There are lots of inexpensive hosts available that supply a good service. WPEngine Terms Of Service
However, what if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? In that case, you’ll want to check out our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, offering handled strategies that are totally optimized for the platform. Obviously, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely inexpensive. You’ll want to understand 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 key features, assistance choices, performance capabilities, and whatever else you’ll require 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 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 rising 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 actually won several awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly adds to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to choose WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, but these are tough to quantify. Some functions stand out when you search the user interface, nevertheless, that can provide you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool created to assist you accelerate your WordPress site by using meaningful metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how rapidly your page rendered, the length of time it required to fill in its totality, and the total size of the page. It even consists of historical data on your site’s efficiency 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 errors 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 comprehensive changes to your website without impacting your clients.
WP Engine has a thorough list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a relatively unusual relocation, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those normally limited are plugins that have actually been kept in mind to cause performance concerns and security holes. For important functions such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has actually made alternatives available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just provides managed WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies include unlimited data transfer. The plans vary based upon:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made strategy consists of dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some unique functions for WordPress users that many hosts don’t offer, or charge additional for. These special features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly develop a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Innovative innovations consisting of latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine offers the most innovative and extensive managed WordPress hosting features.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
User interface and in use
WP Engine’s user interface is professional and well laid out, however the powerful features might suggest a high knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect rules, you’ll be right at home here, however otherwise you’ll need to invest some time on the assistance site.
In our screening, the default WordPress web page loaded in simply over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve tested, with competitor Liquid Web only slightly behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service should provide additional value through its assistance, and WP Engine delivers. The assistance website consists of videos and posts of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with aid on deeper WordPress functionality that many WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the action was quick and the agent well-informed. For all strategies except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If site packing speed is a top concern, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s mix of customized NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation guarantee that your web pages load quickly. NGINX extension prioritizes human requests over robotic demands and uses load balancing, giving your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN delivers website material to your visitors based on their location to improve your site’s speed and reduce latency. You get this ability for free with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why people continue to pay a premium price for this service. WP Engine ensures 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 boosted SLA, which translates to a little under an hour of downtime annually. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls listed below the warranty.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps an eye on all the traffic going to your site and immediately spots and obstructs potential attacks. Additionally, the hosting service automatically updates and patches the WordPress core to eliminate prospective vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine immediately backups your website every day and has a one-click remediation function to get you support and running quickly. This hosting service secures your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Sensational Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to get in touch with consumer care through chat. The support team has an exceptional knowledge base and can assist you fix issues rapidly. You get 24/7 phone assistance 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 website’s live version and make changes or evaluate brand-new plugins and themes. Anything you do in the staging area does not affect your live website. This function permits developers to work on sites without interfering with the live site’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature permits you to construct a site from your WP Engine account. You do not need to wait for the customer to include you to their WordPress site. When completed, you can move the website to the client or host the site on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you regularly 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 a company perspective, it makes sense to concentrate on a single market and deal extraordinary services in that location. This model locks out numerous individuals 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 in other places. You’ll need to utilize third-party services for domain registration or email accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is shown in its pricing structure. You will be punished for exceeding your strategy’s visitor limitations. This may not be a problem if you have predictable traffic, and you can constantly update your strategy as your website grows. Considerable spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal service can cost you considerable overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the cost? The answer depends on determining what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the rate. You can even get committed hosting for the very same rate as WP Engine. What you are truly spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, assurance. The ultimate concern is just 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 performance & not having to believe too much about upkeep, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s rates based upon the features you’re getting- you truly do not get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your site’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and typically logging in frequently), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is superfluous.
Lots of shared hosting servers can deal with the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the rate. My personal site a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with fundamental caching) handled more than 15,000+ check outs in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a trustworthy VPS, you can certainly deal with a lot more for much less. The site you are on manages more than 110,000+ visits per month with plenty of room left to spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, email, 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 relatively transparent about how they count visits, but it can still be quite a surprise for “little” site owners how quickly they can enter the $290 each month tier. I have a customer who began with the Startup strategy, however quickly wound up with a custom plan.
And as mentioned previously that does not even include a lot of the features you do not get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any email from your servers. You have low limitations on regional media storage. Anything above the limits needs additional expenses & technical execution 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 expand the expense of your plan- particularly if you are hitting 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 each month. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 visits each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One website included.
WP Engine targets little sites and blogs with this strategy, however we believe it might be overkill for many people in this category. You can get a far much better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t wish to take any possibilities with uptime or need a guarantee that your website can handle 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d recommend this choice to small companies, affiliate sites, and blogs making good money and want assurances that absolutely nothing will change.
You can conserve $60 each year or 2 months free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The development plan targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 check outs monthly.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
Ten websites included a while.
This plan is a great entry point for a growing business, and it might be a while prior to you require to upgrade. With this plan, you likewise get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to day-and-night chat assistance. This addition will can be found in helpful if you have a complicated concern that you require to resolve rapidly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or 2 months complimentary with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the best value alternative. This one costs $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 sees monthly.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
We recommend this choice for a fast-growing blog or company. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the support center.
You can save $580 or more months totally free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Custom
If you have a mission-critical website or large company, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless visits per month.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites included.
You will have to talk to a sales associate to get your individualized quote depending on your requirements. This plan also offers exclusive assistance ought to something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine achieves over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network infrastructure.
The business also has 3 data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better site speeds by selecting to host your site on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks malicious attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that enter into site speed, however the guideline is that the more complex your site is, the more complex the solutions to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and quick. If you are running a mainly text website with a couple of basic plugins and a few small images, you’ll be great with a cost effective shared hosting strategy from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s usually additional plugins, custom style files, lots of images, widgets, ads, kinds and more.
All these features integrated with good levels of traffic can begin to decrease your WordPress installation.
However a slow site doesn’t mean that you need a larger, better server. It does mean that you require to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as basic as getting a more powerful server, but in some cases it’s more about caching particular resources in a certain order and enhancing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Picture you are attempting to transport a trailer with a pickup truck. Imagine your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s meaningless to keep grumbling 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 requires help to stay quickly as you grow. There are lots of services … but either you or a designer need to implement them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed concerns. They have actually personalized servers with incredibly aggressive caching and even more innovative “stack” than a normal web host. They also have actually trained assistance who will go into your WordPress set up and recognize the specific chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even permit caching plugins on their installs since they have such a personalized caching setup.
The intriguing thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still succeed on their platform because their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers on WP Engine (who has a puffed up style, extra scripts, too many uncompressed images, to name a few things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That determines how quickly the server returned enough data to begin packing 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 complex the website gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are obsessed about speed, you can get even much better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services since you are free to focus on speed factors that you can easily control like image compression, use of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only offers an incorporated CDN, however they likewise offer worldwide data centers in case your audience is mainly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are trying to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And given that they operate on Google Cloud, you don’t need to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include an international CDN (material delivery network).
The CDN will assist your website load quickly for clients 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 websites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting sites is one of the fortes of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The business takes numerous steps to protect WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They monitor an updated firewall to obstruct the most recent dangers.
All sites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can help you recover your site 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 support for any concerns regarding security.
They supply webinars on security.
They release security guidelines and checklists for designers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it free of charge.
Online Resources
WP Engine provides webinars, guides, article, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Release your very first site.
Troubleshoot common problems.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with greater performance.
Both newbies and experienced WordPress website owners will find the assistance documentation important.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all subscription costs is special in the hosting market.
It allows you to experiment with the service in a risk-free method.
Keep in mind: this alternative is not available on custom-made hosting strategies.
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 & routines.
If you remain in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they offer a fantastic service with a solid item. As a managed WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They offer more features than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unrivaled for smart DIYers, WordPress website designers and/or high-traffic sites that do not want to fret about hosting problems.
If handled hosting is a suitable for you- then go check out WP Engine’s plans here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back guarantee. So do a test install and see what you think about their backend. Make sure to chat w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.