There are lots of low-cost hosts readily available that offer a decent service. WPEngine Too Many Redirects
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 webhosting, offering handled strategies that are totally optimized for the platform. Of course, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely low-cost. For that reason, you’ll need to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense before making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to conduct an extensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial features, support choices, efficiency capabilities, 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 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 adds to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to select WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased reliability, efficiency, assistance, and management, but these are difficult to quantify. Some features stand out when you browse the interface, nevertheless, that can give you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool designed to assist you speed up your WordPress site by providing meaningful metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how quickly 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 information on your site’s performance over the past 6 months and recommendations on how you can lower page load.
You can establish your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment before making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid humiliating errors on your website by making changes to a copy of your site before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your developers to make comprehensive changes to your site without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has a detailed list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly uncommon move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those usually limited are plugins that have been kept in mind to trigger efficiency problems and security holes. For crucial functions such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has actually made options readily available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only uses handled WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies include limitless information transfer. The strategies differ based on:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, customer success, and priority support
WP Engine includes some special features for WordPress users that most hosts don’t use, or charge additional for. These special functions include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly create a copy of your website for testing
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Cutting edge technologies consisting of newest PHP version.
In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine provides the most advanced and comprehensive managed WordPress hosting functions.
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 powerful functions might suggest a steep knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect guidelines, you’ll be right in the house here, however otherwise you’ll require to spend a long time on the assistance website.
In our testing, the default WordPress web page loaded in just over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest reactions we’ve checked, with rival Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service must use additional value through its support, and WP Engine provides. The support site consists of videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with assistance on much 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 testing, the response fasted and the representative knowledgeable. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If site packing speed is a leading priority, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s mix of custom NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology ensure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human demands over robotic demands and uses load balancing, providing your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN delivers website content to your visitors based upon their location to enhance your site’s speed and lower latency. You get this ability free of charge with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why individuals 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 even more increase your uptime to 99.99% with improved 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 assurance.
Advanced Security: WP Engine monitors all the traffic going to your site and automatically spots and blocks possible attacks. Additionally, the hosting service automatically updates and spots the WordPress core to eliminate possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine immediately backups your website every day and has a one-click repair function to get you back up and running rapidly. This hosting service secures your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Phenomenal Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact client care via chat. The assistance group has an excellent knowledge base and can help you fix problems rapidly. You get 24/7 phone support for all plans other than 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 variation and make changes or check brand-new plugins and themes. Anything you do in the staging area doesn’t impact your live website. This feature permits designers to work on websites without interfering with the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this function permits you to construct a website from your WP Engine account. You don’t need to await the customer to include you to their WordPress site. As soon as finished, you can transfer the website to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you regularly develop sites for customers.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine only deals with WordPress. From an organization viewpoint, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and deal extraordinary services in that location. Nevertheless, this design locks out many individuals who might otherwise take advantage of 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 require 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 might not be a problem if you have predictable traffic, and you can always update your plan as your site grows. Significant spikes in traffic throughout item launches or seasonal organization can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the expense? The response lies in finding out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the price. You can even get devoted hosting for the very same price as WP Engine. What you are truly spending for here is security, performance, speed, and, most notably, assurance. The supreme 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 paying for performance & not needing to think excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s rates based upon the features you’re getting- you really do not get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think of your site’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress updated and typically visiting regularly), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unneeded.
Lots of shared hosting servers can deal with the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the price. My individual site a shared hosting plan from HostGator with fundamental caching) dealt with more than 15,000+ visits in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a trusted VPS, you can certainly deal with a lot more for much less. The site you are on manages more than 110,000+ gos to 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 plan.
They are relatively transparent about how they count check outs, but it can still be quite a surprise for “little” website owners how rapidly they can enter the $290 monthly tier. I have a customer who began with the Startup plan, however rapidly ended up with a custom strategy.
And as mentioned previously that does not even include much of the features you don’t 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 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 need to factor those into the rate. You can’t use them to spread out the cost of your strategy- particularly if you are striking your visitor cap rather than your set up cap.
If you are seeking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & serve up your website files- WP Engine is a costly choice, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Start-up
The Startup package is the most fundamental strategy and will set you back $25 each month. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 check outs per month.
50GB bandwidth monthly.
10GB storage.
One site included.
WP Engine targets small websites and blogs with this strategy, but we think it may be overkill for the majority of people in this classification. You can get a far much better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you do not want to take any chances with uptime or require an assurance that your website can manage 25,000 visitors each month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d suggest this choice to small companies, affiliate websites, and blogs making great cash and want guarantees that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 annually or two months complimentary if you pay each year.
Growth
The growth strategy targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 sees each month.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
10 websites included a while.
This plan is an excellent entry point for a growing business, and it might be a while before you require to update. With this plan, you also get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will be available in helpful if you have a complex problem that you require to fix rapidly.
You can save a cool $230 or two months complimentary with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale strategy as the very best value option. This one costs $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to monthly.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We advise this alternative for a fast-growing blog site or organization. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the assistance.
You can conserve $580 or more months free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Custom
If you have a mission-critical site or big company, the Custom plan might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless visits per month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites included.
You will need to talk to a sales representative to get your individualized quote depending on your requirements. This plan likewise offers proprietary support must something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong Uptime
WP Engine achieves over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network facilities.
The company also has 3 data 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 market.
WP Engine obstructs harmful attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into site speed, but the rule of thumb is that the more complicated your site is, the more complex the services to speed ended up being.
Out of the box- WordPress is fairly lean and fast. If you are running a mainly text site with a couple of fundamental plugins and a few small images, you’ll be fine with a budget-friendly shared hosting plan from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s usually extra plugins, customized theme files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, forms and more.
All these functions combined with good levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress setup.
However a slow website does not mean that you require a bigger, much better server. It does imply that you need to get smarter about speed. Often it’s as simple as getting a more powerful server, but sometimes it’s more about caching certain resources in a certain order and enhancing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Imagine you are attempting to carry a trailer with a pickup truck. Picture your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s meaningless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you might simply need to eliminate the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress needs aid to remain quickly as you grow. There are plenty of solutions … however either you or a designer need to execute them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine looks after (nearly) all speed concerns. They have actually tailored servers with exceptionally aggressive caching and a lot more advanced “stack” than a common web host. They also have trained support who will enter into your WordPress install and determine the exact chokepoint to get your website moving.
They don’t even enable caching plugins on their installs because they have such a customized caching setup.
The fascinating thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still do well on their platform because their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers on WP Engine (who has a bloated theme, extra scripts, too many uncompressed images, among other things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That measures how quickly the server returned enough information to start packing the page.
It’s good to have that type of speed right out of package- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or complex the website 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 since you are complimentary to concentrate on speed factors that you can easily manage like image compression, use of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only supplies an integrated CDN, but they likewise provide global information centers in case your audience is primarily in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are attempting to get top speeds without tinkering layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does exactly that. And because they work on Google Cloud, you do not have to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans consist of a worldwide CDN (material shipment network).
The CDN will assist your website load fast for customers around the globe by serving it to them from the network node that’s geographically closest to them.
Security and Backups
An approximated 78% of hacked sites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting websites is one of the strong suits of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes several steps to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep track of an upgraded firewall to obstruct the most recent hazards.
All websites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can help you recuperate your site 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 support for any concerns concerning security.
They supply webinars on security.
They release security standards and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it totally free.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, blog posts, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can learn how to:.
Introduce your first site.
Troubleshoot typical problems.
Make improvements to your site.
Manage your hosting account with greater performance.
Both beginners and skilled WordPress website owners will discover the assistance documents vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all membership costs is distinct in the hosting market.
It allows you to experiment with the service in a risk-free way.
Note: this option is not readily available on custom-made hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, however what is best for you based on your goals, spending plan, resources & habits.
If you are in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they provide an excellent service with a strong item. As a managed WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They use more functions than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress website developers and/or high-traffic sites that do not want to stress over 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 assurance. So 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.