There are a lot of inexpensive hosts offered that supply a decent service. WPEngine Themes
Nevertheless, what if you’re trying to find 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 webhosting, using handled plans that are fully enhanced for the platform. Naturally, when compared to lots of other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly inexpensive. You’ll desire to understand whether this hosting service is worth the expense prior to making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to conduct an extensive WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial features, assistance choices, performance abilities, and whatever else you’ll need to understand. Let’s get going!
WP Engine Video Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re66PSKd7_E&t=7s
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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 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 business has actually won numerous 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 more affordable WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, assistance, and management, but these are tough to quantify. Some features stick out when you browse the user interface, however, that can provide you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool created to assist you speed up your WordPress website by using significant metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how rapidly your page rendered, for how long it took to fill in its totality, and the overall 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 develop your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid awkward errors 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 developers to make comprehensive modifications to your website without impacting your consumers.
WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably unusual move, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can install. Those normally limited are plugins that have been noted to cause efficiency problems and security holes. For essential features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made options offered that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just offers handled WordPress hosting. There are five various plans readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies include endless data transfer. The strategies vary based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority support
WP Engine includes some distinct features for WordPress users that most hosts do not provide, or charge extra for. These special functions consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately produce a copy of your site for testing
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Cutting edge innovations consisting of latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine offers the most sophisticated and detailed 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 set out, however the effective functions may suggest a steep learning curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect rules, you’ll be right at home here, but otherwise you’ll require to spend some time on the assistance website.
In our screening, the default WordPress home page loaded in simply over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve checked, with rival Liquid Web just slightly behind.
Support
A handled WordPress service need to use extra worth through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The assistance website consists of videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with help on much deeper WordPress functionality that lots of WordPress hosts don’t go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the response fasted and the representative experienced. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If website packing speed is a leading 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 web pages load quickly. NGINX extension focuses on human requests over robotic demands and provides load balancing, offering your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN provides website content to your visitors based upon their area to enhance your site’s speed and lower latency. You get this ability free of charge 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 cost for this service. WP Engine ensures 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 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 warranty.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps track of all the traffic going to your site and automatically finds and obstructs possible attacks. In addition, the hosting service instantly updates and spots the WordPress core to remove possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine instantly backups your site every day and has a one-click repair function to get you back up and running quickly. This hosting service secures your site versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Extraordinary Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to connect with consumer care through chat. The assistance team has an exceptional knowledge base and can help you resolve issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all plans 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 perform in the staging area doesn’t affect your live site. This feature permits designers to work on websites without disrupting the live website’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature enables you to develop a site from your WP Engine account. You do not have to wait for the client to add you to their WordPress site. As soon as completed, you can move the website to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This performance conserves time if you regularly build websites 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 just works with WordPress. From an organization viewpoint, it makes good sense to focus on a single market and deal exceptional services because area. 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 e-mail account and register your domain through your site host, you’ll require to look somewhere else. You’ll have 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 prices structure. You will be penalized for surpassing your strategy’s visitor limitations. This might not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can always upgrade your plan as your website grows. Nevertheless, significant spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal service can cost you significant overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the expense? The response depends on finding out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the very same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the price. You can even get committed hosting for the same rate as WP Engine. What you are truly spending 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 usually paying for efficiency & not needing to think excessive about maintenance, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s prices based on the functions you’re getting- you really don’t get a lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your site’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress updated and generally logging in often), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is unneeded.
Numerous shared hosting servers can manage the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the cost. My personal site a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with fundamental caching) dealt with more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a dependable VPS, you can definitely deal with a lot more for much less. In fact, the site you are on handles more than 110,000+ gos to each month with plenty of room delegated 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 plan.
They are fairly transparent about how they count sees, however it can still be rather a surprise for “little” site owners how rapidly they can get into the $290 each month tier. I have a client who began with the Startup strategy, however quickly wound up with a custom strategy.
And as discussed previously that does not even include a number 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 local media storage. Anything above the limits needs additional expenses & technical implementation of Amazon cloud services.
And most significantly for me- you are limited on your installs. If you have a couple of side projects or low-traffic test websites, you have to factor those into the rate. You can’t use them to expand the cost of your strategy- especially if you are striking your visitor cap instead of your set up cap.
If you are looking to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your site files- WP Engine is an expensive choice, especially compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Start-up
The Startup package is the most basic strategy and will set you back $25 per month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 gos to per month.
50GB bandwidth monthly.
10GB storage.
One website consisted of.
WP Engine targets small sites and blogs with this plan, but we believe it may be overkill for most people in this category. You can get a far better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t want to take any opportunities with uptime or need a guarantee that your site can handle 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d advise this alternative to small companies, affiliate sites, and blogs making good money and want guarantees that nothing will change.
You can conserve $60 per year or two months totally free if you pay each year.
Growth
The development plan targets growing businesses and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to monthly.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
Ten websites included a while.
This plan is a great entry point for a growing company, and it might be a while prior to you need to upgrade. With this strategy, you also get 24/7 phone support in addition to round-the-clock chat assistance. This addition will come in helpful if you have a complicated concern that you need to deal with quickly.
You can save a cool $230 or two months totally free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale plan as the very best worth choice. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 check outs per month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We suggest this option for a fast-growing blog site or service. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the assistance center.
You can save $580 or more months totally free with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom
Finally, if you have a mission-critical website or big business, the Custom strategy may be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless visits monthly.
400GB+ bandwidth each month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will have to talk to a sales associate to get your personalized quote depending on your requirements. This strategy also uses 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 first-rate network facilities.
The business likewise has 3 information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve site speeds by choosing to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks harmful attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that go into site speed, but the general rule is that the more complex your site is, the more complex the services to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and fast. If you are running a primarily text website with a few basic plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be fine with an affordable shared hosting plan from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s typically additional plugins, custom style files, lots of images, widgets, ads, forms and more.
All these functions combined with good levels of traffic can start to decrease your WordPress installation.
A sluggish website does not indicate that you need a larger, better server. It does imply that you require to get smarter about speed. In some cases it’s as easy as getting a more powerful server, however sometimes it’s more about caching specific resources in a specific order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Picture you are trying to carry a trailer with a pickup truck. Imagine your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s pointless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might just need 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 help to stay quick as you grow. There are a lot of services … however either you or a designer need to execute them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed issues. They have actually customized servers with very aggressive caching and even more innovative “stack” than a normal webhosting. They likewise have actually trained support who will go into your WordPress install and identify the exact chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even allow caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have actually such a customized caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still do well on their platform since their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my customers on WP Engine (who has a puffed up theme, additional scripts, a lot of 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 information to start packing the page.
It’s good to have that kind of speed right out of package- and have it remain that way no matter how huge or complex the website 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 considering that you are free to focus on speed factors that you can easily control like image compression, usage of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just supplies an integrated CDN, however they likewise provide global data centers in case your audience is mostly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are trying to get top speeds without tinkering layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does exactly that. And since they run on Google Cloud, you don’t need to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include an international CDN (material delivery network).
The CDN will help your website load quick 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 sites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Securing websites is among the fortes of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The company takes a number of procedures to secure WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep track of an upgraded firewall program to block the latest hazards.
All websites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can assist you recover your website in case of an attack.
The WP Engine website provides 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 release security standards and lists for developers and engineers.
If your website 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:.
Introduce your first website.
Troubleshoot typical problems.
Make improvements to your site.
Manage your hosting account with greater efficiency.
Both newbies and knowledgeable WordPress website owners will find the support paperwork indispensable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all subscription charges is unique in the hosting industry.
It allows you to experiment with the service in a safe way.
Note: this choice 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 best for you based on your objectives, budget, resources & practices.
If you are in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they use a great service with a strong item. As a managed WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They provide more functions than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unrivaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress site developers and/or high-traffic sites that do not wish to fret about hosting problems.
If managed 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 warranty. Do a test set up 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.