Join me as I compare WP Engine vs Bluehost, two of the largest brands in the hosting industry, in this post. You’ll discover all you need to know about their price choices, convenience of use, performance, security, and customer service right here.
When researching WordPress hosting choices, you’ll probably likely come across the terms WP Engine and Bluehost.
WP Engine is a well-known managed WordPress hosting company. The service provider only offers WordPress hosting. Its target audience appears to be a variety of large-scale enterprises and websites. It is just a more premium, worry-free hosting alternative.
Bluehost is also one of the most popular shared hosting services on the market. Its simplicity and high performance attract newcomers searching for a low-cost entry point. It is likewise heavily focused on WordPress, but not as exclusively as WP Engine.
WP Engine and Bluehost have slightly different techniques, as you may have guessed. However, this adds to the intrigue of comparing the two. So let’s start with their summaries.
Bluehost vs WP Engine -- Overview
WP Engine and Bluehost are both hosting services that cater to consumers in need of WordPress hosting, but they couldn’t be more different. WP Engine is a managed hosting company, whereas Bluehost is primarily recognised for its WordPress-focused shared hosting. WP Engine provides far superior performance numbers and is more sophisticated, but Bluehost is much more budget-friendly.
Here’s a short rundown of both services. Because this essay is pretty lengthy, you can skip directly to the conclusion if you want to hear my final comments.
WINNER
Bluehost
Bluehost vs WP Engine Pricing Review
WP Engine is significantly more expensive than Bluehost in terms of pricing alone. WP Engine has four plans and one bespoke plan, with pricing ranging from $22.50 to $217.50 per month. Bluehost’s lowest plan costs $2.95 per month, while its most costly plan costs $13.95 per month. Furthermore, Bluehost offers managed WordPress plans beginning at $9.95/mo, with the only advantage being that it facilitates scaling.
True, the prices differ significantly between the two. What counts is what you receive for your money. Let’s compare the plans of the lowest suppliers for a better understanding.
To begin, there are some parallels between the two. Both WP Engine and Bluehost provide a free SSL certificate and CDN in their entry-level plans, as well as the ability to host one website. The similarities, however, end there.
WP Engine Pricing Review
WP Engine offers four managed hosting plans, ranging in price from $22.50 per month to $217.50 per month with a one-year payment period.
However, not all plans are created equal. That is why I recommend that you consider:
- Startup ($22.50/month) if you need a robust website for your growing company. For the resources contained, the pricing is really affordable.
- Scale ($217.50/mo) if you provide website development, design, or management services to your clients. Each of the 30 websites would cost $7.25 a month to host.
Obviously, your unique demands are what drive the decision, so with that in mind, you should choose what works best for you.
Our Recommendation
Bluehost Pricing Review
Bluehost also offers four different plans. Prices range from $2.95 per month to $13.95 per month with a three-year billing plan.
Bluehost, unlike WP Engine, suggests the best plan, Choice Plus. However, I believe Plus provides far more value in terms of available resources for the money you pay.
- Plus ($5.45/mo) provides limitless websites and SSD storage, in comparison to Basic,
When it comes to the Choice Plus and Pro plans, both provide some handy features such as domain privacy and automatic backups. However, unless you have a unique need for these services, these plans are prohibitively expensive. And the renewal rates raise the price even further.
Our Recommendation
Bluehost vs WP Engine Pricing Review -- Summary
I don’t blame you if, at this point in my post, you’ve already made up your mind due of the price difference.
Keep in mind, though, that WP Engine is a managed hosting company, which means you won’t have to worry about automated updates, managed upgrades, daily backups, or constant website monitoring. That is taken care of by the host.
Furthermore, WP Engine provides a generous 60-day money-back guarantee, giving you plenty of opportunity to test it out. Bluehost, on the other hand, offers the standard 30-day money-back guarantee.
When comparing Bluehost vs WP Engine pricing, Bluehost provides lesser costs. However, given that Bluehost provides shared hosting and WP Engine provides managed hosting, WP Engine’s costs aren’t outrageous.
WINNER
Bluehost
Bluehost vs WP Engine -- Ease of Use
When it comes to user interfaces and control panels, simplicity is key. And let me tell you, the WP Engine versus Bluehost battle is fierce. Both providers made certain that their user interfaces and control panels were simple to use.
Account management dashboard
WP Engine features a totally personalised dashboard. While WP Engine management is more complex than normal shared hosting, its interface is virtually as simple to use.
The primary dashboard contains a lot of important information.
The menu on the far left contains all of the tools and functionality required to administer your sites, such as billing, tools, and sites. You can discover your site’s statistics on the right, which may help you manage your storage and track the amount of visits.
Bluehost, too, has its own bespoke user panel. This dashboard serves as both a hosting management system and a site control panel. You may install WordPress and configure your domains and email accounts from this page. Simply control your entire website. All of these tools are accessible via the left-hand menu.
Another feature I adore about Bluehost’s interface is the to-do list in the centre. While it is largely worthless for sophisticated users, it is incredibly useful for beginning users and aids in preserving order when developing a website.
To summarise, I found both services’ dashboards to be simple to use. Both dashboards are fairly simple and well-organized. Bluehost, on the other hand, appears to be more geared for beginners.
Control panel comparison
WP Engine has created its own control panel, but Bluehost has incorporated a modified cPanel with the original administration panel.
When you click on the site you wish to control, a menu on the left will appear where you may manage all three environments (Production, Staging, and Development). Each has its own menu choices, such as SSL, Domains, CDN, and many more, and may be operated individually.
Keep in mind that WP Engine handles speed, automated upgrades, and security precautions, so you don’t have to.
Bluehost, on the other hand, includes a modified cPanel in addition to the native administrative panel.
I should point out that the native management panel remains the primary control area. cPanel is left as a more complex management tool for managing files, databases, and free email accounts.
This means you might not even need it because all of the functions, such as installing WordPress or other programmes, are available in the main control panel. Domain administration is also available in Bluehost’s native management area, under the Domains tab.
Choosing a winner between the two here is highly subjective. Both WP Engine and Bluehost offer a very user-friendly, intuitive experience, which makes their services even more appealing. Bluehost does, however, provide cPanel, which some customers may be more accustomed and comfortable with.
Extra hosting management features
In addition to the incredibly user-friendly dashboards, both providers give several very valuable supplementary features.
WP Engine’s offerings include Production, Staging, and Development environments. The three settings provided by WP Engine are among the primary reasons why customers use its services.
- Production – the real live version of your website with which all users interact.
- Staging – creates a duplicate of your site for testing changes or troubleshooting faults.
- Development You can also create a replica of your site for construction and development.
These environments enable you to explore, create, and test your site before putting it live.
Bluehost recently added staging capabilities for WordPress sites. The creation procedure is quite simple.
To set up a staging environment, navigate to the WordPress Admin area and select Staging from the list of pre-installed Bluehost plugins.
It only takes a few clicks to begin playing with your website. So, make a backup of your site and experiment carefully.
Bluehost also provides access to its marketing tools, such as Google Ads and Google My Business.
You can quickly build up and run a small marketing campaign with them directly from your dashboard. You may run advertising or list your company on Google Maps for phrases like “best pizza restaurant.”
So it appears that both vendors provide staging services. Both make staging as simple as possible. Bluehost also provides a marketing tool that may help you increase the visibility of your website.
Overall, both providers are quite user-friendly, with straightforward and simple-to-navigate native interfaces. Bluehost, on the other hand, offers cPanel. Furthermore, WP Engine and Bluehost provide staging, with Bluehost also providing marketing capabilities.
WINNER
Bluehost
Bluehost vs WP Engine -- Performance
WP Engine versus Bluehost was a clear winner in terms of performance. WP Engine outperforms Bluehost in terms of speed and dependability. It had a greater uptime, a faster loading speed, and could handle more traffic. Bluehost, on the other hand, provided strong performance and a faster average response time than WP Engine.
Uptime and response time
Let me walk you through how I evaluate these metrics. An uptime of 99.9 percent to 99.95 percent is acceptable. Anything over that is fantastic, and anything below is not so good. Of course, complete uptime is ideal.
The typical reaction time is 200-450ms, anything more than 1s is terrible, and anything in between is OK.
Both suppliers were investigated for around two months.
WP Engine was producing pretty outstanding results at the time. Even though it guarantees 99.95 percent uptime, what you actually receive is significantly greater. WP Engine did not have a single downtime throughout those two months, resulting in a flawless 100 percent uptime.
Its average reaction time was 489 milliseconds. Nonetheless, I anticipated more. The timing is not in any way awful, but it might be better. Especially when the market’s average reaction time is 600ms.
To be honest, Bluehost’s performance is also excellent. In reality, it is among the top-performing shared hosting services.
It suffered six outages in two months of testing, totaling 11 minutes of downtime. Still, a whopping 99.99 percent uptime. Especially when there is no uptime assurance. Bluehost has a very good average response time of 361ms!
In short, WP Engine performed somewhat better. The uptime was consistent, at 100 percent. The response time was also excellent. Bluehost, on the other hand, was just as amazing, with a little faster average response time and a still extremely stable 99.99 percent uptime.
Website speed
I did a loading speed test on both WP Engine and Bluehost to see how fast they were. I established equivalent scenarios by installing identical templates on both providers. Furthermore, both are hosted and tested in the United States.
You may improve performance by hosting your website on a server that is nearest to your intended audience. WP Engine has servers in the United States, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, and Australia. Bluehost, on the other hand, solely has data centres in the United States.
Before we get into the findings, here are three metrics to keep an eye on:
+ Time to First Byte (TTFB) – the time it takes for the server to respond to a website-opening request. It’s best if it’s less than 200ms.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – the time it takes to load your site’s largest (heaviest) file (image, video, etc.). For the best outcomes, it should be less than 2.5s.
- Fully Loaded Time – the time it takes for a website to load. Any delay of more than 3 seconds is considered poor performance.
Keeping this in mind, WP Engine performed admirably. It has an LCP of 938ms. Which readily conforms to the regulations.
The Fully Loaded Time is 1.1s, which is an incredible performance. We’re still a long way from the dreadful 3 second threshold.
Looking at the TTFB, which is 140ms, it is evident that WP Engine met all of the necessary timings. Excellent loading speed and a fast server. Simply simple, outstanding performance.
Bluehost’s results were significantly less outstanding. Its LCP and Fully Loaded Time are both 1.8s in this situation. While not as good as WP Engine, this is still a respectable outcome.
However, TTFB is at 1 second, which is a bit alarming. This implies that the server may be a little faster. So, if it weren’t for the poor server response, the site would probably load faster.
In conclusion, WP Engine produced considerably quicker outcomes. The loading time was quite fast, and the server responsiveness was excellent. However, Bluehost also exhibited very strong performance that outperformed the market average.
Stress testing results
Finally, I was curious about how well both companies manage growing traffic. So I sent 50 virtual visitors to the site for five minutes at a time to browse about.
Simply speaking, having 50VUs on the site at the same time is a lot of traffic. If this trend continues, it might result in up to 50 000 monthly visitors.
As a result, I don’t anticipate every provider to be able to manage such load. If it appears too difficult, I reduce the number by 5 until I succeed.
WP Engine’s initial pass is at 30VUs. That is to be expected. According to the service, its lowest package can support up to 25 000 monthly visits.
It appears to be speaking the truth. What’s wonderful to know is that, even with such high traffic, the response time (blue line) remained relatively steady, with no excessive responses to the rise in visitors (grey line.) This indicates that the server can handle that many visitors without slowing down.
Bluehost, on the other hand, handled 15VUs.
Furthermore, it appears that response time (blue line) is significantly more depending on the quantity of visitors (grey line.)
Even though the server had to slow down to accommodate all of the visitors, 15VU is still a lot. Approximately 15,000 unique visits each month.
In a nutshell, WP Engine handled more traffic. Its plans indicate an estimated number of monthly visits, which is precisely what it can handle. Bluehost, on the other side, managed quite heavy traffic without incident.
When comparing the performance of WP Engine with Bluehost, one sticks out substantially more. WP Engine is significantly quicker, more dependable, and capable of handling higher traffic volumes. If you want top performance, WP Engine is unquestionably the best choice.
WINNER
WP Engine
Bluehost vs WP Engine -- Support
WP Engine and Bluehost both provide similar support alternatives, including as 24/7 live chat and phone help, as well as extensive knowledge libraries. WP Engine, on the other hand, goes a step further and includes email ticket assistance in the bundle.
When I have questions, I usually prefer to initiate a live chat because it is the quickest method to have them answered. So that’s what I put to the test for my WP Engine versus Bluehost comparison.
I was interested in learning more about each provider’s money-back promise. And it is precisely what I requested.
First, I contacted WP Engine’s sales staff, and I was quickly connected.
The responses were rapid. Each time, the agent responded to my message in less than a minute.
Although the chat was brief, it was enjoyable. My inquiry was answered right away. There were no links to terms and conditions or efforts to sell me a plan. So I must tell that I was overjoyed.
When I contacted Bluehost with the identical query, I was connected in the blink of an eye and received a fast response.
The representative went through the terms of the money-back guarantee in great detail with me. Again, no links and no intrusive ads. Just a quick and easy answer, which is exactly what I needed.
Despite the fact that the dialogue was brief, I must observe that the responses in between messages were slightly slower than with WP Engine. But not by much, so nothing to worry about there.
Aside from the live chat feature, both companies provide excellent knowledge bases with a wealth of relevant information on a variety of topics.
First and foremost, WP Engine’s help centre is extremely well-organized. It offers several subjects with top (most often seen) articles suggested. You may also use a search box to hunt for specific lessons and explanations on web hosting or website maintenance if you want.
Bluehost’s knowledge base is similarly well-organized as WP Engine’s. It has a very clean appearance, and you may select a topic of interest or search for a specific query.
Both suppliers feature a wealth of relevant and up-to-date content on their websites. However, I must admit that I like the aesthetic of WP Engine. That is not to say that Bluehost’s is any less helpful or practical.
In terms of live chat, WP Engine and Bluehost are fairly comparable. Both of their representatives responded quickly and were really professional. WP Engine, on the other hand, provides email customer assistance, which Bluehost does not. Furthermore, both suppliers offer extensive and up-to-date knowledge bases.
WINNER
Bluehost
Bluehost vs WP Engine -- Our Recommendation
So, for the price, Bluehost has a lot to offer while still providing decent performance. It has another notable benefit over WP Engine in that it may be utilised with any CMS. Consider Bluehost if you want to run a personal blog or a small company website.
WP Engine, on the other hand, has far faster performance and more comprehensive website construction capabilities. So, if you want exceptional performance, security, and a more business-oriented approach to hosting, WP Engine might be the answer.
WINNER
Bluehost
WP Engine and Bluehost alternatives
If neither WP Engine nor Bluehost appear to be a suitable fit for you, there are alternative hosting services to consider. Hostinger has some of the most economical price choices available, while Flywheel is a strong cloud-based alternative to WP Engine.
Hostinger
Hostinger is a lot cheaper than both Bluehost and Squarespace . However, unlike both of them, it delivers even better performance. User experience, customer support, and all the basics are also top-quality.
The cheapest Hostinger shared hosting plan is only $2.59/month, and the resources you get are quite generous. Free SSL certificates and generous storage will be waiting for you.
HostGator
For total newbies in the field, HostGator is a wonderful choice. It not only has very low cost choices, but it is also really simple to use and design your website with.
Hatchling, Baby, and Business are the three major plans offered by HostGator. They are $2.75, $3.50, and $5.25 each month, respectively. It provides an easy-to-use cPanel control panel as well as its own website builder, making administering and creating a website from scratch straightforward.
DreamHost
DreamHost is yet another fantastic option to Namecheap and HostGator that combines abundant resources, low pricing, and high performance.
DreamHost specialises on WordPress hosting, although you may use whatever CMS you choose. While it is priced similarly to HostGator, the host offers a 100% uptime guarantee and exceptionally safe hosting options. Furthermore, you may pay monthly without incurring exorbitant fees.
InMotion Hosting
InMotion Hosting is a versatile solution for nearly any website building project. The service provider is well-known for its dependable performance and wide range of hosting options.
You may select from shared, WordPress, dedicated, and VPS hosting options. If you want traditional cPanel hosting, shared hosting options beginning at $2.29/month are ideal.
WP Engine vs Bluehost FAQs
Is WP Engine leader to Bluehost?
WP Engine outperforms Bluehost when it comes to performance. WP Engine offers a 99.95 percent uptime guarantee, however Bluehost does not. WP Engine also boasts a fantastic average response time of 180ms, compared to Bluehost’s 501ms. Both ISPs offer excellent uptime metrics.
Is Bluehost less expensive than WP Engine?
Yes, Bluehost is less expensive than WP Engine. Bluehost’s shared hosting services start at $2.95/month for the Basic plan, $5.45/month for the Plus and Choice Plus plans, and $13.95/month for the Pro plan. WP Engine’s shared hosting options start at $22.50 per month and go all the way up to $217.50 per month.
