There are plenty of cheap hosts readily available that provide a decent service. WPEngine Twitter
Nevertheless, what if you’re searching for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll want to take a look at our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, providing handled plans that are fully optimized for the platform. Obviously, when compared to many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t precisely inexpensive. You’ll desire to understand whether this hosting service is worth the cost prior to making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to carry out a thorough WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key functions, assistance alternatives, efficiency capabilities, and whatever else you’ll need to know. Let’s get going!
WP Engine Video Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re66PSKd7_E
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now among the leading handled WordPress hosting companies in the market. Serial business owner Jason Cohen started WP Engine when he saw a need 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 company 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 factors to choose WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, but these are tough to measure. Some features stand apart when you search the user interface, nevertheless, that can give you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool developed to assist you accelerate your WordPress website by using meaningful metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how rapidly your page rendered, for how long it required to pack in its totality, and the total size of the page. It even consists of historical data on your website’s performance over the past 6 months and recommendations on how you can decrease page load.
You can establish your WordPress website in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid embarrassing errors on your website by making changes to a copy of your site before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it permits your developers to make extensive changes to your website without affecting your clients.
WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly uncommon move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those usually restricted are plugins that have been noted to trigger performance issues and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has actually made options available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just offers managed WordPress hosting. There are 5 different plans offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies include unrestricted information transfer. The strategies vary based on:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority support
WP Engine includes some distinct features for WordPress users that a lot of hosts do not offer, or charge additional for. These special functions include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately create a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from totally free to paid accounts
- Leading edge technologies consisting of latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we discovered that WP Engine provides the most innovative and comprehensive handled WordPress hosting features.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s interface is expert and well set out, but the powerful features might suggest a high learning curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and reroute guidelines, you’ll be right in the house here, but otherwise you’ll require to invest a long time on the assistance site.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page loaded in simply over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve checked, with competitor Liquid Web only a little behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service must use additional worth through its assistance, and WP Engine provides. The support site includes videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with help on much deeper WordPress performance that many WordPress hosts don’t enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the action was quick and the representative experienced. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If site packing speed is a top concern, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s combination of custom-made NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation guarantee that your websites load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human demands over robotic demands and provides load balancing, giving your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides website material to your visitors based on their location to boost your site’s speed and reduce latency. You get this ability free of charge with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s hard to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why people continue to pay a premium price for this service. WP Engine guarantees 99.95% server uptime, roughly four and a half hours of downtime a year. You can further 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 guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine monitors all the traffic going to your website and immediately spots and obstructs potential attacks. Additionally, the hosting service immediately updates and spots the WordPress core to get rid of possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine immediately backups your site every day and has a one-click remediation 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 connect with client care via chat. The assistance group has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you resolve problems rapidly. You get 24/7 phone support for all plans other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area enables you to clone your site’s live variation and make changes or evaluate new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area does not affect your live site. This feature allows developers to deal with websites without hindering the live site’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature allows you to build a site from your WP Engine account. You don’t need to await the customer to add you to their WordPress site. When completed, you can move the website to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you frequently develop websites for customers.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you run out luck. WP Engine just works with WordPress. From a service perspective, it makes sense to concentrate on a single market and offer extraordinary services in that area. However, this model locks out lots of people who might 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 need to look elsewhere. You’ll need to utilize third-party services for domain registration or e-mail accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is reflected in its rates structure. You will be penalized for exceeding your plan’s visitor limits. This might not be a problem if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can always upgrade your plan as your site grows. Significant spikes in traffic during item launches or seasonal business can cost you considerable overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the expense? The response depends on figuring out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can manage the exact 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 actually paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most importantly, comfort. The ultimate question 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 typically spending for efficiency & not needing to think excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you look at WP Engine’s pricing based upon the features you’re getting- you truly do not get a lot.
And if you are the type who will consider your site’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and generally visiting regularly), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unnecessary.
Numerous shared hosting servers can manage the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the price. My personal website a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with fundamental caching) managed more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a dependable VPS, you can certainly manage a lot more for much less. The website you are on handles more than 110,000+ check outs per month with plenty of space left to spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, e-mail, RSS apps, etc with an InMotion VPS. I pay for the VPS plus a CDN for less than WP Engine’s starter strategy.
They are relatively transparent about how they count check outs, but it can still be quite a surprise for “little” site owners how quickly they can get into the $290 per month tier. I have a client who began with the Startup strategy, but rapidly ended up with a custom-made plan.
And as pointed out previously that doesn’t even consist of much of the features you do not get with WP Engine’s plans. You can’t run any e-mail from your servers. You have low limits on regional media storage. Anything above the limits needs additional costs & technical execution 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 have to factor those into the rate. You can’t utilize them to spread out the expense of your plan- especially if you are striking your visitor cap instead of your set up cap.
If you are aiming to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & serve up your website files- WP Engine is a pricey alternative, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Start-up
The Startup package is the most basic plan and will set you back $25 each month. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 gos to each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One site consisted of.
WP Engine targets small websites and blog sites with this plan, however we believe it may be overkill for the majority of 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 possibilities with uptime or require a guarantee that your website can deal with 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d advise this alternative to small companies, affiliate sites, and blog sites making great cash and want assurances that nothing will change.
You can conserve $60 each year or 2 months free if you pay each year.
Growth
The growth strategy targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 each month. Here you get:.
100,000 sees monthly.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
Ten sites included a while.
This strategy is a great entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while before you require to update. With this strategy, you likewise get 24/7 phone support in addition to round-the-clock chat support. This addition will come in convenient if you have a complex concern that you need to resolve quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or two months free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale strategy as the very best value choice. This one costs $241 each month. Here you get:.
400,000 check outs each month.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We suggest this option 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 center.
You can conserve $580 or two months complimentary with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom-made
Finally, if you have a mission-critical site or big business, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless sees each month.
400GB+ bandwidth each month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
You will have to speak with a sales representative to get your individualized quote depending upon your requirements. This plan also uses exclusive assistance must something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine accomplishes 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 picking to host your site 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 website speed, however the rule of thumb is that the more intricate your site is, the more complex the solutions to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is fairly lean and fast. If you are running a primarily text website with a couple of standard plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be fine with a budget friendly shared hosting plan from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s generally additional plugins, customized style files, lots of images, widgets, advertisements, types and more.
All these functions combined with good levels of traffic can start to decrease your WordPress setup.
But a slow website doesn’t suggest that you need a bigger, much better server. It does suggest 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 certain resources in a particular order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Envision you are attempting to haul a trailer with a pickup. 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, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress requires aid to stay quick as you grow. There are plenty of options … but either you or a developer should execute them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed concerns. They have actually tailored servers with incredibly aggressive caching and a lot more innovative “stack” than a typical webhosting. They likewise have trained support who will go into your WordPress set up and recognize the precise chokepoint to get your site moving.
They don’t even enable caching plugins on their installs since 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 clients on WP Engine (who has a bloated style, additional scripts, a lot of uncompressed images, to name a few things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That determines how rapidly the server returned enough data to begin packing the page.
It’s good to have that sort of speed right out of the box- and have it remain that way no matter how big or complicated 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 free to focus on speed factors that you can easily manage like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just offers an integrated CDN, but they also provide 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 since they work on Google Cloud, you do not have to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies include a global CDN (content delivery network).
The CDN will help your website load quickly for clients all over the world 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 company. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Securing sites is one of the strong suits of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes numerous steps to protect WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs everyday malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They monitor an upgraded firewall program to block the current hazards.
All sites are supported daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can assist you recuperate your website 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 assistance for any questions relating to security.
They offer webinars on security.
They release security guidelines and lists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it totally free.
Online Resources
WP Engine offers webinars, guides, blog posts, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can find out how to:.
Introduce your first website.
Troubleshoot common issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with greater efficiency.
Both newbies and skilled WordPress website owners will discover the support documents vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all subscription fees is special in the hosting industry.
It allows you to try out the service in a risk-free method.
Note: this choice is not readily available on custom-made hosting plans.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, however what is finest for you based on your objectives, budget plan, resources & practices.
If you are in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they offer a terrific service with a solid item. As a handled WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more functions than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unmatched for savvy DIYers, WordPress website designers and/or high-traffic websites that don’t want to fret about hosting issues.
If handled hosting is a fit for you- then go have a look at WP Engine’s plans here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back guarantee. Do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Be sure to talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.