There are lots of inexpensive hosts offered that supply a good service. WPEngine Status Page
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll wish to check out our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, using managed plans that are fully optimized for the platform. Naturally, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely low-cost. For that reason, you’ll want to know whether this hosting service deserves the expense before purchasing.
To help you out, we’re going to perform a comprehensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial functions, assistance choices, efficiency capabilities, and whatever else you’ll need to know. Let’s begin!
WP Engine Video Review
Sign up for a WP Engine plan and receive the Genesis Framework and 35+ StudioPress Themes free!
About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now one of the leading managed WordPress hosting companies in the market. Serial business owner Jason Cohen began WP Engine when he saw a need 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 actually won numerous awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly adds to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to select WP Engine over less expensive WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, assistance, and management, but these are hard to quantify. Some functions stand out when you browse the user interface, nevertheless, that can give you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool created to assist you accelerate your WordPress website by using significant 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 pack in its totality, and the total size of the page. It even consists of historical information on your website’s performance over the past 6 months and recommendations on how you can decrease page load.
You can establish your WordPress site 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 enables your designers to make substantial modifications to your website without impacting your clients.
WP Engine has an extensive list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably unusual move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those usually limited are plugins that have been noted to cause performance issues and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made alternatives offered that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just provides handled WordPress hosting. There are five various plans available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans consist of limitless information transfer. The plans vary based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority assistance
WP Engine consists of some distinct features for WordPress users that the majority of hosts don’t provide, or charge additional for. These special functions include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly develop a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Cutting edge technologies including latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine provides the most advanced and detailed handled WordPress hosting functions.
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 may imply a steep learning curve for unskilled 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 require to invest some time on the support site.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page loaded in simply over two seconds. This is one of the fastest responses we’ve checked, with rival Liquid Web just slightly behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service ought to provide additional value through its support, 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 assistance on deeper WordPress functionality that lots of WordPress hosts don’t enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the reaction was quick and the representative experienced. For all strategies except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If website packing speed is a leading priority, WP Engine succeeds 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 quickly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robot demands and provides load balancing, offering your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides site material to your visitors based on their place to enhance your website’s speed and decrease latency. You get this capability totally free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s difficult 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 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 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 immediately detects and blocks possible attacks. In addition, the hosting service automatically updates and patches the WordPress core to get rid of prospective vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine immediately backups your site every day and has a one-click restoration function to get you back up and running rapidly. Lastly, this hosting service safeguards your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Extraordinary Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to get in touch with customer care through chat. The assistance team has an outstanding knowledge base and can help you resolve issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all strategies other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all strategies.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area enables you to clone your website’s live variation and make changes or check new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area does not affect your live site. This feature allows developers to work on sites without interfering with the live site’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this feature enables you to build a site from your WP Engine account. You don’t have to await the client to add you to their WordPress site. Once finished, you can move the site to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you routinely develop sites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are utilizing any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine only deals with WordPress. From a service viewpoint, it makes sense to focus on a single market and offer exceptional services in that location. This model locks out lots of people 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 need to look elsewhere. You’ll need 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 rates structure. You will be penalized for surpassing your strategy’s visitor limits. This might not be a problem if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can always update your strategy as your website grows. However, substantial spikes in traffic during product launches or seasonal business can cost you considerable excess charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the expense? The response lies in determining what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the very same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the cost. You can even get dedicated hosting for the exact same price as WP Engine. What you are truly spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, peace of mind. The ultimate concern 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 strategy, you are typically spending for performance & not having to believe excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s rates based on the features you’re getting- you truly do not get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will consider your website’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and typically logging in frequently), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is unnecessary.
Lots of shared hosting servers can deal with the very same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the price. My individual site a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with standard caching) managed more than 15,000+ visits in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a reliable VPS, you can definitely handle a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on manages more than 110,000+ gos to monthly with lots of space delegated 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 check outs, however it can still be rather a surprise for “little” website owners how rapidly they can enter into the $290 monthly tier. I have a customer who began with the Startup strategy, however quickly wound up with a custom-made plan.
And as discussed previously that doesn’t even include a lot of the functions you don’t get with WP Engine’s strategies. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limitations on regional media storage. Anything above the limits requires extra costs & technical implementation of Amazon cloud services.
And most significantly for me- you are restricted on your installs. If you have a couple of side projects or low-traffic test sites, you have to factor those into the rate. You can’t utilize them to spread out the cost of your plan- particularly if you are hitting your visitor cap rather than your set up cap.
If you are wanting to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your website files- WP Engine is an expensive alternative, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Start-up
The Startup bundle is the most basic plan and will set you back $25 per month. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 gos to each month.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One site consisted of.
WP Engine targets small websites and blogs with this plan, however we believe it might be overkill for the majority of 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 warranty that your website can deal with 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d suggest this alternative to small companies, affiliate websites, and blog sites making good cash and desire guarantees that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can save $60 annually or more months complimentary if you pay annually.
Growth
The development strategy targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 each month. Here you get:.
100,000 check outs each month.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
Ten websites consisted of a while.
This plan is a terrific entry point for a growing business, 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 round-the-clock chat support. This addition will be available in handy if you have a complex problem that you require to deal with rapidly.
You can save a cool $230 or more months free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine markets its scale strategy as the very best worth alternative. This one expenses $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to per month.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 sites included.
We recommend this choice for a fast-growing blog site or organization. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the support.
You can save $580 or two months totally free with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom
If you have a mission-critical website or large organization, the Custom plan may be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Millions of sees per month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
You will have to speak to a sales associate to get your individualized quote depending on your requirements. This strategy likewise offers exclusive assistance needs to something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong Uptime
WP Engine accomplishes over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network facilities.
The business also has 3 information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better website speeds by picking to host your website on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine blocks malicious attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that enter into site speed, but the rule of thumb is that the more intricate your website is, the more complicated the solutions to speed ended up being.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and fast. If you are running a mostly text website with a few standard plugins and a couple of small images, you’ll be fine with an affordable shared hosting plan from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s generally additional plugins, customized theme files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, kinds and more.
All these features integrated with decent levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress setup.
A slow site doesn’t imply that you need a larger, 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 often it’s more about caching specific resources in a certain order and optimizing your files. In other words- it gets complex.
Imagine you are trying to transport a trailer with a pickup. Envision your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s meaningless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might just require to get rid of the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress needs help to stay quick as you grow. There are lots of options … however either you or a designer should execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine takes care of (almost) all speed issues. They have actually customized servers with extremely aggressive caching and a lot more sophisticated “stack” than a normal webhosting. They likewise have actually trained support who will go into your WordPress set up and recognize the specific chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even permit caching plugins on their installs since they have actually such a tailored caching setup.
The intriguing thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still do well on their platform since their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my clients on WP Engine (who has a puffed up theme, additional scripts, a lot of uncompressed images, among other things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That determines how quickly the server returned enough information to begin filling the page.
It’s great to have that type of speed right out of package- and have it stay that way no matter how big or complicated the site 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 free 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 just supplies an integrated CDN, but they likewise offer global information centers in case your audience is mainly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are attempting to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And since they run on Google Cloud, you don’t need to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans consist of a worldwide CDN (material shipment network).
The CDN will assist your website load fast for clients around the globe 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 websites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting sites is among the fortes of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes a number of measures to secure WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an updated firewall to obstruct the latest dangers.
All websites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can assist you recover your site 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 assistance for any concerns relating to security.
They provide webinars on security.
They release security guidelines and lists for designers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it for 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 very first site.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your site.
Manage your hosting account with greater efficiency.
Both newbies and knowledgeable WordPress site owners will find the support documentation important.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all membership charges is special in the hosting market.
It enables you to try out the service in a safe method.
Note: this option is not available on custom hosting plans.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, however what is best for you based on your goals, spending plan, resources & practices.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they provide an excellent service with a strong product. As a handled WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They provide more functions than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unmatched for savvy DIYers, WordPress site designers and/or high-traffic websites that do not wish to stress over hosting problems.
If managed 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 assurance. Do a test install and see what you believe of their backend. Make certain to talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.