There are lots of cheap hosts offered that supply a good service. WPEngine X-frame-options
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 managed strategies that are completely optimized for the platform. Obviously, when compared to numerous other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t precisely low-cost. For that reason, you’ll want to know whether this hosting service deserves the expense prior to making a purchase.
To assist you out, we’re going to carry out a thorough WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key features, support options, performance capabilities, and everything else you’ll need 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 handled WordPress hosting companies in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen began 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 won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and regularly contributes to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to choose WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased dependability, efficiency, assistance, and management, however these are difficult to quantify. Some features stand apart when you search the user interface, nevertheless, that can offer you some insight into the service offered.
WP Engine Page Performance is a cool tool developed to assist you speed up your WordPress site by providing meaningful metrics on performance.
Running a test returns you a page-performance report that details how quickly your page rendered, for how long it required to fill in its whole, and the total size of the page. It even consists of historic information on your site’s performance over the past six 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 awkward mistakes on your website by making changes to a copy of your site before it goes live. This is called Staging, and it enables your designers to make extensive changes to your site without impacting your clients.
WP Engine has a comprehensive list of plugins that are prohibited (Image credit: WP Engine) In a reasonably unusual move, WP Engine limits the WordPress plugins you can install. Those normally limited are plugins that have actually been noted to trigger performance concerns and security holes. For crucial functions such as caching, backups, and search engine optimization tools, WP Engine has made alternatives available that do not put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine just uses handled WordPress hosting. There are 5 various plans offered: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans include endless data transfer. The strategies differ based upon:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom strategy includes dedicated dev. environments, client success, and priority support
WP Engine consists of some distinct functions for WordPress users that a lot of hosts do not use, or charge additional for. These special features consist of:.
- Git version control
- Staging: instantly produce a copy of your site for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Innovative innovations including most current PHP variation.
In our WP Engine evaluation, we found that WP Engine uses the most sophisticated and extensive 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 expert and well set out, but the effective features may imply a high knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect rules, you’ll be right in the house here, however otherwise you’ll need to spend some time on the support website.
In our screening, the default WordPress home page filled in just over 2 seconds. This is one of the fastest actions we’ve tested, with competitor Liquid Web only slightly behind.
Support
A handled WordPress service ought to use additional value through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The support site includes videos and articles of a quality you ‘d anticipate from a paid training course, with aid on much 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 was quick and the agent educated. For all plans except for single-site plans, there’s telephone assistance, too.
Pros
Exceptional Load Speed: If website packing speed is a top priority, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s mix of customized NGINX extension, built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology guarantee that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension focuses on human demands over robotic requests and provides load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN delivers site content to your visitors based on their place to enhance your website’s speed and reduce latency. You get this capability for free with all WP Engine strategies.
High Performance: It’s tough to beat WP Engine’s efficiency, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium rate 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 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 keeps track of all the traffic going to your site and automatically spots and obstructs possible attacks. In addition, the hosting service immediately updates and spots the WordPress core to remove potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case situation, WP Engine automatically backups your website every day and has a one-click remediation function to get you back up and running rapidly. This hosting service safeguards your website against JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Remarkable Customer Support: The hosting service has a transparent and trackable ticketing system to contact client care via chat. The support team has an excellent knowledge base and can assist you fix problems quickly. You get 24/7 phone support for all plans except the Growth Plan, in addition to 24/7 live chat assistance 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 styles. Anything you carry out in the staging area doesn’t impact your live site. This feature enables designers to deal with websites without disrupting the live site’s performance or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this function 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 move the website to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This functionality saves time if you routinely construct sites for customers.
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 deal remarkable services because location. However, this design locks out many people who might otherwise take advantage of WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you prefer to host your email 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 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 plan’s visitor limits. This may not be a problem if you have predictable traffic, and you can constantly update your strategy as your website grows. Nevertheless, substantial spikes in traffic throughout item launches or seasonal company can cost you significant excess charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is costly. Is it worth the cost? The answer depends on finding out what you are spending for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a portion of the rate. You can even get committed hosting for the same rate as WP Engine. What you are actually paying for here is security, performance, speed, and, most significantly, comfort. The supreme 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 plan, you are normally spending for efficiency & not needing to believe too much about maintenance, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s rates based on the features you’re getting- you truly do not get a whole lot.
And if you are the type who will think of your site’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress updated and typically visiting regularly), you’ll likely be spending for “management” that is unneeded.
Lots of shared hosting servers can deal with the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the rate. My personal site a shared hosting strategy from HostGator with basic caching) managed more than 15,000+ sees in a 24 hour duration when a post of mine And if you are running a trustworthy VPS, you can certainly handle a lot more for much less. The website you are on handles more than 110,000+ check outs 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 gos to, however it can still be rather a surprise for “little” site owners how quickly they can get into the $290 each month tier. I have a client who started with the Startup plan, but rapidly wound up with a customized plan.
And as pointed out previously that doesn’t even consist of much of the functions you don’t 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 implementation of Amazon cloud services.
And most importantly for me- you are limited on your installs. If you have a few side projects or low-traffic test websites, you need to factor those into the price. You can’t utilize them to expand the cost of your plan- especially if you are hitting your visitor cap instead of your install cap.
If you are looking to pay for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & provide your site files- WP Engine is a pricey alternative, especially compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Start-up
The Startup plan is one of the most basic strategy and will set you back $25 each month. With this package, you get:.
25,000 gos to monthly.
50GB bandwidth monthly.
10GB storage.
One website consisted of.
WP Engine targets small sites and blog sites with this plan, however we believe it may be overkill for most people in this classification. You can get a far better handle shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you do not wish to take any chances with uptime or require a guarantee that your site can manage 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d advise this choice to small companies, affiliate websites, and blog sites making great cash and want assurances that absolutely nothing will alter.
You can conserve $60 per year or two months complimentary if you pay each year.
Growth
The growth plan targets growing services and will cost you $95 monthly. Here you get:.
100,000 gos to per month.
200GB bandwidth each month.
25GB storage.
Ten sites included a while.
This plan is a fantastic 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 support. This addition will can be found in helpful if you have an intricate problem that you need to fix quickly.
You can conserve a cool $230 or more months complimentary with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine markets its scale strategy as the very best value choice. This one expenses $241 monthly. Here you get:.
400,000 check outs per month.
500GB bandwidth each month.
50GB storage.
30 websites included.
We advise this choice for a fast-growing blog site or company. You get access to 24/7 live chat and 24/7 phone assistance in addition to the assistance.
You can save $580 or 2 months complimentary with annual pre-paid billing.
Custom-made
If you have a mission-critical website or big company, the Custom strategy may be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Countless gos to monthly.
400GB+ bandwidth per month.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites included.
You will have to speak to a sales rep to get your customized quote depending upon your requirements. This strategy also provides proprietary assistance needs to something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine achieves over 99% uptime thanks to its first-rate network facilities.
The business likewise has 3 data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can improve website speeds by picking to host your site on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine blocks destructive attacks on your website.
Speed & Performance
There are a great deal of variables that enter into website speed, however the guideline is that the more intricate your website is, the more intricate the solutions to speed ended up being.
Out of the box- 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 budget-friendly shared hosting plan from someone like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of site owners keep their WordPress install lean. There’s typically additional plugins, custom theme files, great deals of images, widgets, ads, forms and more.
All these functions integrated with good levels of traffic can start to decrease your WordPress setup.
A sluggish website doesn’t suggest that you need a bigger, much better server. It does indicate that you require to get smarter about speed. Sometimes it’s as easy as getting a more effective server, however in some cases it’s more about caching certain resources in a particular order and enhancing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Envision you are attempting to transport a trailer with a pickup truck. Imagine your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s meaningless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you may just need to eliminate the emergency brake, install a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and consolidate your load.
The point is that WordPress needs assistance to remain quickly as you grow. There are a lot of options … but either you or a designer should implement them.
That’s where managed WordPress hosting comes in. WP Engine looks after (almost) all speed issues. They have tailored servers with incredibly aggressive caching and even more innovative “stack” than a common web host. They likewise have actually trained support who will enter into your WordPress set up and determine the specific chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even enable caching plugins on their installs since they have actually 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 among my customers on WP Engine (who has a bloated style, extra scripts, a lot of uncompressed images, among other things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That measures how rapidly the server returned enough data to start loading the page.
It’s nice to have that kind of speed right out of package- and have it stay that way no matter how big or complex the website gets.
* Note that the other point here is that if you are consumed about speed, you can get back at better numbers with WP Engine than you may get with other services since you are totally free to focus on speed factors that you can easily manage like image compression, use of scripts, and so on
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not just supplies an incorporated CDN, however they likewise provide worldwide data centers in case your audience is primarily in Asia and/or Europe.
If you are attempting to get top speeds without tinkering layered caching plugins- the WP Engine does precisely that. And because they operate on Google Cloud, you do not need to worry about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies include an international CDN (content shipment network).
The CDN will assist your site load quick for consumers worldwide 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.
Protecting websites is among the strengths of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting service.
The business takes several steps to safeguard WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs everyday malware/virus scans in partnership with Sucuri.
They keep track of an upgraded firewall to obstruct the latest hazards.
All sites are supported daily.
You get a one-click bring back function that can help you recuperate your site 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 supply webinars on security.
They release security guidelines and checklists for designers and engineers.
If your website 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 learn how to:.
Launch your first website.
Troubleshoot typical problems.
Make improvements to your website.
Handle your hosting account with greater effectiveness.
Both newbies and experienced WordPress website owners will find the support paperwork indispensable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back assurance on all membership fees is special in the hosting industry.
It enables you to experiment with the service in a safe way.
Keep in mind: this alternative is not offered on custom-made hosting strategies.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is best overall, however what is finest for you based upon your goals, budget plan, resources & practices.
If you are in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they offer a fantastic service with a solid item. As a managed WordPress host, their pricing is competitive. They offer more features than “WordPress hosting” plans from other hosting brand names. Their feature-set is unequaled for smart DIYers, WordPress site developers and/or high-traffic sites that do not wish to worry about hosting issues.
If managed hosting is a suitable 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 about their backend. Be sure to chat w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.