There are plenty of low-cost hosts readily available that provide a good service. WPEngine Vs Aws
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 review for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, using managed strategies that are completely enhanced for the platform. Naturally, when compared to lots of other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly inexpensive. You’ll desire to know whether this hosting service is worth the expense before making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to carry out a comprehensive WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its essential features, support alternatives, performance capabilities, and everything else you’ll need to understand. Let’s begin!
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 business owner Jason Cohen started WP Engine when he saw a need for specialized WordPress hosting due to the increasing 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 actually won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to select WP Engine over more affordable WordPress hosting are increased dependability, performance, assistance, and management, but these are hard to measure. Some functions stick out when you search the user interface, nevertheless, that can give you some insight into the service used.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool developed to help you speed up your WordPress website 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 took to fill in its entirety, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historic information on your website’s performance over the past 6 months and suggestions 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 website prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it permits your designers to make substantial modifications to your site without affecting your consumers.
WP Engine has a thorough list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly uncommon relocation, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those typically restricted are plugins that have actually been kept in mind to cause efficiency concerns and security holes. For essential features 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 handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 various strategies readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All strategies consist of unrestricted information transfer. The plans vary based on:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized strategy includes dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority assistance
WP Engine consists of some special functions for WordPress users that many hosts do not use, or charge additional for. These special functions consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: quickly produce a copy of your site for testing
- Easy transferable installs from totally free to paid accounts
- Innovative technologies including most current PHP version.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine uses the most sophisticated and detailed handled WordPress hosting features.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
User interface and in use
WP Engine’s interface is professional and well set out, however the powerful features might suggest a steep learning curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and reroute guidelines, you’ll be right in your home here, however otherwise you’ll need to invest some time on the support website.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page filled in just over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve tested, with competitor Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Assistance
A handled WordPress service must offer extra value through its assistance, and WP Engine provides. The support website includes videos and articles 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 testing, the action fasted and the representative experienced. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Remarkable Load Speed: If website loading speed is a top priority, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s combination of custom NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD innovation make sure that your websites load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robot requests and provides load balancing, providing your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN delivers site material to your visitors based upon their area to improve your site’s speed and minimize latency. You get this ability free of charge with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s tough 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 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 annually. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls below the guarantee.
Advanced Security: WP Engine monitors all the traffic going to your website and instantly detects and blocks possible attacks. In addition, the hosting service automatically updates and patches the WordPress core to remove potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine immediately backups your site every day and has a one-click repair function to get you support and running quickly. This hosting service secures your website 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 connect with client care through chat. The support team has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you solve issues quickly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all plans 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 variation and make changes or check brand-new plugins and styles. Anything you carry out in the staging area doesn’t impact your live website. This function enables developers to work on sites without interfering with the live site’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this function enables you to construct a site from your WP Engine account. You do not need to wait on the customer to add you to their WordPress website. When finished, you can move the site to the customer or host the site on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you regularly construct 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 only works with WordPress. From a service perspective, it makes sense to concentrate on a single market and offer exceptional services in that location. Nevertheless, this model locks out lots of people who might otherwise take advantage of WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you choose to host your e-mail account and register your domain through your site host, you’ll require to look somewhere else. You’ll need to use 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 may not be a problem if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your plan as your website grows. Nevertheless, significant spikes in traffic throughout item launches or seasonal service can cost you significant overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the cost? The answer lies in figuring out what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the exact same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the cost. You can even get committed hosting for the very same cost as WP Engine. What you are truly spending for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most notably, peace of mind. The ultimate concern 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 strategy, you are normally paying for efficiency & not having to think too much about upkeep, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s rates based on the functions you’re getting- you really do not get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think of your website’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress updated and typically visiting regularly), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is superfluous.
Numerous shared hosting servers can handle the exact same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the cost. My individual website a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with standard caching) managed more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a reputable VPS, you can definitely manage a lot more for much less. The site you are on manages more than 110,000+ sees per month with plenty 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 strategy.
They are relatively transparent about how they count sees, however it can still be quite a surprise for “small” site owners how quickly they can enter into the $290 per month tier. I have a customer who started with the Startup plan, but quickly wound up with a custom plan.
And as pointed out previously that doesn’t even consist of 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 limitations on local media storage. Anything above the limits requires extra expenses & technical implementation of Amazon cloud services.
And most importantly for me- you are limited 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 utilize them to spread out the expense of your strategy- especially if you are hitting your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are seeking to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & serve up your site files- WP Engine is an expensive option, especially compared to other non-managed hosting alternatives.
Startup
The Startup plan is the most fundamental plan and will set you back $25 each month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 check outs monthly.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One website included.
WP Engine targets small sites and blog sites with this strategy, however we think it may be overkill for many 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 need a guarantee that your website can handle 25,000 visitors each month, WP Engine is a sure bet. We ‘d recommend this choice to small businesses, affiliate sites, and blog sites making great money and desire assurances that absolutely nothing will change.
You can save $60 per year or more months totally free if you pay yearly.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing services and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to per month.
200GB bandwidth per month.
25GB storage.
Ten websites consisted of a while.
This strategy is a fantastic entry point for a growing service, and it might be a while before you need to upgrade. With this plan, you also get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to round-the-clock chat assistance. This addition will be available in useful if you have a complex issue that you need to solve rapidly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or 2 months complimentary with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale plan as the very best worth alternative. This one costs $241 each month. Here you get:.
400,000 visits each month.
500GB bandwidth monthly.
50GB storage.
30 sites included.
We advise this choice for a fast-growing blog or service. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone support in addition to the support center.
You can conserve $580 or more months free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Custom-made
If you have a mission-critical website or large company, the Custom strategy may be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless visits each month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
You will need to talk to a sales rep to get your tailored quote depending upon your requirements. This plan also uses exclusive assistance needs to something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine achieves over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network facilities.
The company likewise has 3 data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better website speeds by selecting to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine obstructs destructive attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into site speed, however the guideline is that the more complicated your site is, the more complex the options to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is fairly lean and quick. If you are running a primarily text site with a few fundamental plugins and a couple of little images, you’ll be fine with a cost effective shared hosting strategy from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of website owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s typically additional plugins, custom-made style files, lots of images, widgets, advertisements, types and more.
All these features integrated with decent levels of traffic can start to decrease your WordPress installation.
But a slow website does not suggest that you require a larger, better server. It does mean that you need to get smarter about speed. In some cases it’s as basic as getting a more effective server, but sometimes it’s more about caching specific resources in a certain order and enhancing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Imagine you are trying to haul a trailer with a pickup. Envision your trailer keeps getting heavier. It’s pointless to keep complaining that your truck is not big enough when you may simply require to remove the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress needs help to remain fast as you grow. There are plenty of solutions … but either you or a developer need to execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting can be found in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed concerns. They have tailored servers with very aggressive caching and a lot more sophisticated “stack” than a common web host. They also have actually trained assistance who will enter into your WordPress install and recognize 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 actually such a personalized caching setup.
The intriguing thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still do well on their platform due to the fact that their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for among my clients on WP Engine (who has a bloated theme, additional 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 data to start loading the page.
It’s nice to have that kind of speed right out of the box- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or complicated 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 since you are complimentary to focus on speed aspects that you can quickly manage like image compression, use of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just offers an integrated CDN, however they also supply international information centers in case your audience is primarily in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are trying to get top speeds without messing with layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And since they operate on Google Cloud, you don’t have to worry about uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans consist of a worldwide CDN (material shipment network).
The CDN will help your website load quickly for customers 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 websites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Frequently the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Securing websites is among the fortes of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes several steps to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep track of an upgraded firewall software to block the most recent risks.
All sites are backed up daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can assist you recover 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 regarding security.
They provide webinars on security.
They release security standards and checklists for designers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it free of charge.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can find out how to:.
Launch your first website.
Troubleshoot common issues.
Make improvements to your site.
Handle your hosting account with higher performance.
Both newbies and experienced 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 subscription charges is special in the hosting market.
It enables you to try out the service in a risk-free way.
Note: this alternative is not available on customized hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, but what is best for you based upon your goals, budget, resources & practices.
If you remain in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they provide a fantastic service with a strong product. As a managed WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more features than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress site developers and/or high-traffic sites that do not want to worry about hosting issues.
If managed 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 assurance. So do a test install and see what you think of their backend. Make certain to chat w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.