There are lots of inexpensive hosts available that provide a good service. WPEngine Uptime Monitoring
What if you’re looking 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 webhosting, providing handled plans that are totally optimized for the platform. Of course, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly low-cost. For that reason, you’ll need to know whether this hosting service is worth the cost before buying.
To help you out, we’re going to conduct a comprehensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its crucial functions, support alternatives, performance abilities, 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 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 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 multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly adds to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to select WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased reliability, performance, support, and management, however these are hard to quantify. Some functions stand apart when you browse the interface, nevertheless, that can provide you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool developed to assist you speed up your WordPress website by providing meaningful metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how quickly your page rendered, how long it required to fill in its entirety, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historic data on your website’s efficiency over the past 6 months and recommendations on how you can decrease 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 humiliating errors on your website by making changes to a copy of your website prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your designers to make extensive changes to your site without impacting your consumers.
WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably uncommon move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those typically limited are plugins that have actually been kept in mind to trigger efficiency concerns and security holes. For crucial functions such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has made alternatives offered that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only offers managed WordPress hosting. There are 5 various plans readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of unlimited information transfer. The plans vary based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom plan consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority assistance
WP Engine consists of some distinct functions for WordPress users that a lot of hosts don’t use, or charge additional for. These special functions include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately create a copy of your site for testing
- Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
- Innovative innovations including latest PHP variation.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine offers the most advanced and detailed managed WordPress hosting functions.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
User interface and in use
WP Engine’s interface is professional and well laid out, however the powerful functions might imply a high learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect guidelines, you’ll be right at home here, but otherwise you’ll need to spend some time on the support site.
In our testing, the default WordPress web page packed in just over two seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve evaluated, with competitor Liquid Web just slightly behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service must provide additional value through its support, and WP Engine provides. The support site consists of videos and articles of a quality you ‘d get out of a paid training course, with help on deeper WordPress functionality that numerous WordPress hosts don’t go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the reaction fasted and the agent knowledgeable. For all strategies except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If site filling speed is a leading priority, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s combination of custom NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology ensure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human demands over robotic demands and offers load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN provides site material to your visitors based on their area to boost your site’s speed and reduce latency. You get this ability free of charge with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium cost for this service. WP Engine guarantees 99.95% server uptime, approximately 4 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 assurance.
Advanced Security: WP Engine monitors all the traffic going to your site and automatically identifies and obstructs potential attacks. In addition, the hosting service automatically updates and patches the WordPress core to get rid of prospective vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine immediately backups your website every day and has a one-click remediation feature to get you support and running quickly. Lastly, this hosting service safeguards your site versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS attacks.
Incredible Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact consumer care by means of chat. The support group has an exceptional knowledge base and can help you solve issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all strategies other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat support on all strategies.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area allows you to clone your website’s live version and make changes or check new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area doesn’t affect your live website. This feature permits designers to deal with websites without disrupting the live website’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this feature allows you to build a website from your WP Engine account. You do not have to wait for the customer to include you to their WordPress site. Once completed, you can move the website to the client or host the site on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you frequently build sites for clients.
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 a business perspective, it makes sense to focus on a single market and offer exceptional services because location. This model locks out many people who might 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 website host, you’ll require to look in other places. You’ll have 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 pricing structure. You will be punished for surpassing your plan’s visitor limits. This might not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly update your plan as your website grows. However, substantial spikes in traffic throughout item launches or seasonal company can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the cost? The response lies in figuring out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can manage the exact same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the cost. You can even get committed hosting for the same rate as WP Engine. What you are actually paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most significantly, peace of mind. The ultimate question is just how much these things are worth to you.
Plans and Pricing
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With a WP Engine strategy, you are generally spending for performance & not having to believe excessive about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s prices based on 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 anyway (ie, keeping WordPress updated and normally logging in often), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is unnecessary.
Numerous shared hosting servers can deal with the very same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the rate. My personal website a shared hosting plan 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 trusted VPS, you can definitely deal with a lot more for much less. In fact, the website you are on manages more than 110,000+ visits per month with lots of space 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” website owners how rapidly they can get into the $290 per month tier. I have a customer who started with the Startup plan, however rapidly wound up with a custom-made strategy.
And as pointed out previously that does not even include 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 limitations on regional media storage. Anything above the limits needs additional costs & 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 websites, you have to factor those into the price. You can’t utilize them to spread out the expense of your plan- specifically if you are striking your visitor cap rather than your set up cap.
If you are aiming to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your site files- WP Engine is a costly option, especially compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Startup
The Startup plan is one of the most basic strategy and will set you back $25 each month. With this bundle, you get:.
25,000 check outs each month.
50GB bandwidth monthly.
10GB storage.
One website consisted of.
WP Engine targets small websites and blogs with this strategy, but we believe it might be overkill for most people in this classification. You can get a far much better deal with 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 thing. We ‘d advise this choice to small companies, affiliate sites, and blogs making great cash and want guarantees that nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 each year or 2 months totally free if you pay every year.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 sees per month.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
Ten websites consisted of a while.
This strategy is a terrific entry point for a growing organization, and it might be a while prior to you require to update. With this strategy, you also get 24/7 phone support in addition to day-and-night chat assistance. This addition will can be found in handy if you have an intricate issue that you require to solve quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or 2 months totally free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale strategy as the best worth choice. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to per month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
We advise this choice for a fast-growing blog or company. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the support.
You can conserve $580 or more months free with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom
If you have a mission-critical site or big business, the Custom plan may be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Millions of check outs each month.
400GB+ bandwidth each month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites included.
You will have to talk to a sales rep to get your tailored quote depending on your requirements. This plan also provides proprietary support should something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine attains over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class 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 selecting to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine obstructs malicious attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into website speed, however the guideline is that the more complex your site is, the more complicated the options to speed ended up being.
Out of package- WordPress is fairly lean and fast. If you are running a mostly text site with a few standard plugins and a few small images, you’ll be great with a cost effective shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few site owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s typically extra plugins, customized style files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, forms and more.
All these features integrated with good levels of traffic can begin to decrease your WordPress setup.
A sluggish site doesn’t indicate that you require a bigger, much better server. It does mean that you need to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as easy as getting a more effective server, but in some cases it’s more about caching certain resources in a particular order and enhancing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Imagine you are attempting to haul a trailer with a pickup. Imagine your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s meaningless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you might simply require to remove the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress requires help to stay quickly as you grow. There are plenty of services … however either you or a developer should implement them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed issues. They have personalized servers with extremely aggressive caching and much more sophisticated “stack” than a typical web host. They likewise have trained assistance who will go into your WordPress install and identify the exact chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even enable caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have 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 extra work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my clients on WP Engine (who has a puffed up 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 quickly the server returned enough data to start filling the page.
It’s nice to have that kind of speed right out of package- and have it remain that way no matter how huge or complex the site gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are consumed about speed, you can get back at much better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services given that you are totally free to concentrate on speed elements that you can easily manage like image compression, usage of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only supplies an integrated CDN, but they also offer global information centers in case your audience is mainly 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 because they work on Google Cloud, you do not need to worry about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies consist of a global CDN (content 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. Regularly the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Securing websites is one of the strong points of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes numerous steps to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an updated firewall to obstruct the most recent risks.
All websites are supported daily.
You get a one-click restore 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 questions regarding security.
They provide webinars on security.
They publish security standards and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your site 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 learn how to:.
Release your very first website.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with higher effectiveness.
Both novices and knowledgeable WordPress site owners will discover the assistance documents vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all subscription fees is special in the hosting industry.
It enables you to try out the service in a risk-free way.
Keep in mind: this choice is not offered on custom-made 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 plan, resources & routines.
If you remain in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they offer 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 unequaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress site developers and/or high-traffic sites that do not wish to stress over hosting issues.
If managed hosting is a suitable for you- then go check out WP Engine’s strategies here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back guarantee. Do a test set up and see what you think of their backend. Make sure to talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.