WP Engine is one of the best managed WordPress hosting providers. Founded in 2010, WP Engine has grown because it provides high-performance and secure hosting services specifically for WordPress. This makes it a little more pricey. But IsItWP users can enjoy a great deal — 20% off your first-month payment or get 4 months free if paid annually.
WP Engine Review (2024): Is It the Best Managed WP Hosting?
What is WP Engine?
Unlike many traditional web hosts, WP Engine offers its services entirely to WordPress users.
Its servers and framework are optimized for WordPress websites‘ unique needs, resulting in faster loading times and better overall performance.
On top of this, it offers a robust set of features, including infrastructure optimization, a global content delivery network (CDN), automated updates, proactive security measures, and expert WordPress support.
WP Engine also comes with automatic updates, daily backups, and staging environments to test changes before pushing them live.
Now that you understand WP Engine hosting better, let’s see how we tested it to see if it is right for your business.
How We Tested WP Engine
To thoroughly assess WP Engine’s capabilities and features, we used the following approach:
- Real-World Projects: We migrated an existing WordPress website to WP Engine to gauge the ease and efficiency of the migration process. We also built a new WordPress site from scratch on WP Engine’s platform, evaluating the user experience and available tools.
- Performance: We used the website speed testing tool GTmetrix to measure the loading times of our test websites before and after migrating to WP Engine. After this, we monitored the website uptime through Pingdom to assess WP Engine’s reliability.
- Functionality: We explored the entirety of WP Engine’s management features, including hosting environments, security measures, automated backups, and CDN integration. Then, we followed this up by testing the effectiveness of WP Engine’s customer support by submitting questions. We submitted our issues through various channels so that we could evaluate response times and resolution quality.
- Cost vs. Value Analysis: We compared WP Engine’s pricing plans to those of its competitors, considering the features offered and the target audience for each plan. This helped us weigh the cost of WP Engine against the value it provides in terms of performance, security, and ease of management.
WP Engine Standout Features:
- Dedicated WordPress support
- Hassle-Free Management
- Easy to set up a staging site
- Excellent speed and uptime
- Enhanced security with free SSL, CDN, and backups
- Intuitive account dashboard
- Advanced custom control panel
- It comes with beautiful premium Themes
- Backup and version control features
- 1-click site set up
- Advanced cloud hosting infrastructure
- Regular price $30 / mo. but our users pay $20 / mo for the Startup plan.
- Get started with WPEngine now!
WP Engine Cheap Hosting Review
Despite being a managed WordPress hosting solution, WP Engine offers shared hosting plans for small and medium-sized businesses.
You can find 3 different shared hosting plans that are structured based on the amount of traffic and number of sites. It’s expensive than a traditional shared hosting provider because it gives you a wide variety of WordPress specific suites to deliver enterprise level experience to your visitors.
Below are a few UNIQUE features you get from WP Engine’s shared hosting plan:
- Quickly set up dev, stage and production environments with one-click tools.
- Global CDN for faster load times, real-time performance diagnostics and WordPress specific in-built security to give you a peace of mind.
- Automated SSL certificate installation and renewals.
- Several enterprise-level tools as addons such as GeoIP service to personalize content based on geographical location, content performance insights powered by Google Analytics and multi-site ready platform to operate multiple sites with a single login.
- Managed WordPress hosting
- Developer-friendly platform
- Dev, Stage, Prod Environments
- Regular price $30 / mo. but our users pay $20 / mo!
- Real-time performance diagnostics
- Get started with WP Engine now!
WP Engine Dedicated Hosting Review
WPEngine offers dedicated server hosting for those users who attract millions of monthly visitors. With a dedicated server from WPEngine, you can host about 25 websites and add additional sites for $20 per month per site.
WPEngine offers 2 dedicated hosting plans, Premium and Enterprise. You’ll need to get in touch with the sales team to get a custom quote for your dedicated server hosting.
- Resources: In both dedicated hosting plans, you get a storage space of 100 GB–1 TB. Bandwidth per month is 400 GB to 5000GB+.
- All shared hosting features: You get all shared hosting features including global CDN, one-click tools for setting up dev, stage and production environments, automated SSL certificates and more.
- SSH gateway: Command line tools like WP-CLI is available in all dedicated hosting plans.
- Consultative onboarding: For your first 30 days, you get assistance from a dedicated technical success manager.
- Free GeoIP service: Personalize your content based on your visitors’ geographical location.
- Free performance Analytics: Access WordPress optimized Google Analytics data right within your WordPress admin panel.
- 24/7 support: Get 24/7 support via phone, live chat and ticket based email.
- And more…
- All shared hosting features
- Dev, Stage, Prod Environments
- Powerful built-in tools to speed up your growth
- Custom pricing based on your individual needs
- High performance and availability
- Get started with WP Engine now!
WP Engine Managed WordPress Hosting Review
WP Engine is one of the first hosting companies to provide WordPress centric managed hosting solutions. As a pioneer in the managed WordPress hosting industry, they boast an impressive customer list including Yelp, Asana, National Geographic, PBS, and MyFitnessPal.
The best thing is that they offer blazing fast website experience and cutting edge WordPress specific technologies.
Using WP Engine is like having an army of WordPress experts on your side when you need help. They have partnered with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud platform to offer your sites the highest availability, speed, scalability, and security around the clock irrespective of where your visitors are located in the world.
Their one-click staging tool enables you to test new plugins and updates before pushing the changes to your live site. Overall, they offer a truly superior WordPress hosting experience.
- Managed WordPress hosting
- Complete Backup and Security
- Robust caching, CDN, and real-time performance optimization
- Regular price $30 / mo. but our users pay $20 / mo!
- 1-click staging environment
- Get started with WP Engine now!
WP Engine eCommerce Hosting Review
Even though you can create and run any type of website on WP Engine, online stores often need specific features to be more effective. Below is a list of WP Engine eCommerce features that can help you run a more successful online shop.
- Quick Store Setup: This feature lets you launch your store with just one click, automatically installing all necessary eCommerce building blocks on your new WP Engine environment.
- WooCommerce Integration: You can quickly integrate WooCommerce into your WP Engine’s eCommerce platform. This allows you to set up your store, securely accept payments easily, configure shipping options, and more.
- Instant Store Search: For the high-end eCommerce WP Engine plans, Instant Store Search powered by Elasticsearch is included. This feature improves your customers’ search experience, helping them find products faster and with less effort.
- Stripe Connect Integration: WP Engine also integrates with Stripe Connect, a popular payments processor. With this integration, you can quickly set up and process transactions, as well as perform test transactions. This provides a better checkout experience for your customers.
- Smart Plugin Manager: WP Engine’s Smart Plugin Manager automatically updates all WordPress plugins to ensure they’re up-to-date, improving security and stability for your eCommerce store.
- Genesis Pro: WP Engine’s eCommerce plans include Genesis Pro for more customization options. This package provides advanced tools to create a beautiful and optimized theme for your online store.
WooCommerce Performance Features
As mentioned, WP Engine allows you to integrate WooCommerce quickly.
But on top of this, WP Engine’s eCommerce solution offers performance features specifically designed to improve the site speed and scalability of WooCommerce. This ensures a smooth shopping experience for your customers.
- Live Cart for WooCommerce: WP Engine’s Live Cart feature eliminates unnecessary AJAX requests, improving page speed and stability, particularly during high-traffic events like promotions or sales.
- EverCache for WooCommerce: WP Engine’s EverCache optimizes caching settings for your cart. By caching your pages more frequently, WP Engine ensures scalability and performance.
- WordPress for eCommerce: WordPress is a versatile CMS that can be used for various types of websites, including eCommerce stores. WP Engine’s eCommerce solution takes WordPress eCommerce to the next level, offering a robust hosting platform with tools, apps, and features tailored for WooCommerce stores.
- 1-click store creation
- Extra layer of security
- Automated plugin updates
- Pricing starts at $24 / mo!
Features
(5.0 / 5.0)As you have seen so far, WP Engine goes beyond just hosting your WordPress site. It also comes with a suite of features designed to enhance security, performance, and overall user experience.
Here are some key features you can also expect from WP Engine.
1. 1-Click Staging
As mentioned, 1-click Staging is a feature that allows you to easily create a staging environment for your WordPress site with just one click. It allows you to create a copy of your site online of the live website where you can test changes, updates, or new features before implementing them on your actual live site.
Since it is a live copy of the site, it mimics the live website, allowing you to test changes, updates, plugins, or new features more accurately before implementing them on the live site. And because it is online, a staging site allows for better collaboration between teammates.
While staging and Local may seem to serve the same purpose on the surface, this is not the case.
WP Engine Local allows you to build, customize, and test your WordPress site locally on your computer before deploying it to a live server. It allows you to work offline without an internet connection, providing flexibility and convenience.
To add to this, using Local reduces the risk of accidentally affecting the live site during development or testing.
The good news is that you can use either or both of the staging and Local features with WP Engine.
2. Copy Environments
Environments in WordPress are different setups or configurations used for developing, testing, and deploying WordPress websites or applications. This means that staging sites are part of environments.
With that said, WP Engine’s Copy Environment feature simplifies the process of duplicating WordPress environments. It enables you to quickly transfer changes made in one environment to another within the same account. This ensures consistency across your various WordPress setups, enhancing workflow and productivity.
On top of this, copying environments creates a new restore checkpoint for both the source and destination environments, ensuring data consistency.
You also have the option to include or exclude the database, providing customization according to your needs. This allows you to preserve specific data or avoid overwriting certain tables.
Most importantly, it allows you to share the copy environment with teammates or clients. This allows you to gather feedback on design and functionality while upholding your security.
3. EverCache
EverCache is a front-end cache tool developed by WP Engine to improve website performance and scalability. It does this by optimizing server resources by automatically caching static content on your site, reducing strain on servers.
Whether your site experiences a sudden surge in traffic or a steady increase in pageviews over time, EverCache ensures that your site remains responsive and delivers a smooth browsing experience to every visitor.
Beyond speed and scalability, EverCache also helps with WordPress website security. It analyzes browser requests in real time and automatically identifies and blocks potentially harmful requests.
4. Global CDN
A CDN is a network of servers placed at different locations around the world, like mini storage units for your website’s files. When someone visits your site, their computer grabs the files from the closest server instead of your main server. This cuts down on loading times, especially for visitors far away.
This ensures that your website pages load faster for users, regardless of where they are in the world, reducing the number of requests to the WP Engine origin server.
WP Engine integrates Cloudflare as its Content Delivery Network (CDN). Cloudflare also compresses images without quality loss, improving loading times.
Plus, activating WP Engine’s CDN is super easy. Once you point your DNS to Advanced Network or GES, the CDN becomes active automatically. You do not need to add customized URLs or compress images yourself.
This translates to a smoother user experience for both you and your users.
5. Automated Core Files, Theme, and Plugin Updates
Keeping your WordPress core files, plugins, and themes updated is crucial for security and functionality. WP Engine automates this process, ensuring your website stays patched against vulnerabilities and runs on the latest software versions.
The best part is that the WP Engine handles the testing and deployment process, so you can rest easy knowing your site is secure and up-to-date without your involvement.
Major releases, which introduce new features and functionality, undergo thorough testing before being deployed to your site. Minor releases containing important security and maintenance updates are deployed automatically to all sites without delay.
To add to this, WP Engine performs smoke testing before updates, which are simple tests done early to identify major problems. This ensures that updates are applied smoothly and without site disturbance.
But, updating WordPress core files is time-consuming and risky. As a result, WP Engine lets you postpone major updates for 30 days, allowing you to test them in your staging environment first.
Apart from these, here are additional features you can expect from WP Engine.
- DDoS Protection and Managed WAF: WP Engine safeguards your website against malicious attacks with robust DDoS protection and a Managed Web Application Firewall (WAF). This multi-layered security approach shields your site from DDoS floods, malware intrusions, and other security threats.
- Annual SOC 2 Audits and ISO 27001 Certification: To give you Peace of mind, WP Engine undergoes detailed yearly SOC 2 audits and maintains ISO 27001 certification. This not only keeps your site safe but also demonstrates their commitment to the highest security standards.
- Immediate Disaster Recovery: With WP Engine’s Hot Standby feature, your website won’t be affected in case a natural disaster strikes your website’s data center. This solution automatically reroutes traffic to a geographically separate data center, ensuring your site stays up and running no matter what. These backups are stored offsite on Amazon S3, ensuring your files are encrypted while they are being moved and after they arrive on the server. As a result, you get an extra layer of security.
- Many Free and Premium WordPress Themes: WP Engine provides you with access to a library of professional WordPress themes. These free and premium themes are designed to be responsive and highly customizable, meaning they’ll look great on any device, from desktops to smartphones.
Performance
(5.0 / 5.0)As a managed WordPress hosting provider, WP Engine delivers enterprise-level WordPress performance for your site.
To test the site performance for our WP Engine review, we’ve created a test WordPress site using the default Twenty Seventeen theme and uploaded some dummy content, including images. This way our test site looked and behaved like an actual average WordPress site.
After setting up our test site, we first ran the speed test using Pingdom.
According to Pingdom’s website speed test, our test site loads less than a second in New York. That’s faster than 96% of all tested sites.
Apart from Pingdom, we also used a testing tool called Load Impact to figure out how WP Engine handles visitors during a traffic surge. Load Impact sent some virtual users (VUs) to our site and gradually built up to 100 visitors at a time to test how the server handles it.
In the chart, you can find a blue line (VUs active) which shows the number of virtual users sent to our WP Engine site and a green line (VU load time) which represents how much time it took to load a web page for a user.
WP Engine performed consistently throughout the test. The number of live visitors on the site doesn’t have an impact on performance.
WP Engine Server Response Time
The content of your site can have an impact on your page loading time. For instance, if your site contains too many images, it will take more time to load. In fact, images account for most of the downloadable bytes in a typical site.
To get accurate results, instead of solely analyzing page load time, we decided to test the actual server response time as well by ignoring the content of our page entirely.
Bitcatcha works differently than Pingdom.
Bitcatcha ignores the content of your page and records the page loading time from eight different global locations: New York, LA, London, Brazil, India, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. The speed for each location is measured three separate times, and then the results are averaged.
From the result, you can see that WP Engine server response time remained under less than half a second for all geographic locations. It was particularly great in the United States. Best of all, WP Engine allows you to choose a data center when you subscribe to a plan.
Be sure to choose the nearest data center where your target audience is mostly located, which can improve your server response time.
Support
(5.0 / 5.0)When you encounter issues with your WP Engine WordPress site, their support team is available 24/7/365 to assist you. They are recipients of the Stevie Award, which recognizes their commitment to customer satisfaction.
WP Engine support teams are based in Austin, San Antonio, and Limerick. Plus, their experts are also accessible via live chat support, phone support, or ticket from your User Portal.
If you have any urgent issues, the best way to contact them is through live chat for immediate assistance.
To add to this, they offer plenty of documentation covering a wide range of topics to help you troubleshoot and resolve issues independently.
The Support Center offers step-by-step tutorials and articles for setting up a site, managing accounts and features, and troubleshooting technical issues.
They also provide support for WP Engine platform features, WordPress configuration, plugins, and themes.
Ease of Use
(5.0 / 5.0)One of the reasons WP Engine is one of the best web hosting services is its user-friendly interface and streamlined processes. These make it ideal for both beginners and experienced users.
First of all, WP Engine simplifies the process of creating a new WordPress site.
With just a few clicks in the User Portal or Dashboard, you can set up your site and hosting environments effortlessly. Plus, this hosting provider also offers step-by-step instructions to guide you through selecting site usage, choosing templates, and configuring site details with ease.
Now, WP Engine makes sure navigating through your User Portal is straightforward, thanks to its intuitive layout and clear labeling of all features and functions.
This helps you quickly find the tools and features you need without getting lost in complex menus or confusing interfaces. Plus, you have the option to group sites to help you organize your workflow better and improve user experience.
Setting up your WordPress site with WP Engine is also easy and user-friendly.
After logging in, select “Add Site” and choose your site type and setup method, which includes a blank site, migration, and so on. Then, add the name of your site and environment type.
WP Engine will create your site and provide a temporary domain for access. Here, you can choose a theme, install plugins, and add content using the familiar WordPress editor. This ensures you do not experience a learning curve.
Launching your site once you are happy with it is just as simple.
All you have to do is purchase a domain name, update WordPress URL settings, and point your DNS to the WP Engine servers.
They even offer extras like free SSL certificates and performance optimization tools to get you started with site security and customization.
Once you create a site, WP Engine offers one-click Staging.
This allows you to test changes before making them live with minimal effort. As a result, you can streamline your site development process and reduce the risk of errors, broken WordPress websites, or downtime.
To add to this, the dashboard provides easy access to all site management tools, ensuring you can quickly handle tasks like adding content, installing themes and plugins, and managing backups.
Another feature that makes WP Engine easy to use is its many integration capabilities.
It seamlessly connects with plenty of apps, tools, and services, allowing you to improve your website’s functionality without hassle.
From SSL certificate installation to plugin management, WP Engine connections simplify security measures and ensure your WordPress site remains protected against threats at all times.
Its quick connections also include domain management, making it easy for users to connect their custom domains and take their sites live without a developer’s assistance.
Customization
With so many managed hosting options available, you need to offer a personalized journey for your visitors. This is why WP Engine provides customization options that prioritize performance, uptime, and ease of use.
One way WP Engine capitalizes on this is through User Cache Segmentation.
It is challenging to show different content to different visitors on your WordPress website. To do this you will need to sacrifice caching, a key factor for fast-loading websites.
To help you with this, WP Engine’s User Cache Segmentation creates multiple versions of a page in the cache. This is based on visitor segments like marketers, developers, or any other segment you create.
Think of it like having different-colored folders in your file cabinet—specific content goes in the specific folder for quick retrieval.
This way, you can deliver targeted content without compromising performance. As a result, you can also carry out A/B testing to determine the best-performing content for the page and SEO.
You can also customize site monitoring with WP Engine.
You can customize the issue alerts so that you are notified either through Slack or email, making it more convenient for you.
On top of that, the site monitoring system allows you to personalize the alerts so that you are only notified for specific issues.
You can customize the alerts to include those from third-party tools and plugins or new code. This allows you as a website owner, to quickly address and resolve these problems before they escalate.
This proactive approach not only enhances user experience but also minimizes potential downtimes that could impact small businesses.
Now, WP Engine allows you to customize your site to reflect your unique brand.
First up, it offers a library of stunning, pre-built themes that are Gutenberg-ready. This means you can easily tweak layouts, add content, and personalize the design to match your vision without coding experience.
But what if you have a unique idea that you cannot execute with default Gutenberg blocks?
Instead, WP Engine lets you build custom Gutenberg blocks. You can group and edit the default blocks, snapping them together to create a new block for a specific function.
There is also the possibility that a new code, plugin, or custom Gutenberg blocks may cause problems on your site.
For this, WP Engine offers Local.
WP Engine Local is a free tool that lets you build and test your WordPress site offline on your computer. This allows you to experiment freely without the risk of breaking something on your live WordPress site.
WP Engine Local takes minutes to get started because of a user-friendly interface that makes building and managing your local site easy. Plus, it comes with plenty of developer tools like WP-CLI and access to logs, letting you customize and fine-tune your site better before it is live.
Once the changes are ready to go live, adding them to your live site only takes a few clicks, without complicated uploads and transfers.
Pricing
(4.0 / 5.0)WP Engine is not cheap. Their managed hosting service emphasizes on performance it delivers and the pricing is based on the amount of traffic you attract to your site. The pricing is structured for less versatility as well.
To make it even better, they’re offering our users an exclusive discount if you use our WPEngine coupon code.
FAQs
Having helped thousands of users choose a web hosting plan and start their website, we have answered just about every question you can think of. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about WP Engine.
How do I know if WP Engine is a good fit for me?
WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting solution. While it gives you a peace of mind by handling all technicalities of optimizing your server for improved performance, the reality is that it might not be the right solution for everyone. The platform is primarily targeted at a few customer segments, like SMBs, agencies, developers, enterprises and marketers.
WP Engine is a good fit for you in the following cases.
- Ease of management: You get a fine-tuned hosting setup that’s built specifically to operate WordPress sites. This way you can focus on what’s important for your business without handling any tedious system administration tasks.
- Speed: No need to install any plugins for boosting your site speed such as CDN or caching plugins. If you’re on a managed WordPress hosting environment, blazing fast site speed is assured.
- In-built security: Managed WordPress hosting companies provide bulletproof security without having you to manage complex WordPress security plugins. They also come with automatic WordPress core updates to ensure you’re using latest version so that it protects your site from known vulnerabilities.
- Developer friendly environment: You need developer friendly features like SSH access, WP-CLI, Composer, Sequel Pro and Git. You also need one-click staging environment tool that makes it easy to build sites before pushing them to production.
- Superior Support: You can also count on highly trained, qualified support professionals who know the ins and outs of your WordPress site and server.
How WP Engine differs from other WordPress hosting options?
As WordPress is the most popular website builder platform, a lot of hosting providers offer WordPress hosting that emphasizes on the convenience of building a WordPress site. With such hosting options, you don’t have to go through an additional step of installing WordPress because they come pre-installed with WordPress.
WP Engine goes beyond a managed WordPress hosting solution and provides a lot of different set of tools to help you succeed in your business, like one-click staging tool, WordPress content analytics and more. Rather than convenience, it emphasizes primarily on performance it delivers. Aside from choosing a hosting plan, you don’t have to do anything else for improving your site’s performance. In fact, WP Engine restricts you from install caching, CDN and security plugins on your site because they’re handled by themselves. This way you can focus on what matters to your business without managing system administration tasks.
Why should I choose WP Engine when I can handle the same amount of traffic and get more storage space for a comparatively lower price from other providers?
While other hosting providers handle the same amount of traffic for a cheaper plan, the benefit of WP Engine is that it delivers blazing fast website speed for all your visitors while giving you a peace of mind. You’re not required to spend your resources on optimizing your server’s performance. Best of all, you also get many enhanced features to provide breakthrough WordPress experience.
With WP Engine, you are paying for performance and the tools they give you to succeed in your business– not for storage. If you need a hosting server for media storage, you might want to choose another hosting service instead.
What plugins are restricted on the WP Engine platform?
WP Engine doesn’t allow you to use certain plugins that have been shown to clash with their hosting solution.
The banned plugins fall into a few different categories.
- Caching plugins
- Some backup plugins
- Server and MySQL thrashing plugins
- Related posts plugins
- Broken link checker plugins
- Duplicate behavior plugins
- Email plugins
- Other compromised plugins that may contain potentially vulnerable codes.
Which WP Engine plan should I get?
Choosing a WP Engine plan is easy. You can choose a plan based on the amount of traffic you’re expecting.
When you’re just starting out, you can choose the Startup plan. As you grow, you can upgrade to a higher plan based on your needs.
Where are WP Engine servers located?
When you sign up for a hosting plan on WP Engine, you’ll be allowed to choose a data center location.
- US (Iowa, South Carolina, Oregon)
- Belgium
- Taiwan
- Tokyo
- London
- Frankfurt
- Sydney
- Ireland
- Montreal
Can I upgrade my WP Engine plan later?
Of course! When you’re starting out, you can choose the most basic plan. As you grow, you can always upgrade to a higher plan per your needs.
Does WP Engine offer a month-to-month payment option?
Yes! But keep in mind that the annual plan provides the best value. You get 4 months free on an annual plan.
WP Engine Alternatives
WP Engine Vs. FlyWheel
WP Engine and Flywheel are two of the best managed WordPress hosting services. While their startup plans are similar, Flywheel‘s Tiny plan is more suitable for beginners because of the lower price point.
Despite this, WP Engine offers a broader range of plans, allowing you to pick one that better suits your needs. But even though WP Engine plans offer better performance they come with a higher price tag.
Both provide 24/7 customer support, but WP Engine’s knowledge base offers more information with more in-depth resources.
WP Engine and FlyWheel also offer similar features, such as pre-installed WordPress, website staging, and a partnership with the Google Cloud platform.
Overall, both these Managed WordPress hosting services serve the same clientele. So it is up to you to decide which better meets your needs.
Siteground Vs WP Engine
When we compared SiteGround vs WP Engine for WordPress hosting, we found that SiteGround is a more budget-friendly option.
SiteGround WordPress hosting starts at $2.99/month, while WP Engine offers premium services from $13.00/month.
To add to this, SiteGround supports multiple Content Management Systems (CMSs), while WP Engine focuses solely on WordPress. Both platforms provide user-friendly interfaces and essential features like SSL certificates and backups.
SiteGround offers real-time monitoring and an AI anti-bot system, while WP Engine provides server monitoring and plugin management.
Overall, SiteGround suits small to medium-sized businesses, while WP Engine is ideal for larger projects that you want more help managing.
Check out the latest SiteGround review here for more details on this hosting solution.
WP Engine Vs Bluehost
Bluehost offers more affordable hosting plans suitable for beginners, while WP Engine specializes in managed WordPress hosting for advanced users.
Because of a dedicated WordPress infrastructure and premium tools, WP Engine edges Bluehost in terms of performance and speed.
Bluehost‘s setup process is easy and straightforward because it offers a free WordPress plugin that integrates with your cPanel, allowing for better collaboration with WordPress.
While WP Engine excels in support because of its dedicated team of WordPress experts spread in different locations.
If you want a more budget-friendly solution, choose Bluehost. For premium performance and tailored WordPress hosting solutions, choose WP Engine.
WPEngine vs Other Hosts
Wondering how WPEngine stacks up against other web hosting companies? See our side-by-side comparison to see for yourself.
Final Recap
WP Engine is targeted at specific customer segments, like developers, marketers, SMBs, agencies, and enterprise and delivers the right set of features to help those segments expand markets quickly and effortlessly.
For example, for developers, they make it easy to focus on development & design without dealing with hosting maintenance. Marketers can build and personalize their website using their built-in tools without having to focus on maintenance.
WPEngine invests a lot of resources on training, hiring, and managing a great support team, so you can count on them when in need.
If you want a managed WordPress hosting solution that also makes it easy to build, publish and personalize your site, WPEngine is the best choice for you.
WP Engine Standout Features:
- Dedicated WordPress support
- Hassle-Free Management
- Easy to set up a staging site
- Excellent speed and uptime
- Enhanced security with free SSL, CDN, and backups
- Intuitive account dashboard
- Advanced custom control panel
- It comes with beautiful premium Themes
- Backup and version control features
- 1-click site set up
- Advanced cloud hosting infrastructure
- Regular price $30 / mo. but our users pay $20 / mo for the Startup plan.
- Get started with WPEngine now!
Nothing but positive things for WP Engine. Honestly, it is refreshing to see a service that does deliver on what it promises. There is a reason that we list this service atop our rankings right now! The experiences here have been nothing but positive and there is no beating the lightning speeds that you get here.
I have no doubt that WP Engine is one of the best WordPress hosts in market. Personally I think the recent updates – of not charging on bot visits and increasing support team size, are very positive.
I’ve seen this comment about SEO in a few other places, but no direct example of what it is. What are the issues with SEO so that I can be better informed on how to fix them?
My experience is similar to Greg’s. I think WPE is great for people who don’t really “get” WP, but WPE actually refuses to support the file system customization I usually do. You *must* use wp-content to use their system, if you change your content directory, they won’t support it. I wonder how people using skeleton work with them?
And yeah, they like to blame the “rookie developer”. I don’t think 9 years of almost exclusively WP custom plugin and theme development makes me a “rookie”, but hey, what do I know…I want to change my directory structure. I must be insane.
Thank you for this review. I have always been curious, but never used it on any of my clients site’s because I wasn’t sure. I do believe some people have liked it, but it depends on what they’re needs are. Based on your comment I will pass.
Neil… somewhat surprised to see your comment here :), i see your site is hosted by wpengine. i switched my site see how it goes. so far customer svc has been a mix.
We have run many clients on WordPress Engine and have had mixed reviews with our last experience ranging in the “awful” category. DO NOT go to them if you run a high profile client. Use Linode or similar. They use Rackspace for their hosting (which sucks) so any large scale sites will need to go to a better host since they don’t actually manage their own servers. Here are some issues we’ve run into:
1) Can’t get a db over 700MB or posts records > 50k rows
2) Cron jobs – forget about it
3) Any server to server needed to use ssh2 instead of ssh or command line tools
Just know what you’re getting into.
Big fan of WPEngine, we have 100s of client sites running on our WPE environment.
Pros – high uptime, high performance (sites can handle 100s of visitors at once without nose diving performance), patches are taken care of, CDN is awesome, snapshot and staging site saves our developers 100s of hours of time, site migration plugin makes moving sites easy, support is responsive and 24/7 (a few years ago it wasn’t some there are conflicting things around the web on this)
Cons – some quirks around SEO which are easily fixable, some plugins not allowed but that’s the price pay for security vs convenience, some quirks around caching if you’re using session cookies on the front end, eg if you’re using woocommerce
WPE is over-rated. They have a lot of issues that people not in the know are unaware of. The canonical name wpengine.c causes double indexing on google and DESTROYS SEO. If you try to point the name back to your domain you run into issues with looping. They also force a no index in robots.txt without alerting anyone of doing so. This disallow gets copied over to the live site causing your site to not be indexed by google. Again DESTROYING your SEO. They added this disallow to solve the problem of double indexing, which does not work anyway because google still indexes it (the correct way is to use htaccess). So in the end the site winds up not being indexed and gets points against it from google.
If you approach them with any issue, they blame it on the developer. This is so they can sell you developer services, getting your current developer fired. Imagine your coding a website for someone and someone comes in when you are not looking and puts a disallow on the site. You know the default is to only disallow the admin panel and you never created a robots.txt file, nor do you even have access to the robots.txt file from the sftp. As far as you are concerned it does not exist. You then get a call from your client screaming saying that they spoke with WPE who says it is a common mistake by a rookie developer. As far as I am concerned the only person responsible for the disallow is the person who puts it there. You cant force code and not take responsibility. What other code has been forced that the developer will get blamed for?
We have slower speeds with WPE in comparison to a cheaper route with a collo or digitalocean. Also if you run ads on your site, they have no solution for you. You still need to find a host for your ads, in which case you might as well host wp there as well. Its that or allow yourself to be a part of the game where WPE steals clients with shady business practices that hurt not just the developers but also their own customers.
The site I worked on had great SEO until switching to WPE. The site speeds slow to a crawl at certain points of the day. Not surprising since you are sharing the server with many other sites and they are tightly managing your percentage of that server. Any large spike that happens and you cant serve those requests. They just cant get to it fast enough. They were honest about this from the beginning so kudos to them for not hiding this.
Overall, I do not have all the answers to why we experienced such a large SEO hit. We came from a very fast server and a noticeable slowdown can be seen on analytics once we switched to WPE. This along with the canonical name issue and forced disallow done behind the developers back has definitely not been good for us.
All this said, for someone starting out with less than 80k views a month, WPE may work just fine. If you have high traffic and want to have control over your sites SEO, rather than being grouped into decisions made for hundreds of thousands of sites which may not be right for you, look elsewhere.
WP Engine is ok. They have different ways of doing things and are a bit limiting. e.g. will not allow certain plugins. The support is responsive and they will work to resolve your problems. I found them nice for the most part.
They make things seem easier than they are at times, to sell people on their service. e.g. the idea of instant transfer to them as if DNS delay does not exist. They have some poor recommendations at times. e.g. CName instead of A-Records. This sort of thing benefits them but is not best practice as you cant assign an apex domain to a CName. I found this sort of thing would happen often… they really sell people on the idea that their way is easier and better than everyone else, but going so far as ignoring best practices. This is noticable in their caching as well, which is how they get such great numbers in regards to speed, however it is not best practice to cache so aggressively.
Overall, they are decent. I did not find support any better than other places and was often just thrown a link to a website page when I was searching for answers that intended to dig a bit deeper. The speeds are a bit of an illusion. All said, the pricing is a bit high when you get down to reality.
Neil Sir is still on WP Engine
I am thinking of using them for a client who uses woocommerce for his ecommerce site. What ecom program are you using and could you please provided a link to your sites. I want to see how fast they are?
Thank you,
Keith
What are you using now, Neil?
Wpengine has its own benefits as well as cons. I used it and it worked pretty well for me.
Following are some cons that I experienced with WPengine
I am pretty experience in WordPress, and have tons of experience on Hosting companies… wpengine is just not right hosting company for experience users.
– slow ftp upload speed (i am using 11mbps internet upload speed ISP, so i know)
– site migration (nightmare and confusing)
– not 24/7 customer support
– limited control and options in dashboard.
– display their ads on people ‘s website without permission…
I have used quite a few big name hosting companies through the years but they were all the hosting companies that sell their service by price and with the 99.9% uptime promise which is usually pure BS. After years of issues with downtime over an hour at a time slow speed spells and tech support totally denying there was a problem, I switched my main WordPress site which is a life insurance website to WP Engine. The change was like going from driving a Pinto to a Mercedes Benz. I now have consistent super speed, great security which is a major factor for a WordPress site and a team of people that handle all of the updates and actually maintain the website. They even keep track of everyones plugins to make sure none of the plugins are prone to problems that consume heavy resources or become security risks. The only thing I can say is you get what you pay for. I wish I new about these people years ago. It could have saved me a ton of aggravation. When you think of the thousands of dollars you can invest into website design, it only makes good sense to use good hosting. A hosting company can either make or break a nice website.
WPEngine requires users to use a strong password. You can’t even set up a user with a “medium” strength password. Just saying 🙂
WP Engine seriously has the best support out there. They are always professional and get back to you quickly. I host a couple of ecommerce sites with them and it is well worth the money for the peace of mind. Having the staging site is so helpful and easy to use instead of having to set up and maintain a separate dev site myself. The daily restore points and being able to make manual restore points has helped me out tremendously when I’ve accidentally broken things lol It really does feel like having an army of WordPress experts at your side. I highly recommend them!
WP Engine is awesome.
I have a number of sites hosted with them.
Super fast, easy backup/restore, staging area to play with changes, and fantastic support.
Hosting is definitely an area where you tend to get what you pay for.
If you have a site that you really care about or that you’re trying to actually make money with, then WP Engine is a no-brainer and absolutely worth it.
I would be careful about saying that WPEngine makes a site practically hacker proof. Because the user has to do their part, too. And if they don’t, like using an easy password into admin, well, the site can be hacked. And WPEngine can not prevent that. Other than that, I love WPEngine.
I switched to WPEngine, they are professional, when I call they answer the phone (even on their cell), and I feel they listen to their customers. The only thing they promise is to work hard, and I think they’ve kept their word.
WP engine and its support staff have been the best in the industry and I can say this as a user of Pagely, web synthesis and Zippy kid so I do know what good support is and I will tell anybody that wants to know is that WPEngine has the best support.
I highly recommend WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting services. Uptime has been excellent, and the guys at support have always gone out of their way to help me whenever I had any questions or trouble with the site.
I spent the first 6 months of this year researching WP Engine, Page.ly, and ZippyKid as potential hosting providers for build my service platform at WP Valet. After 6 months, I ultimately went with WP Engine
I’ve worked with various hosting providers over the years and WPEngine has provided, by miles, the best support ever. They helped us improve the management and quality of our site massively, particularly through the suggestions surrounding management of staging environments, spam signups/rogue traffic reduction and general maintenance. Furthermore, our site is running smoother than ever, despite continuing to grow in size.
– Tim