There are a lot of low-cost hosts readily available that offer a decent service. WPEngine Vs Godaddy
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 evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, providing handled plans that are fully optimized for the platform. Naturally, when compared to lots of other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly cheap. For that reason, you’ll would like to know whether this hosting service deserves the cost prior to making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to perform a comprehensive WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key functions, support alternatives, efficiency capabilities, and whatever else you’ll require to know. Let’s begin!
WP Engine Video Review
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About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now among the leading managed WordPress hosting companies in the market. Serial business owner Jason Cohen began 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 business has won numerous awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core reasons to choose WP Engine over less expensive WordPress hosting are increased dependability, efficiency, assistance, and management, however these are difficult to measure. Some features stand apart when you browse the interface, however, that can offer you some insight into the service provided.
WP Engine Page Performance is a neat tool created to help you speed up your WordPress site by offering significant metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that information how rapidly your page rendered, for how long it took to pack in its totality, and the overall size of the page. It even includes historic data on your site’s performance over the past 6 months and recommendations on how you can reduce page load.
You can establish your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment prior to making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid humiliating mistakes on your website by making changes to a copy of your site before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your developers to make comprehensive changes to your website without affecting your customers.
WP Engine has a detailed list of plugins that are disallowed (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably uncommon move, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can install. Those normally limited are plugins that have been noted to cause performance concerns and security holes. For crucial functions such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has actually made options readily available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only provides managed WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans consist of unrestricted data transfer. The plans vary based on:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized strategy consists of dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority support
WP Engine includes some distinct features for WordPress users that most hosts don’t provide, or charge additional for. These unique functions include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly develop a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Innovative innovations including most current PHP version.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine offers the most innovative and thorough 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 laid out, however the effective functions might imply a high learning curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect rules, you’ll be right in your home here, but otherwise you’ll require to invest some time on the assistance site.
In our testing, the default WordPress home page loaded in just over two seconds. This is one of the fastest actions we’ve tested, with competitor Liquid Web just a little behind.
Support
A handled WordPress service need to offer extra worth through its assistance, and WP Engine delivers. The support website includes videos and posts of a quality you ‘d anticipate from a paid training course, with help on much deeper WordPress performance that lots of WordPress hosts don’t enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat support and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the response fasted and the agent experienced. For all strategies except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If website filling speed is a top priority, WP Engine does well in this regard. The host’s combination of customized NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology make sure that your websites load quickly. NGINX extension prioritizes human demands over robot requests and offers load balancing, offering your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN provides site material to your visitors based upon their location to enhance your website’s speed and minimize latency. You get this ability totally free with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s hard to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium rate for this service. WP Engine ensures 99.95% server uptime, approximately four and a half hours of downtime a year. You can further increase your uptime to 99.99% with enhanced SLA, which translates 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 keeps track of all the traffic going to your site and instantly identifies and obstructs possible attacks. In addition, the hosting service immediately updates and spots the WordPress core to get rid of possible vulnerabilities. In a worst-case circumstance, WP Engine automatically backups your site every day and has a one-click restoration feature to get you back up and running quickly. This hosting service protects 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 contact client care through chat. The support team has an outstanding knowledge base and can assist you fix problems quickly. You get 24/7 phone assistance for all plans other than the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat assistance on all plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area permits you to clone your website’s live version and make changes or test new plugins and themes. Anything you perform in the staging area does not impact your live website. This feature allows designers to work on websites without hindering the live website’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this function permits you to develop a site from your WP Engine account. You do not need to wait on the client to include you to their WordPress website. When finished, you can move the site to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you routinely build sites for customers.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are utilizing any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you are out of luck. WP Engine only works with WordPress. From a business perspective, it makes good sense to focus on a single market and offer extraordinary services in that area. However, this model locks out many individuals who might 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 site host, you’ll require to look in other places. 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 shown in its rates structure. You will be punished for surpassing your strategy’s visitor limits. This might not be an issue if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can always upgrade your strategy as your site grows. However, considerable spikes in traffic during product launches or seasonal service can cost you significant overage charges.
There is no other method to put it: WP Engine is pricey. Is it worth the expense? The answer lies in determining what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can handle the same amount of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the cost. You can even get committed hosting for the same price as WP Engine. What you are truly spending for here is security, performance, speed, and, most importantly, peace of mind. 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 generally spending for efficiency & not having to think too much about maintenance, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s pricing based upon the features you’re getting- you actually do not get a great deal.
And if you are the type who will consider your site’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and normally logging in regularly), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is superfluous.
Lots of shared hosting servers can deal with the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the price. My personal site a shared hosting plan from HostGator with standard caching) managed more than 15,000+ gos to 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 deals with more than 110,000+ gos to monthly with plenty of space 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 strategy.
They are relatively transparent about how they count sees, however it can still be quite a surprise for “small” site owners how rapidly they can enter the $290 per month tier. I have a client who started with the Startup plan, but quickly wound up with a custom plan.
And as pointed out earlier that does not 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 local media storage. Anything above the limits needs extra costs & 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 need to factor those into the cost. You can’t utilize them to spread out the expense of your strategy- specifically if you are hitting your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are looking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & serve up your site files- WP Engine is an expensive option, particularly compared to other non-managed hosting options.
Startup
The Startup plan is the most basic plan and will set you back $25 each month. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 check outs per month.
50GB bandwidth each month.
10GB storage.
One website consisted of.
WP Engine targets small sites and blog sites with this strategy, but we believe it might be overkill for many people in this category. You can get a far better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t wish to take any possibilities with uptime or require a warranty that your website can handle 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a certainty. We ‘d recommend this option to small businesses, affiliate sites, and blog sites making good cash and want assurances that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 annually or two 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 check outs per month.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
Ten websites included a while.
This strategy is a great entry point for a growing organization, and it might be a while before you require 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 convenient if you have a complicated concern that you need to resolve rapidly.
You can save a cool $230 or more months totally free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale strategy as the best value option. This one costs $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 sees per month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
We recommend this choice for a fast-growing blog or business. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the assistance.
You can conserve $580 or more months free with annual pre-paid billing.
Customized
If you have a mission-critical site or large business, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Millions of visits each month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will have to speak to a sales rep to get your customized quote depending on your requirements. This strategy likewise offers proprietary assistance needs to something go wrong.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Strong Uptime
WP Engine achieves over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network infrastructure.
The company also has 3 information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better website speeds by choosing to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks destructive attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that go into website speed, however the general rule is that the more intricate your website is, the more complicated the solutions to speed become.
Out of package- WordPress is relatively lean and fast. If you are running a mainly text site with a few standard plugins and a couple of small images, you’ll be fine with an affordable shared hosting plan from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few website owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s normally additional plugins, customized theme files, lots of images, widgets, advertisements, types and more.
All these functions integrated with decent levels of traffic can begin to slow down your WordPress setup.
A slow site does not imply that you require a bigger, much better server. It does indicate that you need to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as easy as getting a more effective server, however often it’s more about caching specific resources in a specific order and optimizing your files. In other words- it gets complex.
Envision you are trying 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 may just require to eliminate the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress requires assistance to remain quick as you grow. There are lots of options … but either you or a designer need to implement them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed issues. They have personalized servers with exceptionally aggressive caching and much more sophisticated “stack” than a typical webhosting. They likewise have trained support who will enter into your WordPress set up and identify the exact chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even permit caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have such a customized caching setup.
The fascinating thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still succeed on their platform since 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 determines how rapidly the server returned enough data to begin filling the page.
It’s great to have that type of speed right out of package- and have it stay that way no matter how huge or intricate the website 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 considering that you are free to concentrate 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 supply international data 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 precisely that. And given that they run on Google Cloud, you don’t have to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All plans include a global CDN (material delivery 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 websites are WordPress sites, according to Sucuri, a web security firm. Frequently the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t upgraded.
Securing sites is one of the strong points of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes numerous measures to protect WordPress sites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep track of an updated firewall to obstruct the latest hazards.
All websites are supported daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can help you recover your site in case of an attack.
The WP Engine website 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 supply webinars on security.
They publish security standards and checklists for developers and engineers.
If your website gets hacked, WPE will clean it totally free.
Online Resources
WP Engine offers webinars, guides, article, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can find out how to:.
Launch your very first site.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your website.
Manage your hosting account with greater effectiveness.
Both beginners and skilled WordPress site owners will discover the support documents vital.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all membership costs is unique in the hosting market.
It enables you to experiment with the service in a safe method.
Keep in mind: this choice is not offered on custom 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 on your objectives, budget, resources & routines.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they provide a terrific service with a solid product. As a managed WordPress host, their prices is competitive. They provide more functions than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unrivaled for smart DIYers, WordPress site developers and/or high-traffic websites that don’t wish to fret about hosting issues.
If handled hosting is a fit for you- then go check out WP Engine’s plans 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 talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.