There are a lot of cheap hosts readily available that offer a decent service. WPEngine Xdebug
What if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented, concierge service? Because case, you’ll wish to check out our WP Engine evaluation for WordPress.
WP Engine is a WordPress-specific webhosting, offering managed strategies that are completely optimized for the platform. Obviously, 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 deserves the cost prior to purchasing.
To assist you out, we’re going to conduct a comprehensive WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its essential features, assistance choices, efficiency capabilities, and whatever 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 handled WordPress hosting business in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen began WP Engine when he saw a requirement for specialized WordPress hosting due to the rising popularity 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 business has actually won numerous awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently adds to the WordPress core and neighborhood.
WP Engine Features
The core factors to choose WP Engine over cheaper WordPress hosting are increased reliability, efficiency, assistance, and management, however these are tough to measure. Some features stand apart when you search the interface, nevertheless, that can give 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 quickly your page rendered, how long it took to fill in its totality, and the overall size of the page. It even consists of historic information on your site’s performance over the past six months and suggestions on how you can lower page load.
You can establish your WordPress site in a Staging or Development environment before making the changes live (Image credit: WP Engine) Avoid awkward errors on your site by making changes to a copy of your site prior to it goes live. This is called Staging, and it allows your developers to make substantial changes to your site without impacting your consumers.
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 install. Those usually limited are plugins that have been noted to cause performance issues and security holes. For important features such as caching, backups, and seo tools, WP Engine has actually made alternatives available that don’t put a high load on the server.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only offers managed WordPress hosting. There are 5 different plans readily available: Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
All plans include unrestricted information transfer. The strategies differ based on:
- number of WordPress sets up
- traffic volume (# of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Custom-made strategy includes dedicated dev. environments, consumer success, and priority assistance
WP Engine includes some special features for WordPress users that many hosts do not use, or charge additional for. These special functions include:.
- Git version control
- Staging: immediately produce a copy of your website for screening
- Easy transferable installs from complimentary to paid accounts
- Cutting edge innovations consisting of most current PHP version.
In our WP Engine review, we discovered that WP Engine provides the most advanced 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 user interface is expert and well set out, but the powerful functions might mean a high knowing curve for unskilled users. If you have an understanding of terms like Git, CNAME, and redirect rules, you’ll be right at home here, but otherwise you’ll require to invest some time on the assistance website.
In our testing, the default WordPress web page loaded in simply over two seconds. This is one of the fastest reactions we’ve tested, with competitor Liquid Web only a little behind.
Support
A managed WordPress service must use additional value through its support, and WP Engine delivers. The assistance website consists of videos and short articles of a quality you ‘d expect from a paid training course, with aid on deeper WordPress functionality that lots of WordPress hosts do not enter into.
There’s 24/7 live chat assistance and a ticket system, too. In our testing, the response was quick and the representative educated. For all plans except for single-site strategies, there’s telephone support, too.
Pros
Extraordinary Load Speed: If site loading speed is a top priority, WP Engine succeeds in this regard. The host’s combination of customized NGINX extension, integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), and SSD technology ensure that your web pages load rapidly. NGINX extension prioritizes human requests over robotic requests and uses load balancing, providing your visitors a better experience. For its part, CDN delivers site content to your visitors based upon their area to improve your site’s speed and decrease latency. You get this ability for free with all WP Engine plans.
High Performance: It’s tough to beat WP Engine’s performance, which is why individuals continue to pay a premium price for this service. WP Engine guarantees 99.95% server uptime, approximately four 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 annually. WP Engine will compensate you with hosting credit if your uptime falls listed below the assurance.
Advanced Security: WP Engine keeps an eye on all the traffic going to your site and automatically identifies and obstructs possible attacks. Additionally, the hosting service immediately updates and spots the WordPress core to eliminate potential vulnerabilities. In a worst-case scenario, WP Engine automatically backups your website every day and has a one-click repair function to get you back up and running quickly. This hosting service safeguards your site versus JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, brute force efforts, and DDoS attacks.
Extraordinary 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 resolve issues 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 site’s live version and make changes or check new plugins and styles. Anything you do in the staging area doesn’t affect your live site. This function allows designers to work on websites without interfering with the live site’s functionality or user experience.
Transferable Installs: Also targeting designers, this feature enables you to construct a website from your WP Engine account. You do not need to wait for the client to include you to their WordPress site. When finished, you can move the site to the customer or host the website on WP Engine. This performance saves time if you routinely build sites for clients.
Cons
WordPress-Only Hosting: If you are using any other content management system aside from WordPress, then you run out luck. WP Engine only deals with WordPress. From a business viewpoint, it makes good sense to concentrate on a single market and offer remarkable services because area. However, this design locks out lots of people who might otherwise take advantage of WP Engine’s services.
No Domains or Email Hosting: If you prefer to host your e-mail account and register your domain through your site host, you’ll need to look in other places. You’ll have 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 penalized for exceeding your strategy’s visitor limitations. This might not be a problem if you have foreseeable traffic, and you can constantly upgrade your strategy as your website grows. Substantial spikes in traffic during item launches or seasonal service can cost you substantial overage charges.
There is no other way to put it: WP Engine is expensive. Is it worth the cost? The answer depends on determining what you are paying for.
You can get shared hosting that can deal with the same quantity of traffic as WP Engine for a fraction of the cost. You can even get devoted hosting for the exact same rate as WP Engine. What you are truly paying for here is security, performance, speed, and, most significantly, comfort. The supreme question is just 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 usually paying for performance & not having to think excessive about maintenance, security & speed. If you take a look at WP Engine’s prices based on the features you’re getting- you really don’t get a lot.
And if you are the type who will think about your website’s health anyhow (ie, keeping WordPress upgraded and usually visiting regularly), you’ll likely be paying for “management” that is superfluous.
Many shared hosting servers can manage the same traffic numbers as WP Engine- and cost a fraction of the rate. My individual website a shared hosting plan from HostGator with basic caching) managed more than 15,000+ check outs in a 24 hour period 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 deals with more than 110,000+ sees per month with plenty of space 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 strategy.
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 began with the Startup strategy, but rapidly wound up with a custom plan.
And as mentioned earlier that doesn’t even consist of 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 needs extra costs & technical implementation of Amazon cloud services.
And most significantly for me- you are restricted on your installs. If you have a couple of side projects or low-traffic test websites, you need to factor those into the rate. You can’t use them to expand the expense of your strategy- particularly if you are striking your visitor cap rather than your install cap.
If you are aiming to spend for hosting- ie, a server that will hold & dish out your website files- WP Engine is a costly option, specifically compared to other non-managed hosting choices.
Startup
The Startup plan is one of the most fundamental strategy and will set you back $25 per month. With this package, you get:.
25,000 visits per month.
50GB bandwidth monthly.
10GB storage.
One site included.
WP Engine targets little sites and blog sites with this plan, however we think it might be overkill for the majority of people in this category. You can get a far much better deal with shared hosting at Bluehost However, if you don’t want to take any opportunities with uptime or need a guarantee that your site can manage 25,000 visitors monthly, WP Engine is a sure thing. We ‘d advise this option to small businesses, affiliate sites, and blogs making great money and desire assurances that absolutely nothing will change.
You can save $60 annually or 2 months complimentary if you pay every year.
Growth
The development strategy targets growing organizations and will cost you $95 per month. Here you get:.
100,000 visits monthly.
200GB bandwidth monthly.
25GB storage.
Ten websites consisted of a while.
This plan is an excellent entry point for a growing company, and it might be a while before you require to update. With this strategy, you likewise get 24/7 phone assistance in addition to round-the-clock chat support. This addition will can be found in helpful if you have a complex issue that you require to solve quickly.
You can save a cool $230 or more months totally free with yearly billing.
Scale
WP Engine promotes its scale plan as the very best value choice. This one expenses $241 per month. Here you get:.
400,000 gos to each month.
500GB bandwidth per month.
50GB storage.
30 sites included.
We suggest 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 conserve $580 or two months free with yearly pre-paid billing.
Custom
Finally, if you have a mission-critical site or large company, the Custom strategy might be appealing. With this strategy, you get:.
Millions of visits per month.
400GB+ bandwidth monthly.
100GB-1TB storage.
30 sites consisted of.
You will need to speak with a sales rep to get your customized quote depending on your requirements. This plan also uses exclusive assistance should something fail.
Migrate WordPress websites in just a few clicks.
Solid Uptime
WP Engine achieves over 99% uptime thanks to its world-class network facilities.
The business also has 3 data centers in London, Tokyo, and Midwest USA.
As a result, you can get better site speeds by picking to host your website on servers that are closest to your target market.
WP Engine obstructs harmful attacks on your site.
Speed & Performance
There are a lot of variables that go into site speed, however the rule of thumb is that the more complicated your website is, the more intricate the services 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 couple of small images, you’ll be great with an inexpensive shared hosting strategy from somebody like InMotion HostGator Bluehost But couple of site owners keep their WordPress set up lean. There’s usually additional plugins, customized style files, great deals of images, widgets, advertisements, types and more.
All these features integrated with decent levels of traffic can start to decrease your WordPress installation.
However a sluggish website does not imply that you need a bigger, better server. It does suggest that you need to get smarter about speed. Often it’s as simple as getting a more effective server, but in some cases it’s more about caching specific resources in a certain order and optimizing your files. Simply put- it gets complex.
Picture you are trying to transport a trailer with a pickup. Envision your trailer keeps getting much heavier. It’s meaningless to keep grumbling that your truck is not big enough when you may simply require to remove the emergency brake, set up a turbocharger, refresh the transmission fluid and combine your load.
The point is that WordPress needs aid to remain quickly as you grow. There are lots of options … however either you or a designer must execute them.
That’s where handled WordPress hosting is available in. WP Engine takes care of (almost) all speed issues. They have tailored servers with exceptionally aggressive caching and much more sophisticated “stack” than a typical webhosting. They likewise have actually trained assistance who will go into your WordPress set up and recognize the specific chokepoint to get your website moving.
They do not even allow caching plugins on their installs since they have actually such a customized caching setup.
The interesting thing is that even unoptimized WordPress installs still succeed on their platform since their platform does the extra work.
Here’s the speed test for one of my customers on WP Engine (who has a bloated theme, additional scripts, a lot of uncompressed images, among other things)- Note the Time To First Byte and the Start Render numbers. That measures how quickly the server returned enough information to start packing the page.
It’s nice to have that type of speed right out of the box- and have it stay that way no matter how big 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 considering that you are free to concentrate on speed aspects that you can quickly manage like image compression, usage of scripts, etc
. The last observation on speed- WP Engine not only provides an incorporated CDN, but they likewise offer international data centers in case your audience is primarily 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 considering that they operate on Google Cloud, you don’t have to fret about uptime either.
CDN Included
All strategies consist of a worldwide CDN (material delivery network).
The CDN will assist 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 approximated 78% of hacked sites are WordPress websites, according to Sucuri, a web security company. Often the “open doors” are plugins that weren’t updated.
Protecting sites is among the strengths of WP Engine’s handled WordPress hosting service.
The company takes numerous steps to secure WordPress websites:.
WP Engine runs daily malware/virus scans in collaboration with Sucuri.
They keep an eye on an updated firewall program to block the most recent risks.
All websites are backed up 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 supply webinars on security.
They publish security standards and lists for developers and engineers.
If your site gets hacked, WPE will clean it totally free.
Online Resources
WP Engine supplies webinars, guides, post, updates, tutorials, and a knowledgebase. With these you can find out how to:.
Launch your first site.
Troubleshoot typical issues.
Make improvements to your site.
Handle your hosting account with greater efficiency.
Both beginners and skilled WordPress site owners will discover the assistance paperwork invaluable.
WP Engine’s 60-Day Guarantee
WP Engine’s 60-day money-back warranty on all membership fees is unique in the hosting market.
It enables you to try the service in a risk-free way.
Keep in mind: this alternative is not readily available on custom hosting plans.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
Like any service, it’s not about what is finest overall, however what is finest for you based upon your objectives, budget, resources & practices.
If you are in what I consider WP Engine’s core markets- they provide a terrific service with a strong product. As a managed WordPress host, their rates is competitive. They provide more features than “WordPress hosting” strategies from other hosting brands. Their feature-set is unequaled for savvy DIYers, WordPress site designers and/or high-traffic sites that don’t want to stress over hosting concerns.
If handled hosting is a suitable for you- then go check out WP Engine’s plans here View Current Plans They do a 60-day money-back assurance. Do a test set up and see what you think of their backend. Be sure to talk w/ assistance & sales.
Get 3 months free when you sign up for WP Engine.