There are lots of inexpensive hosts available that offer a decent service. WPEngine Ssl
Nevertheless, what if you’re trying to find more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll wish to check out our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, using handled plans that are totally optimized for the platform. Naturally, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t exactly cheap. You’ll desire to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense prior to making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to conduct an extensive WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its essential features, support alternatives, performance abilities, and everything else you’ll require to understand. Let’s begin!
WP Engine Video Review
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now among the leading managed WordPress hosting business in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen began WP Engine when he saw a requirement for specialized WordPress hosting due to the increasing popularity 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 won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to pick WP Engine over less expensive WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, but these are hard to measure. Some features stand out when you search the interface, however, that can give you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool created to assist you accelerate your WordPress website by providing significant metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how quickly your page rendered, for how long it took to fill in its entirety, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historical information on your website’s performance over the past six months and suggestions on how you can reduce page load.
You can develop your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment before 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 permits your designers to make comprehensive changes to your website without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has an extensive 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 restricted are plugins that have actually been kept in mind to trigger performance problems and security holes. For essential functions such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has actually made alternatives readily available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only offers handled WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies include endless data transfer. The plans differ based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made strategy includes dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some distinct functions for WordPress users that a lot of hosts do not offer, or charge additional for. These special functions consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly create a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Innovative innovations including newest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine offers the most sophisticated and extensive handled WordPress hosting features.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s user interface is expert and well laid out, but the effective features might indicate a high 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, however otherwise you’ll require to invest some time on the assistance site.
In our testing, the default WordPress web page loaded in simply over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest reactions we’ve checked, with competitor Liquid Web only a little behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service must provide additional worth through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The support site includes videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with help on deeper WordPress functionality that numerous WordPress hosts do not go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the reaction was quick and the agent experienced. For all strategies except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If site loading speed is a top concern, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s mix of customized NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation make sure that your websites load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human requests over robot requests and uses load balancing, offering your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN provides site material to your visitors based upon their area to enhance your website’s speed and decrease latency. You get this ability totally free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s performance, 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 equates to a little under an hour of downtime per year. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls listed below the guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine monitors all the traffic going to your site and immediately identifies and blocks potential attacks. In addition, the hosting service automatically updates and spots the WordPress core to get rid of potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine immediately backups your site every day and has a one-click repair function to get you back up and running rapidly. This hosting service safeguards your website against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Incredible Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact consumer care by means of chat. The assistance group has an exceptional knowledge base and can help you resolve issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all strategies except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat assistance on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area enables you to clone your site’s live version and make changes or test new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area does not affect your live site. This feature allows developers to deal with sites without interfering with the live website’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature permits you to build a site from your WP Engine account. You don’t need to await the client to add you to their WordPress website. As soon as finished, you can move the site to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you frequently construct websites 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 service viewpoint, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and offer exceptional services because area. Nevertheless, this design locks out lots of 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 elsewhere. You’ll have to use third-party services for domain registration or email accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is shown in its prices structure. You will be punished for exceeding your strategy’s visitor limitations. This may not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your strategy as your website grows. Considerable spikes in traffic during item launches or seasonal organization can cost you significant overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the cost? The answer depends on determining what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can manage the same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the rate. You can even get committed hosting for the exact same price as WP Engine. What you are truly paying for here is security, performance, speed, and, most importantly, comfort. 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 performance & not having to think too much about maintenance, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s prices based upon the functions you’re getting- you truly don’t get a great deal.
And if you are the type who will think of your site’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and usually visiting frequently), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is unnecessary.
Lots of shared hosting servers can handle the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the price. My personal website a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with basic caching) handled more than 15,000+ gos to in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a trusted VPS, you can definitely handle a lot more for much less. The website you are on handles more than 110,000+ visits 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 spend for the VPS plus a CDN for less than WP Engine’s starter strategy.
They are fairly transparent about how they count gos to, but it can still be quite a surprise for “little” site owners how quickly they can enter into the $290 each month tier. I have a customer who began with the Startup strategy, but quickly ended up with a custom-made strategy.
And as discussed previously that doesn’t even include a lot 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 additional 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 websites, you have to factor those into the rate. You can’t use them to expand the expense of your strategy- especially if you are hitting your visitor cap instead of your set up cap.
If you are seeking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & serve up your site files- WP Engine is a pricey choice, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Startup
The Startup plan is the most fundamental plan and will set you back $25 each month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 visits monthly.
50GB bandwidth monthly.
10GB storage.
One site consisted of.
WP Engine targets little websites and blogs with this strategy, however we believe it may be overkill for most 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 need an assurance that your site can deal with 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d suggest this choice to small businesses, affiliate websites, and blogs making great cash and desire assurances that nothing will change.
You can save $60 each year or 2 months totally free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The development plan targets growing businesses and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 visits each month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
10 websites consisted of a while.
This strategy is a fantastic entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while prior to you need to update. With this strategy, 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 a complicated concern that you require to resolve quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or two months free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale strategy as the best value alternative. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to each month.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 sites included.
We recommend this option for a fast-growing blog or service. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the support center.
You can conserve $580 or 2 months totally free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Custom-made
If you have a mission-critical website or large service, the Custom strategy may be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Millions of check outs each month.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites included.
You will have to speak with a sales representative to get your individualized quote depending on your requirements. This plan likewise offers proprietary support ought 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 3 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 audience.
WP Engine obstructs destructive attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that enter into website speed, but the guideline is that the more complicated your site is, the more intricate the options to speed become.
Out of the box- WordPress is fairly lean and fast. If you are running a mostly text site with a few fundamental plugins and a couple of small images, you’ll be fine with an inexpensive shared hosting plan from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s normally additional plugins, customized style files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, forms and more.
All these functions integrated with good levels of traffic can start to slow down your WordPress setup.
A sluggish website doesn’t indicate that you require a bigger, better server. It does mean that you require to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as basic as getting a more effective server, however often it’s more about caching particular resources in a certain order and enhancing your files. To put it simply- it gets complex.
Imagine you are attempting to haul a trailer with a pickup. Imagine your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s pointless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you might simply require to get rid of the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress needs aid to remain fast as you grow. There are lots of options … however either you or a developer need to execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed concerns. They have customized servers with incredibly aggressive caching and even more advanced “stack” than a common web host. They likewise have trained support who will go into your WordPress install and identify the exact chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even enable caching plugins on their installs since they have actually such a customized caching setup.
The intriguing thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still do well on their platform since their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers on WP Engine (who has a puffed up style, 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 rapidly the server returned enough data to begin filling the page.
It’s great to have that kind of speed right out of package- and have it remain that way no matter how big or complex the website 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 might get with other services considering that you are totally free to focus 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 offers an integrated CDN, but they also provide global data centers in case your audience is mostly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are trying to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does exactly that. And since they operate on Google Cloud, you don’t have to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies include an international CDN (content delivery network).
The CDN will help your website load quickly for customers worldwide by serving it to them from the network node that’s geographically closest to them.
Security and Backups
An approximated 78% of hacked websites are WordPress websites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting websites is among the strengths of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes several measures to secure WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs everyday malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an upgraded firewall software to block the current dangers.
All websites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can assist you recuperate your website 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 assistance for any concerns concerning security.
They offer webinars on security.
They publish security guidelines and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can find out how to:.
Launch your first site.
Troubleshoot common problems.
Make improvements to your site.
Manage your hosting account with greater effectiveness.
Both novices and experienced WordPress website owners will find the assistance paperwork invaluable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all membership costs is distinct in the hosting market.
It allows you to try out the service in a safe way.
Note: this option is not offered on custom-made hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, however what is finest for you based upon your objectives, budget, resources & routines.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they use an excellent service with a solid item. As a managed WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They use more functions than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for smart DIYers, WordPress website designers and/or high-traffic sites that do not want to fret about hosting issues.
If handled hosting is a fit for you- then go have a look at 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 chat w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.