There are a lot of low-cost hosts readily available that supply a good service. WPEngine Transfer Ownership
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll wish to have a look at our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, using handled plans that are fully enhanced for the platform. Naturally, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely low-cost. You’ll desire to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense prior to making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to carry out a comprehensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial features, assistance options, efficiency abilities, and everything else you’ll need to understand. Let’s get going!
WP Engine Video Review
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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 entrepreneur Jason Cohen started 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 offices in San Antonio (Texas), London (England), Limerick (Ireland), Brisbane (Australia), and Kraków (Poland).
The company has won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly adds to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to pick WP Engine over less expensive WordPress hosting are increased reliability, efficiency, support, and management, but these are difficult to measure. Some functions stick out when you search the user interface, however, that can offer you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool 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 details how rapidly your page rendered, for how long it took to pack in its entirety, and the total size of the page. It even includes historical information 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 changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid awkward errors on your site by making changes to a copy of your website before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your designers to make substantial modifications to your website without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has a thorough list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably uncommon relocation, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can install. Those usually restricted are plugins that have actually been noted to cause efficiency problems and security holes. For essential 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 only provides handled WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of unrestricted data transfer. The strategies vary based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom strategy includes dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some distinct functions for WordPress users that the majority of hosts don’t offer, or charge extra for. These unique features include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately create a copy of your website for testing
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Innovative innovations including newest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine uses the most innovative and comprehensive 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 expert and well laid out, but the powerful functions might indicate a high knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect guidelines, you’ll be right in your home here, however otherwise you’ll need to spend some time on the assistance site.
In our screening, the default WordPress web page packed in just over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest responses we’ve evaluated, with rival Liquid Web just slightly behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service must provide additional value through its assistance, and WP Engine provides. The assistance site consists of videos and posts of a quality you ‘d anticipate from a paid training course, with assistance on much deeper WordPress performance that numerous WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the action was quick and the representative experienced. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If site packing speed is a leading concern, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s combination of customized NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation ensure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human demands over robotic requests and offers load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides site material to your visitors based upon their place to improve your site’s speed and reduce latency. You get this ability free of charge with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s tough 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 four and a half hours of downtime a year. You can further increase your uptime to 99.99% with improved SLA, which equates to a little under an hour of downtime each year. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls listed below the guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps track of all the traffic going to your website and immediately detects and obstructs possible attacks. Additionally, the hosting service instantly updates and patches the WordPress core to eliminate potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine automatically backups your website every day and has a one-click remediation function to get you support and running quickly. Lastly, this hosting service protects your site against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Phenomenal Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to get in touch with customer care through chat. The support group has an exceptional knowledge base and can assist you fix problems quickly. 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 variation and make changes or evaluate new plugins and styles. Anything you perform in the staging area does not affect your live site. This function enables developers to work on sites without disrupting the live site’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this function enables you to construct a site from your WP Engine account. You do not have to await the customer to include you to their WordPress site. Once completed, you can move the site to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you regularly develop sites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are utilizing any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you run out luck. WP Engine only deals with WordPress. From a business perspective, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and offer extraordinary services because area. This model locks out lots of people who could otherwise benefit from WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you choose to host your email account and register your domain through your website host, you’ll require to look somewhere else. 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 rates structure. You will be penalized for exceeding your strategy’s visitor limits. This might not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can always update your plan as your site grows. However, significant spikes in traffic during product launches or seasonal service can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the expense? The answer lies in figuring 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 fraction of the cost. You can even get dedicated hosting for the very same rate as WP Engine. What you are truly paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most significantly, peace of mind. The supreme question 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 plan, you are normally paying for efficiency & not needing to think excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s pricing based on the features you’re getting- you actually don’t get a great deal.
And if you are the type who will consider your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress updated and normally logging in often), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unneeded.
Numerous shared hosting servers can manage the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the rate. My individual website a shared hosting plan from HostGator with standard caching) dealt with 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+ check outs monthly with a lot of room left to spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, e-mail, 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 “small” site owners how quickly they can get into the $290 per month tier. I have a customer who began with the Startup strategy, however quickly ended up with a custom plan.
And as discussed earlier that does not even consist of a number of the features you do not get with WP Engine’s strategies. You can’t run any e-mail from your servers. You have low limitations on regional media storage. Anything above the limits needs extra expenses & technical application of Amazon cloud services.
And most importantly 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 use them to spread out the cost of your strategy- particularly if you are hitting your visitor cap instead of your set up cap.
If you are looking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your site files- WP Engine is an expensive choice, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Startup
The Startup plan is one of the most standard plan and will set you back $25 monthly. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 sees each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One site included.
WP Engine targets little sites and blogs with this strategy, however we believe it might be overkill for most people in this category. 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 require an assurance that your website can deal with 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d advise this alternative to small companies, affiliate websites, and blogs making good cash and want assurances that absolutely nothing will change.
You can save $60 each year or more months free if you pay annually.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 each month. Here you get:.
100,000 sees monthly.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
Ten websites included a while.
This plan is a great entry point for a growing organization, and it might be a while prior to you require to update. With this strategy, you likewise get 24/7 phone support in addition to day-and-night chat assistance. This addition will be available in useful if you have a complex issue that you need to fix rapidly.
You can save a cool $230 or more months free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale plan as the best value choice. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to per month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
We recommend this option 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.
You can save $580 or two months free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Customized
If you have a mission-critical website or big business, the Custom strategy may be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Millions of gos to monthly.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites included.
You will have to speak with a sales associate to get your individualized quote depending upon your requirements. This strategy likewise offers exclusive support needs to something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine accomplishes over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network facilities.
The company also has 3 information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better website speeds by selecting to host your site on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine blocks harmful attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that enter into site speed, however the rule of thumb is that the more complicated your site is, the more complicated the options to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and quick. If you are running a primarily text website with a few fundamental plugins and a few small images, you’ll be great with an affordable shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few website owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s normally additional plugins, custom-made theme files, great deals of images, widgets, advertisements, forms and more.
All these features integrated with good levels of traffic can begin to decrease your WordPress setup.
However a sluggish website doesn’t suggest that you need a bigger, better server. It does imply that you need to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as simple as getting a more effective server, but in some cases it’s more about caching particular resources in a particular order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Picture you are attempting to haul a trailer with a pickup. Imagine 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, set up a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress needs assistance to stay quickly as you grow. There are lots of options … but either you or a developer should 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 extremely aggressive caching and a lot more advanced “stack” than a typical webhosting. They also have trained assistance who will enter into your WordPress set up and recognize the specific chokepoint to get your site moving.
They do not even permit caching plugins on their installs because they have actually such a tailored caching setup.
The fascinating thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still do well on their platform because their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for among my clients on WP Engine (who has a bloated 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 rapidly the server returned enough data to begin filling the page.
It’s good to have that kind 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 better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services considering that you are complimentary to concentrate on speed factors that you can quickly manage like image compression, use of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only offers an integrated CDN, however they also provide worldwide data 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 precisely that. And considering that they run on Google Cloud, you do not need to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans consist of a global CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will assist your website load quickly 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 websites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Securing websites is among the strong suits of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes a number of procedures to protect WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs everyday malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an upgraded firewall to obstruct the latest risks.
All websites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can assist you recover 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 regarding security.
They supply webinars on security.
They publish security guidelines and checklists 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 discover how to:.
Release your first site.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with higher effectiveness.
Both novices and knowledgeable WordPress site owners will find the support documentation invaluable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all subscription costs is unique in the hosting industry.
It enables you to experiment with the service in a safe method.
Note: this alternative is not offered on customized hosting plans.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, but what is best for you based upon your goals, spending plan, resources & practices.
If you remain in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they provide a great service with a solid item. As a managed WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They offer more features than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unrivaled for smart DIYers, WordPress website developers and/or high-traffic sites that don’t wish to stress over hosting issues.
If managed hosting is a suitable 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 set up and see what you think of their backend. Make sure to talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.