There are a lot of cheap hosts readily available that provide a decent service. WPEngine Stock
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll wish to check out our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, offering handled strategies that are fully enhanced for the platform. Of course, when compared to lots of other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t exactly inexpensive. Therefore, you’ll would like to know whether this hosting service deserves the cost prior to purchasing.
To help you out, we’re going to perform a thorough WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key features, assistance options, performance capabilities, and whatever else you’ll require to understand. Let’s start!
WP Engine Video Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnf3do933oY
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now one of the leading handled WordPress hosting business in the market. Serial business owner 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 offices in San Antonio (Texas), London (England), Limerick (Ireland), Brisbane (Australia), and Kraków (Poland).
The business has actually won several awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to select WP Engine over less expensive WordPress hosting are increased dependability, efficiency, assistance, and management, but these are hard to measure. Some features stand apart 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 created to help you accelerate your WordPress website by using significant metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how rapidly your page rendered, for how long it required to load in its totality, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historical data on your website’s efficiency 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 embarrassing mistakes on your site by making changes to a copy of your website prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it enables your designers to make comprehensive modifications to your website without impacting your consumers.
WP Engine has an extensive list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably uncommon move, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can install. Those usually restricted are plugins that have been kept in mind to cause efficiency concerns and security holes. For important functions such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made options readily available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just uses handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 various strategies readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans include unlimited data transfer. The plans differ based on:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom plan includes dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority support
WP Engine includes some unique functions for WordPress users that the majority of hosts do not use, or charge additional for. These unique features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly produce a copy of your site for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Cutting edge innovations including latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we discovered that WP Engine offers the most sophisticated and thorough 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 professional and well laid out, however the powerful features may imply a high learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect guidelines, you’ll be right at home here, however otherwise you’ll need to invest a long time on the support website.
In our screening, the default WordPress web page loaded in just over 2 seconds. This is one of the fastest responses we’ve evaluated, with competitor Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service should offer additional value through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The assistance site includes videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with assistance on much deeper WordPress performance that many WordPress hosts don’t go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the response fasted and the agent knowledgeable. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If site loading speed is a leading concern, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s combination of custom NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology make sure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robotic demands and offers load balancing, offering your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides website content to your visitors based upon their place to enhance your site’s speed and decrease latency. You get this capability free of charge with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium price for this service. WP Engine guarantees 99.95% server uptime, roughly four and a half hours of downtime a year. You can even more increase your uptime to 99.99% with improved SLA, which translates 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 instantly identifies and blocks possible attacks. Furthermore, the hosting service automatically updates and spots the WordPress core to get rid of potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine instantly backups your website every day and has a one-click repair feature to get you back up and running quickly. Finally, this hosting service protects your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Incredible Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to get in touch with customer care by means of chat. The support team has an exceptional knowledge base and can help you resolve problems rapidly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all strategies except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat assistance on all strategies.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area enables you to clone your site’s live version and make changes or evaluate new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area does not affect your live website. This function enables designers to work on websites without interfering with the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this feature permits you to build a website from your WP Engine account. You do not need to wait on the customer to include you to their WordPress site. Once completed, you can transfer the site to the client or host the site on WP Engine. This performance conserves time if you frequently develop sites for customers.
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 works with WordPress. From a business viewpoint, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and offer remarkable services in that area. Nevertheless, this model locks out many people who could otherwise gain from WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you choose to host your email account and register your domain through your site host, you’ll need to look somewhere else. 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 reflected in its prices structure. You will be punished for surpassing your plan’s visitor limitations. This might not be a problem if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can always upgrade your plan as your website grows. Significant spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal business can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the cost? The response depends on finding out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the cost. You can even get committed hosting for the exact same rate as WP Engine. What you are truly paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, comfort. The ultimate 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 strategy, you are typically spending for efficiency & not needing to believe too much about maintenance, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s prices based upon the features you’re getting- you truly don’t get a great deal.
And if you are the type who will consider your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and normally logging in often), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is superfluous.
Many shared hosting servers can manage the very same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the rate. My personal website a shared hosting plan from HostGator with basic caching) managed more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a trustworthy VPS, you can definitely deal with a lot more for much less. The website you are on deals with more than 110,000+ visits per month with plenty of room 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 gos to, but it can still be rather a surprise for “small” website owners how quickly they can get into the $290 per month tier. I have a customer who began with the Startup plan, however rapidly wound up with a custom-made strategy.
And as pointed out previously that doesn’t even consist of many of the functions you do not get with WP Engine’s strategies. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limits on regional media storage. Anything above the limits needs additional costs & technical application of Amazon cloud services.
And most importantly for me- you are limited on your installs. If you have a few side projects or low-traffic test websites, you have to factor those into the cost. You can’t utilize them to spread out the expense of your plan- especially if you are striking your visitor cap rather than your set up cap.
If you are wanting to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your site files- WP Engine is an expensive alternative, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Start-up
The Startup package is the most basic strategy and will set you back $25 each month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 gos to each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One website included.
WP Engine targets little websites and blog sites with this strategy, however 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 want to take any chances with uptime or need an assurance that your site can handle 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d recommend this choice to small businesses, affiliate sites, and blog sites making great cash and want assurances that absolutely nothing will change.
You can save $60 annually or 2 months complimentary if you pay annually.
Growth
The development strategy targets growing services and will cost you $95 each month. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to per month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
Ten sites included a while.
This strategy is a great entry point for a growing organization, and it might be a while before you require 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 handy if you have a complicated issue that you need to solve rapidly.
You can save a cool $230 or two months complimentary with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the very best worth choice. This one costs $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 visits monthly.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
We advise this alternative for a fast-growing blog site or company. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the support.
You can save $580 or two months totally free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Customized
Finally, if you have a mission-critical website or big organization, the Custom plan might be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Countless sees monthly.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
You will have to talk to a sales associate to get your customized quote depending upon your requirements. This strategy likewise offers proprietary support should something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine accomplishes over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network infrastructure.
The business also has 3 information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better site speeds by picking to host your site on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine obstructs harmful attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that enter into website speed, but the general rule is that the more complicated your site is, the more complicated the solutions to speed ended up being.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and quick. If you are running a mainly text site with a couple of standard plugins and a few small images, you’ll be fine with a budget-friendly shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few website owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s generally extra plugins, custom 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.
However a sluggish website doesn’t imply that you require a bigger, much better server. It does indicate that you require to get smarter about speed. Often it’s as basic as getting a more powerful server, but sometimes it’s more about caching certain resources in a specific order and enhancing your files. To put it simply- it gets complex.
Envision you are attempting to transport a trailer with a pickup truck. Picture your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s meaningless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you might just require to get rid of 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 a lot of services … however either you or a developer need to execute them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed issues. They have actually customized servers with incredibly aggressive caching and even more advanced “stack” than a normal webhosting. They also have actually trained support who will go into your WordPress set up and recognize the precise chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even permit caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have such a tailored caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still do well on their platform due to the fact that their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for among my clients 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 quickly the server returned enough data to start loading 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 huge or complicated the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are obsessed about speed, you can get back at much better numbers with WP Engine than you may get with other services since you are complimentary to concentrate on speed elements that you can easily control like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only supplies an incorporated CDN, but they likewise supply worldwide data centers in case your audience is primarily 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 because they operate on Google Cloud, you do not need to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies consist of a worldwide CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will assist your website load quick for consumers 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 company. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Securing sites is among the strong suits of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes a number of procedures to safeguard WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs everyday malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They monitor an updated firewall software to obstruct the current threats.
All websites are supported 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 checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, article, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Introduce your very first website.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Handle your hosting account with greater efficiency.
Both beginners and experienced WordPress site owners will find the support paperwork important.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all subscription charges is unique in the hosting market.
It enables you to experiment with the service in a risk-free way.
Keep in mind: this option is not available on custom hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, but what is finest for you based on your goals, budget, resources & habits.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they offer an excellent service with a solid product. As a handled WordPress host, their prices is competitive. They use more features than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for smart DIYers, WordPress site designers and/or high-traffic websites that don’t want to fret about hosting problems.
If handled hosting is a suitable for you- then go take a look at WP Engine’s strategies here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back guarantee. So do a test set up and see what you think of their backend. Be sure to talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.