There are plenty of inexpensive hosts readily available that provide a decent service. WPEngine What Is
Nevertheless, what if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll wish to take a look at our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, providing handled strategies that are fully optimized for the platform. Obviously, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s strategies aren’t exactly cheap. You’ll desire to understand whether this hosting service is worth the expense before making a purchase.
To help you out, we’re going to perform an extensive WP Engine evaluation for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key features, support choices, 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 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 business has actually won several 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 less expensive WordPress hosting are increased dependability, performance, assistance, and management, but these are difficult to measure. Some functions 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 designed to assist you speed up your WordPress website by using meaningful metrics on efficiency.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, the length of time it took to pack in its totality, and the total size of the page. It even consists of historic data on your website’s efficiency over the past six months and suggestions on how you can reduce page load.
You can establish your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment before making the modifications live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid humiliating errors on your website by making changes to a copy of your website before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your developers to make substantial modifications to your website without affecting your clients.
WP Engine has a detailed list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a fairly uncommon relocation, WP Engine restricts the WordPress plugins you can set up. Those normally restricted are plugins that have actually been kept in mind to cause efficiency problems and security holes. For crucial features such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made options available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just offers handled WordPress hosting. There are five various strategies available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans consist of unlimited data transfer. The strategies differ based upon:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Customized plan includes dedicated dev. environments, customer success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some unique functions for WordPress users that many hosts do not offer, or charge additional for. These unique features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly produce a copy of your site for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Cutting edge innovations consisting of most current PHP version.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we discovered that WP Engine provides the most sophisticated and thorough managed WordPress hosting functions.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.
Interface and in use
WP Engine’s interface is professional and well laid out, however the effective features might imply a high knowing curve for inexperienced users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect guidelines, you’ll be right in the house here, but otherwise you’ll require to invest some time on the support site.
In our screening, the default WordPress web page packed in just over 2 seconds. This is among the fastest actions we’ve evaluated, with competitor Liquid Web only somewhat behind.
Support
A handled WordPress service should provide extra worth through its assistance, and WP Engine delivers. The support website consists of videos and posts of a quality you ‘d anticipate from a paid training course, with aid on deeper WordPress performance that many WordPress hosts do not go into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our screening, the action fasted and the representative educated. For all strategies except for single-site plans, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If site loading speed is a top priority, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s combination of custom-made NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology ensure that your websites load quickly. NGINX extension focuses on human requests over robot requests and uses load balancing, providing your visitors a much better experience. For its part, CDN provides website content to your visitors based on their area to increase your website’s speed and decrease latency. You get this capability totally free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s difficult to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why people continue to pay a premium price for this service. WP Engine ensures 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 warranty.
Advanced Security: WP Engine monitors all the traffic going to your site and immediately spots and blocks possible attacks. In addition, the hosting service instantly updates and patches the WordPress core to get rid of potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine immediately backups your site every day and has a one-click restoration function to get you support and running rapidly. This hosting service secures your website against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Extraordinary Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to get in touch with consumer care through chat. The support group has an outstanding knowledge base and can assist you solve problems 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 plans.
Useful Staging Environment: The staging area allows you to clone your site’s live version and make changes or test new plugins and themes. Anything you carry out in the staging area does not impact your live site. This feature permits designers to work on sites without interfering with the live site’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting developers, this feature allows you to construct a site from your WP Engine account. You don’t need to await the customer to include you to their WordPress site. As soon as finished, you can transfer the website to the client or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you frequently develop sites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are utilizing any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you run out luck. WP Engine just works with WordPress. From a service point of view, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and deal extraordinary services in that location. This model locks out numerous people who could 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 website host, you’ll require to look elsewhere. You’ll need to use third-party services for domain registration or email accounts.
Inflexible Pricing: WP Engine runs a tight ship, and this is shown in its prices structure. You will be punished for exceeding your strategy’s visitor limitations. This might not be a problem if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your plan as your website grows. Substantial spikes in traffic during item launches or seasonal service can cost you considerable excess charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the expense? The response depends on determining what you are spending 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 very same rate as WP Engine. What you are actually paying for here is security, efficiency, speed, and, most importantly, peace of mind. The ultimate question is 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 think excessive about maintenance, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s rates based on the functions you’re getting- you really don’t get a lot.
And if you are the type who will think of your website’s health anyway (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and generally visiting regularly), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is superfluous.
Lots of shared hosting servers can manage the very same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a portion of the cost. My personal site a shared hosting plan from HostGator with basic caching) handled more than 15,000+ visits in a 24 hour period when a post of mine And if you are running a trusted VPS, you can certainly deal with a lot more for much less. The site you are on handles more than 110,000+ gos to per month with plenty of room left to spare for side-projects, gigabytes of media, email, RSS apps, etc with an InMotion VPS. I pay for the VPS plus a CDN for less than WP Engine’s starter plan.
They are relatively transparent about how they count visits, but it can still be rather a surprise for “little” site owners how quickly they can enter into the $290 monthly tier. I have a client who started with the Startup strategy, however quickly wound up with a custom-made plan.
And as mentioned previously that does not even include a number 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 requires additional expenses & technical execution of Amazon cloud services.
And most notably for me- you are restricted on your installs. If you have a few side projects or low-traffic test sites, you have to factor those into the price. You can’t use them to spread out the expense of your plan- specifically if you are hitting your visitor cap rather than your install cap.
If you are looking to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your site files- WP Engine is a pricey option, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Startup
The Startup bundle is the most fundamental strategy and will set you back $25 monthly. With this plan, you get:.
25,000 sees each month.
50GB bandwidth per month.
10GB storage.
One site included.
WP Engine targets little websites and blogs with this plan, but we believe it may 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 want to take any possibilities with uptime or require a warranty that your website can deal with 25,000 visitors each month, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d advise this option to small businesses, affiliate sites, and blog sites making good money and desire guarantees that nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 annually or more months totally free if you pay annually.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing businesses and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 check outs per month.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
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 prior to you require to update. With this plan, you also get 24/7 phone support in addition to day-and-night chat support. This addition will be available in convenient if you have an intricate concern that you require to resolve quickly.
You can save a cool $230 or 2 months totally free with annual billing.
Scale
WP Engine advertises its scale strategy as the very best worth alternative. This one costs $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 visits each month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
We advise 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 more months free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Custom
If you have a mission-critical website or big organization, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this plan, you get:.
Millions of gos to per month.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 websites consisted of.
You will have to talk to a sales representative to get your individualized quote depending upon your requirements. This plan also uses proprietary assistance must something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine accomplishes over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network facilities.
The company likewise has three information centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve website speeds by selecting to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks destructive attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that go into website speed, however the guideline is that the more complicated your site is, the more intricate the solutions to speed ended up being.
Out of package- WordPress is fairly lean and fast. If you are running a primarily text website with a few basic plugins and a few little images, you’ll be great with a cost effective shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But few website owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s usually additional plugins, customized style files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, kinds and more.
All these functions integrated with good levels of traffic can start to slow down your WordPress installation.
A slow site doesn’t suggest that you require a bigger, better server. It does mean that you require to get smarter about speed. In some cases it’s as simple as getting a more powerful server, but sometimes it’s more about caching certain resources in a particular order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Envision you are trying to transport 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 remove the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, revitalize the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress requires assistance to stay fast as you grow. There are lots of solutions … however either you or a designer need to execute them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine takes care of (nearly) all speed issues. They have actually customized servers with exceptionally aggressive caching and a lot more sophisticated “stack” than a typical webhosting. They also have actually trained support who will go into your WordPress install and recognize the specific chokepoint to get your site moving.
They do not even allow caching plugins on their installs due to the fact that they have actually such a customized caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress sets up still do well on their platform since their platform does the additional work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my customers on WP Engine (who has a puffed up style, 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 information to begin filling the page.
It’s nice to have that type 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 consumed about speed, you can get even much better numbers with WP Engine than you might get with other services since you are free to focus on speed factors that you can quickly manage like image compression, usage of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just supplies an incorporated CDN, however they likewise offer global data 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 given that they operate on Google Cloud, you do not have to stress over uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies include a worldwide CDN (material delivery network).
The CDN will help your site load quick for customers 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. Frequently 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 a number of steps to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs day-to-day malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an upgraded firewall to block the latest hazards.
All websites are supported daily.
You get a one-click restore function that can help you recuperate your site in case of an attack.
The WP Engine website 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 supply webinars on security.
They publish security standards and lists for designers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it for free.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, article, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can discover how to:.
Launch your first site.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your site.
Manage your hosting account with greater effectiveness.
Both newbies and skilled WordPress website owners will find the support documentation invaluable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back guarantee on all subscription charges is unique in the hosting industry.
It enables you to check out the service in a safe method.
Keep in mind: this choice is not available on customized hosting plans.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, however what is best for you based upon your goals, budget plan, resources & habits.
If you remain in what I think of as WP Engine’s core markets- they use an excellent service with a solid product. As a handled WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more functions than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unmatched for savvy DIYers, WordPress website developers and/or high-traffic websites that do not wish to stress over hosting issues.
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 guarantee. So do a test install and see what you think about their backend. Be sure to talk w/ support & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.