There are a lot of low-cost hosts offered that provide a good service. WPEngine Trial
Nevertheless, what if you’re searching for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll wish to take a look at our WP Engine review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, providing handled strategies that are completely optimized for the platform. Of course, when compared to lots of other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely inexpensive. You’ll want to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense before making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to conduct a thorough WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial features, support choices, performance capabilities, and everything else you’ll require to know. 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 handled WordPress hosting business in the market. Serial business owner Jason Cohen started WP Engine when he saw a requirement for specialized WordPress hosting due to the increasing 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 company 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 choose WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased dependability, efficiency, assistance, and management, however these are hard to measure. Some functions stand out when you search the interface, nevertheless, that can offer you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool designed to help you accelerate your WordPress site by using significant 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 load in its whole, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historical data on your website’s performance over the past 6 months and recommendations on how you can lower page load.
You can establish your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the modifications live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid humiliating errors on your website by making changes to a copy of your site prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it permits your developers to make extensive changes to your website without affecting your consumers.
WP Engine has an extensive list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a relatively unusual relocation, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can install. Those normally limited are plugins that have actually been kept in mind to trigger efficiency issues and security holes. For essential functions such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made alternatives readily available that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only uses handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 various strategies available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of limitless information transfer. The plans differ based upon:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, customer success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some distinct functions for WordPress users that most hosts don’t offer, or charge additional for. These unique functions consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly produce a copy of your site for screening
- Easy transferable installs from totally free to paid accounts
- Innovative technologies including latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we discovered that WP Engine provides the most sophisticated and comprehensive managed WordPress hosting features.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s user interface is expert and well laid out, but the effective features may mean a steep knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and reroute rules, you’ll be right in the house here, but otherwise you’ll need to spend some time on the assistance site.
In our testing, the default WordPress web page filled in simply over two seconds. This is one of the fastest actions we’ve evaluated, with rival Liquid Web only a little behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service should offer extra value through its assistance, and WP Engine delivers. The support website consists of videos and articles of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with help on deeper WordPress functionality that many WordPress hosts don’t enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the reaction was quick and the representative experienced. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If website loading speed is a leading concern, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s combination of customized NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation guarantee that your websites load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human requests over robotic demands and offers load balancing, offering your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN delivers site material to your visitors based upon their place to improve your website’s speed and decrease latency. You get this capability for free with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, which is why people continue to pay a premium rate for this service. WP Engine ensures 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 enhanced 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 listed below the assurance.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps an eye on all the traffic going to your site and immediately finds and blocks potential attacks. Additionally, the hosting service automatically updates and patches the WordPress core to eliminate prospective vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine automatically backups your site every day and has a one-click restoration function to get you support and running quickly. This hosting service secures your website versus 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 customer care via chat. The assistance team has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you solve problems rapidly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all strategies 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 test brand-new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area doesn’t affect your live site. This feature enables designers to deal with websites without interfering with the live site’s functionality 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 client to add you to their WordPress site. When completed, you can move the website to the client or host the website on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you routinely develop websites 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 business point of view, it makes sense to concentrate on a single market and offer exceptional services because location. This model locks out many people 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 site host, you’ll need to look elsewhere. 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 reflected in its pricing structure. You will be penalized for surpassing your strategy’s visitor limits. This may not be an issue if you have predictable traffic, and you can constantly update your plan as your site grows. Considerable spikes in traffic throughout product launches or seasonal business 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 depends on figuring out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the exact same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the price. You can even get committed hosting for the very same price as WP Engine. What you are truly spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, comfort. 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 strategy, you are usually paying for performance & not having to believe too much about upkeep, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s rates based on the functions you’re getting- you actually do not get a lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and generally visiting often), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is superfluous.
Numerous shared hosting servers can manage the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the cost. My personal website a shared hosting plan from HostGator with standard caching) managed more than 15,000+ check outs in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a dependable VPS, you can definitely manage a lot more for much less. The website you are on manages more than 110,000+ sees 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 rather a surprise for “little” website owners how rapidly they can enter into the $290 monthly tier. I have a customer who began with the Startup plan, however rapidly ended up with a custom-made plan.
And as pointed out previously that does not even include many of the functions you don’t 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 requires extra expenses & technical application 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 sites, you have to factor those into the cost. You can’t utilize them to spread out the cost of your strategy- particularly if you are striking your visitor cap rather than your install cap.
If you are wanting to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your site files- WP Engine is a pricey choice, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Start-up
The Startup package is one of the most basic plan and will set you back $25 per month. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 check outs monthly.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One website consisted of.
WP Engine targets little sites and blogs with this strategy, however we think it may be overkill for many people in this category. You can get a far better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t want to take any possibilities with uptime or need a guarantee that your website can deal with 25,000 visitors per month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d advise this option to small companies, affiliate sites, and blogs making good money and desire assurances that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 each year or two months free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The development strategy targets growing businesses and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to per month.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
10 websites consisted of a while.
This plan is a terrific entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while before you require to update. With this strategy, you also get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to day-and-night chat assistance. This addition will come in helpful if you have an intricate issue that you need to deal with quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or two months totally free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale plan as the best value choice. This one costs $241 each month. Here you get:.
400,000 sees each month.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
We suggest this option for a fast-growing blog site or company. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the assistance center.
You can save $580 or more months complimentary with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom
Finally, if you have a mission-critical website or large business, the Custom plan might be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Countless visits each month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
You will have to speak to a sales representative to get your customized quote depending on your requirements. This plan likewise offers proprietary support ought to something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network infrastructure.
The company likewise has three data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve site speeds by picking to host your website on servers that are closest to your target audience.
WP Engine blocks malicious 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 website is, the more complicated the solutions to speed become.
Out of the box- WordPress is fairly lean and quick. If you are running a mostly text website 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 website owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s generally extra plugins, custom theme files, great deals of images, widgets, advertisements, types and more.
All these features integrated with good levels of traffic can start to decrease your WordPress setup.
A sluggish website does not mean that you need a bigger, better server. It does imply that you need to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as easy as getting a more powerful server, however sometimes it’s more about caching specific resources in a certain order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Imagine you are attempting to carry a trailer with a pickup. Picture your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s meaningless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might just require to remove the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress needs help to stay fast as you grow. There are a lot of solutions … however either you or a designer should implement them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed issues. They have actually customized servers with exceptionally aggressive caching and much more advanced “stack” than a common web host. They likewise have 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 tailored caching setup.
The fascinating thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still succeed on their platform due to the fact that their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for among my customers on WP Engine (who has a puffed up theme, extra 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 data to begin filling the page.
It’s good to have that kind of speed right out of the box- and have it remain that way no matter how huge or complicated the website gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are obsessed about speed, you can get back at better numbers with WP Engine than you may get with other services since you are free to concentrate on speed factors that you can easily control like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only provides an integrated CDN, however they also supply international information centers in case your audience is mostly in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are attempting to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And because they run on Google Cloud, you don’t have to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include an international CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will help your site 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 firm. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Securing websites is one of the strong suits of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes several steps to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs everyday malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an upgraded firewall software to block the most recent threats.
All sites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can help you recover your site in case of an attack.
The WP Engine site 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 questions relating to security.
They provide webinars on security.
They release security guidelines and lists for designers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine offers webinars, guides, blog posts, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can learn how to:.
Release your very first website.
Troubleshoot common problems.
Make improvements to your site.
Handle your hosting account with higher efficiency.
Both beginners and knowledgeable WordPress site owners will discover the assistance documents indispensable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all membership fees is special in the hosting market.
It allows you to check out the service in a safe method.
Note: this choice is not offered on custom-made hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, but what is finest for you based upon your goals, spending plan, resources & routines.
If you are in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they offer a terrific service with a solid product. As a handled WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They provide 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 sites that do not wish to worry about hosting concerns.
If handled hosting is a fit for you- then go have a look at WP Engine’s strategies here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back assurance. So do a test set up and see what you consider their backend. Be sure to chat w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.