There are plenty of inexpensive hosts offered that offer a good service. WPEngine Site Transfer
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll want to take a look at our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, offering managed plans that are completely enhanced for the platform. Naturally, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely inexpensive. Therefore, you’ll need to know whether this hosting service deserves the expense before buying.
To help you out, we’re going to perform an extensive WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its essential features, assistance alternatives, efficiency capabilities, and whatever else you’ll need to know. Let’s get started!
WP Engine Video Review
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now among the leading handled 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 popularity 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 multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to choose WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, but these are difficult to quantify. Some functions stand out when you browse the interface, however, that can offer you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool designed to help you speed up your WordPress website by providing meaningful metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how rapidly your page rendered, the length of time it required to load in its whole, and the total size of the page. It even consists of historical information on your site’s performance over the past 6 months and recommendations on how you can minimize page load.
You can establish your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment before making the modifications live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid embarrassing mistakes on your website by making changes to a copy of your website prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it permits your designers to make comprehensive modifications to your website without impacting your consumers.
WP Engine has a thorough list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably unusual relocation, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can install. Those typically limited are plugins that have actually been kept in mind to cause performance problems and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has made options readily available that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only provides managed WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans include unrestricted information transfer. The plans differ based on:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized strategy consists of dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some special functions for WordPress users that the majority of hosts don’t provide, or charge additional for. These unique features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly create a copy of your website for testing
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Leading edge innovations consisting of latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine offers the most sophisticated and thorough 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 professional and well set out, but the powerful features might imply a steep knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and reroute rules, you’ll be right in your home 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 simply over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest responses we’ve checked, with rival Liquid Web just a little behind.
Support
A handled WordPress service must offer extra worth through its assistance, and WP Engine delivers. The assistance site consists of videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with aid on deeper WordPress performance that lots of WordPress hosts don’t enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the reaction fasted and the representative well-informed. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If website 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 innovation make sure that your websites load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robotic requests and uses load balancing, providing your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN provides website material to your visitors based on their location to enhance your site’s speed and decrease latency. You get this capability for free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium rate for this service. WP Engine guarantees 99.95% server uptime, approximately 4 and a half hours of downtime a year. You can further increase your uptime to 99.99% with improved 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 assurance.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps track of all the traffic going to your site and instantly discovers and blocks possible attacks. In addition, the hosting service automatically updates and patches the WordPress core to remove prospective vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine instantly backups your website every day and has a one-click repair function to get you back up and running rapidly. Finally, this hosting service protects your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Remarkable Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to get in touch with client care through chat. The support group has an outstanding knowledge base and can assist you fix problems rapidly. You get 24/7 phone support 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 site’s live variation and make changes or check new plugins and styles. Anything you carry out in the staging area does not impact your live website. This function allows designers to deal with sites without hindering the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature permits you to build a website from your WP Engine account. You don’t have to await the customer to include you to their WordPress site. Once completed, you can transfer the website to the client or host the site on WP Engine. This performance conserves time if you routinely build sites for customers.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are utilizing any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you run out luck. WP Engine just deals with WordPress. From an organization perspective, it makes good sense to focus on a single market and deal remarkable services because area. This design locks out many individuals who could otherwise benefit from WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you choose to host your e-mail account and register your domain through your website host, you’ll require to look elsewhere. You’ll have to use third-party services for domain registration or e-mail accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is reflected in its pricing structure. You will be punished for surpassing your plan’s visitor limits. This may not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can always update your strategy as your website grows. However, substantial spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal service can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the expense? The answer lies in figuring out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the very same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the price. You can even get committed hosting for the exact same rate as WP Engine. What you are really spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most importantly, comfort. The supreme question 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 plan, you are normally paying for efficiency & not having to believe too much about maintenance, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s rates based upon the features you’re getting- you really don’t get a lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your website’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and normally visiting regularly), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unnecessary.
Numerous shared hosting servers can deal with the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the cost. My individual website a shared hosting plan from HostGator with basic caching) dealt with 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 definitely handle a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on handles more than 110,000+ check outs each 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, however it can still be quite a surprise for “little” site owners how rapidly they can enter the $290 per month tier. I have a client who started with the Startup strategy, however rapidly ended up with a customized strategy.
And as pointed out previously that doesn’t even consist of a number of the features you don’t get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limits on local media storage. Anything above the limits requires extra expenses & technical application of Amazon cloud services.
And most significantly for me- you are restricted 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 use them to spread out the cost of your plan- especially if you are striking your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are aiming to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your site files- WP Engine is a pricey option, especially compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Start-up
The Startup bundle is the most fundamental plan and will set you back $25 per month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 visits monthly.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One site included.
WP Engine targets small sites and blogs with this plan, but we think 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 do not wish to take any chances with uptime or require a guarantee that your website can deal with 25,000 visitors each month, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d recommend this alternative to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blogs making good money and desire assurances that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 annually or more months totally free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The development plan targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 check outs monthly.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
Ten websites consisted of a while.
This strategy is a terrific entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while before you need to update. With this strategy, you also get 24/7 phone support in addition to round-the-clock chat support. This addition will come in convenient if you have a complex issue that you need to resolve quickly.
You can save a cool $230 or more months free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine markets its scale plan as the best worth option. This one costs $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to each month.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 sites included.
We advise this alternative for a fast-growing blog or organization. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the assistance.
You can save $580 or more months free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Custom-made
If you have a mission-critical website or large service, the Custom plan might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless visits monthly.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will have to talk to a sales associate to get your individualized quote depending upon your requirements. This strategy likewise uses exclusive assistance ought to something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network facilities.
The company likewise has 3 information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better website speeds by picking 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 website is, the more complicated the options to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is fairly lean and quick. If you are running a mostly text website with a few fundamental plugins and a couple of small images, you’ll be fine with an economical shared hosting plan from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of site owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s generally additional plugins, custom-made theme files, lots of images, widgets, advertisements, types and more.
All these functions combined with decent levels of traffic can begin to decrease your WordPress setup.
But a slow website does not mean that you require a larger, better server. It does suggest that you require to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as easy as getting a more powerful server, however in some cases it’s more about caching specific resources in a specific order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Imagine you are trying to transport a trailer with a pickup. Envision your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s meaningless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you might simply require 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 fast as you grow. There are plenty of options … however either you or a developer must implement them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed concerns. They have personalized servers with extremely aggressive caching and a lot more innovative “stack” than a typical webhosting. They likewise have trained support who will enter into your WordPress set up and determine the precise chokepoint to get your site moving.
They do not even enable caching plugins on their installs because they have such a customized caching setup.
The intriguing thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still succeed on their platform since their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers on WP Engine (who has a bloated style, additional scripts, a lot of uncompressed images, among other things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That determines how rapidly the server returned enough data to start 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 intricate the website gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are obsessed about speed, you can get back at better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services considering that you are totally free to concentrate on speed aspects that you can quickly manage like image compression, use of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just provides an integrated CDN, but they likewise offer worldwide information centers in case your audience is mostly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are attempting to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does exactly that. And considering that they work on Google Cloud, you don’t have to worry about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies consist of an international CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will assist your website load quick 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 sites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Protecting sites is among the fortes of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes a number of steps to protect WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They monitor an upgraded firewall software to obstruct the current risks.
All websites are backed up 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 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 concerns concerning security.
They provide webinars on security.
They publish security standards and checklists for developers 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 find out how to:.
Launch your first site.
Troubleshoot common problems.
Make improvements to your website.
Handle your hosting account with higher effectiveness.
Both beginners and knowledgeable WordPress website owners will find the support documents indispensable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all membership charges is unique in the hosting market.
It enables you to try the service in a risk-free 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 upon your objectives, spending plan, resources & habits.
If you are in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they use a terrific service with a solid product. As a handled WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They provide more features than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unrivaled for smart DIYers, WordPress site designers and/or high-traffic websites that do not want to worry about hosting problems.
If managed hosting is a fit for you- then go take a look at WP Engine’s plans here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back warranty. So do a test set up and see what you think of their backend. Be sure to talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.