typical web host. They likewise have actually trained assistance who will enter into your WordPress install and recognize the precise chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even allow caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have actually such a customized caching setup.
The intriguing thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still do well on their platform due to the fact that their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my clients on WP Engine (who has a bloated theme, additional scripts, too many 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 packing the page.
It’s good to have that sort of speed right out of the box- and have it stay that way no matter how big or complicated the website gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are consumed about speed, you can get even 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 quickly control like image compression, usage of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only provides an incorporated CDN, however they likewise provide international data centers in case your audience is primarily 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 given that they run on Google Cloud, you don’t need to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans consist of an international CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will assist your site load quickly for customers around 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 sites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Protecting sites is among the fortes of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The business takes a number of measures to safeguard WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They monitor an updated firewall program to block the current risks.
All websites are supported daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can help you recuperate your website in case of an attack.
The WP Engine site supplies 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 concerning security.
They offer webinars on security.
They release security standards 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 learn how to:.
Release your first website.
Troubleshoot common problems.
Make improvements to your site.
Handle your hosting account with greater performance.
Both beginners and skilled WordPress site owners will find the assistance documentation vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all subscription costs is unique in the hosting industry.
It enables you to try out the service in a risk-free method.
Note: this alternative is not available on custom-made 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 & routines.
If you remain in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they offer a fantastic service with a strong item. As a managed WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more functions than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unmatched for smart DIYers, WordPress site designers and/or high-traffic sites that don’t want to worry about hosting issues.
If handled hosting is a suitable for you- then go have a look at WP Engine’s plans 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 sure to chat w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.