WPEngine is a WordPress hosting service for VIP users. Their hosting service is trouble-free and provides lightning-fast and reliable servers that can deal with anything. Your website is very resistant to being hacked, and the exceptional customer support that they provide makes you feel like a king. They provide top-tier security, one-click staging area, automated caching, daily backups, one-click restoration points, and automatic security updates. In addition, they provide automatic security updates. WPEngine is comparable to having a team of WordPress professionals ready to help you around the clock. Just so you know (Just sayin’), WPEngine is the WordPress hosting platform of choice for companies such as HTC, FourSquare, SoundCloud, and Balsamiq, among many others. WPEngine is the answer for your problem if you own a company and do not want to deal with the technical aspects of maintaining your blog. As a bonus, all WP Engine accounts now include with access to all 36+ premium StudioPress themes and the Genesis framework at no additional cost.
pros
- Fast Loading Time
- Expert WordPress support
- Advanced Security Tools
- 1-click WordPress install
- Free SSL, CDN, and Website Backups
- Easy Staging Tools
- 10+ Premium Themes
cons
- No Free Domain
WP Engine Review from Our Experts
WP Engine is an industry leader in providing premium, fully managed WordPress hosting. They are pioneers in the area of managed WordPress hosting, and they claim an amazing customer list, which includes companies such as Yelp, Asana, National Geographic, and PBS. MyFitnessPal is also one of their clients. WP Engine is an excellent option for those who want quality WordPress hosting without the headache of other management tasks. You should read our in-depth analysis of WP Engine to determine whether or not it is the best option for you.
This is going to be an extensive review of WP Engine, in which we will take a comprehensive look at the services they provide. If you do not like to read the whole evaluation, then the following is a condensed version of the overall score for our WP Engine review.
In the end, we determined that WP Engine is the most effective managed WordPress hosting company after conducting an evaluation of their services. They provide the greatest platform available, which includes quicker servers, more security, and peace of mind for customers, all of which are necessary qualities in a managed WordPress host.
Having stated that, let’s dive into the specifics and take a close look at the reasoning behind how we arrived at this decision.
About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now one of the leading managed WordPress hosting companies in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen started WP Engine when he saw a need for specialized WordPress hosting due to the rising popularity of WordPress.
WP Engine is Headquartered in Austin, Texas with 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 consistently contributes to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
Only managed WordPress hosting is available with WP Engine. The following hosting solutions are available with their managed WordPress plans:
- Managed hosting – Managed hosting environment suitable for small business and blogs
- Managed Hosting Plus – Includes automated plugin updates tested with AI including 3rd party plugins.
- Secure Hosting – Additional security layers with website firewall and DDoS protection
- Ecommerce Hosting – WooCommerce hosting with powerful store search, eCommerce templates, and more
There are five distinct tiers accessible for each of these hosting solutions, and they are as follows: startup, professional, growth plan, scale, and custom. Additionally, dedicated servers and development environments, client success management, and priority support are included with the Custom plan.
All plans offer unlimited data transmission. The plans vary depending on the following factors:
- number of WordPress installs
- traffic volume (Monthly visitors or number of visits per month)
- disk storage amount
- Bandwidth requirement
Each plan on WP Engine has a predetermined limit on the total number of visits that may be made to your hosting account. In the event that your account exceeds such restrictions, you may be subject to overage charges for any further visits.
WP Engine gives users of WordPress access to a variety of special capabilities that the majority of web servers either don’t provide or charge extra for. These unique characteristics are as follows:
- Git version control
- Staging environment: instantly staging sites for testing
- Easy transferable WordPress installation from free to paid accounts
- Free SSL certificates and SSH access
- Cutting edge technologies including latest PHP version
During the course of our research of WP Engine, we discovered that the company provides the most cutting-edge and all-encompassing managed WordPress hosting services.
Advanced Security Features
Additionally, WP Engine provides its users with a selection of premium security options. You won’t need to worry about keeping up with core WordPress updates since they are done for you automatically.
Before implementing any significant core changes for its clients, WP Engine does exhaustive testing. They are equipped with a patented intrusion detection and prevention system that can thwart any brute force assaults, DDoS attacks, malware, JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, and many other types of attacks.
In addition to this, they collaborate with independent security companies to carry out routine code reviews and security audits.
Because your security is assured, if your website is hacked, WP Engine will remedy the problem at no additional cost to you.
Customer Support and Service
WP Engine provides a support staff made up entirely of WordPress industry professionals. They tout a customer satisfaction rate of over 97% despite having thousands of contacts with customers every single day.
All clients have access to live chat assistance around the clock. Support is provided. With the exception of the Startup plan, all other options provide round-the-clock access to phone assistance. The customer service team will open an internal support ticket for you if they are unable to address a problem instantly over the phone or through chat.
Enterprise clients get access to email-based ticket assistance 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, Premium and Enterprise clients have the opportunity to participate in a consultative one-on-one onboarding experience.
Additionally, WP Engine has a specialised staff devoted to the customer experience operations. They work hard to make the WP Engine user experience better for customers all the time.
In addition to that, they provide customers with a comprehensive library of articles from their knowledge base, how-to instructions, and tutorials that can be used by users who wish to solve problems on their own.
CDN for Even Faster Loading
In partnership with MaxCDN, WP Engine provides customers with a content delivery network (CDN), which makes their hosting even more efficient.
The Content Delivery Network (CDN) is included at no additional charge with each and every WP Engine hosting plan, which is a substantial benefit and a significant savings.
36+ Premium WordPress Themes
WP Engine has completed the acquisition of StudioPress, a well-known premium WordPress theme provider.
Now, all users of WP Engine have access, at no additional cost, to the renowned Genesis framework as well as more than thirty-six premium StudioPress themes.
The Genesis Framework is well-known for producing high-performance themes that are also beneficial to search engines. The functionality of their site has not been sacrificed in order to achieve quicker page load speeds in their code base.
It’s true that you won’t have to pay anything more to receive all of these professionally designed and well-coded themes; in fact, you get more than $2,000 worth of extra value for free.
Money Back Guarantee
WP Engine has a substantial money-back guarantee of sixty days’ worth of service. You have the option to terminate your account and obtain a full refund within the first sixty days if you do not find their service to be satisfactory.
The guarantee is only applicable to billing plans that are paid for annually.
Pros and Cons of WP Engine
WP Engine is a well-known web hosting provider, however its services may not be suitable for all customers. Before deciding on a course of action, you should think about both of these aspects.
Pros of choosing WP Engine
Security –
Your website is safeguarded by a wide range of cutting-edge security protections that other hosts don’t provide, but WP Engine does.
Fast Loading Times –
Your website loads quickly because to WPEngine’s exclusive Evercache technology and servers that are tuned specifically for WordPress. In addition to that, you will get access to a CDN, which will further improve speed.
Reliability –
The patented front-end layer structure used by WP Engine can readily withstand traffic surges without causing your website to become less responsive.
WordPress Expert Support –
The whole of WP Engine’s customer support team is formed of WordPress professionals that have received extensive training.
Rave Reviews –
WP Engine is an extremely well-known web hosting provider that has earned high marks from a wide variety of clients for the dependability of their systems and the quality of their support offerings.
Cons of choosing WP Engine
Disallowed Plugins –
WP Engine does not let you to install some WordPress plugins on your website. This might be because these plugins produce a high server load, are incompatible with other WP Engine capabilities, or conflict with other WP Engine features. This comprises a large number of plugins for caching, backup, related post, and other functions.
No Domain Registrations –
Your website loads quickly because to WPEngine’s exclusive Evercache technology and servers that are tuned specifically for WordPress. In addition to that, you will get access to a CDN, which will further improve speed.
Higher Costs –
When compared to shared hosting, WP Engine’s prices are higher; however, the features they provide make the additional cost more than worthwhile.
WP Engine Performance Tests
Our evaluations have earned the confidence of WPBeginner readers because we only suggest goods and services that we have personally tried and tested. We go to each of the top WordPress hosting companies and sign up for their services so that we can completely examine their claims using our own industry-standard testing procedures.
For the purpose of this evaluation, we set up a website using WordPress on WPEngine. We loaded the website with fake data, including media and graphics, using the basic Twenty Seventeen theme. In this manner, the appearance and functionality of our test site mimicked those of a real ordinary WordPress site.
WP Engine Speed Test Results
After preparing our testing location, the first thing that we did was the speed test. We tested our example website using the Pingdom tool on the servers provided by WP Engine.
The following are the findings:
Our specialised test website loaded in a little over a hundredth of a second. This is an impressively excellent result taking into account that we did not have to install any performance improvement software.
WP Engine Stress Test
Next, we wanted to test how well WP Engine servers perform when there is a high volume of visitors. K6 is the name of the instrument that we used to measure this (formerly LoadImpact). To test the server’s ability to deal with increasing demand from numerous connections at once, we started with a small number and worked our way up to 100 unique visitors at once.
The following are the findings:
The red line indicates the average response time, while the green line indicates the total number of people currently logged in. As you can see, the performance of our test site was quite good, with just a few tiny spikes. Throughout the whole of the test, it consistently demonstrated an astounding reaction rate.
As the number of users in the test rose, the chart demonstrates that the WP Engine server performance did not change during the duration of the test. During the period that was being stressed, there was not a single instance of downtime that was reported.
WP Engine Server Response Time
The second item that we examined was the amount of time it took for the server to respond from various geographic locations. A programme known as Bitcatcha was used in order to carry out this test.
The following are the findings of the server response time test conducted by WP Engine:
The screenshot demonstrates that the amount of time it took for the WP Engine server to respond was consistently less than half a second across all geographic areas. It achieved a very high level of success in the United States.
Is WP Engine Right for You?
After going through our comprehensive WP Engine review and looking at the performance ratings, you may be asking whether WP Engine is the web host that’s best suited for you now that you’ve had the chance to do so.
After doing an in-depth analysis of WP Engine’s services, we have determined that they deserve the title of “Best Managed WordPress Hosting.”
If you want to host your WordPress website without having to deal with any hassles at all, WP Engine is the best option available to you. WP Engine is an excellent choice for WordPress newbies, bloggers, and companies who want to quit spending time on technical intricacies and choose a server that works without any further configuration. WordPress freelancers and developers will discover that the enhanced capabilities offered by WP Engine will save them time when working on client projects involving WordPress development. And when their customer base expands, rising enterprises won’t have any trouble expanding their hosting space to accommodate the additional demand.
Frequently Asked Questions About WP Engine
1. Is WP Engine a shared hosting company?
WP Engine is not a shared hosting firm, and the company does not provide services or plans that are analogous to shared hosting services. WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting provider that specialises in providing solutions that are tailored to WordPress.
2. What is managed WordPress hosting?
Having your WordPress site hosted by a company that manages it for you is similar to having a concierge service. WordPress is an effective combination of a content management system and website builder. Managed hosting providers provide an optimum solution by taking care of the latest software upgrades, as well as data backups, caching, and other related tasks. As a result, you will have more time on your hands, which you can use into expanding your company.
The cost of managed WordPress hosting is just somewhat more than that of shared hosting options.
3. Is WP Engine worth your money?
Yes, you will get your money’s value out of WP Engine. WP Engine is the greatest scalable upgrade option available, particularly if your company has exceeded the constraints of shared hosting services and shared VPS plans.
As your company expands, you will have the ability to simply handle website upgrades and security, as well as scale your website.
4. Where are WP Engine Servers Located?
WP Engine’s data centres are powered by Google Cloud servers and Amazon Web Servers respectively. This gives you the ability to pick data centres in either Europe, Asia/Pacific, or North America.
5. How WP Engine Compares to Other Hosts?
Comparing WP Engine to other best WordPress hosting providers is a topic that comes up often in conversations with our customers.
When it comes to managed WordPress hosting, WP Engine has a modest advantage over rivals such as Kinsta and Flywheel, in addition to other available choices. Primarily as a result of improvements in technology, user experience, and support for customers.
The prices for shared hosting on WP Engine are much more than those offered by competitors such as Bluehost, HostGator, GoDaddy, InMotion Hosting, DreamHost, and even SiteGround.
6. Does WP Engine support WordPress multisite?
WordPress multisite is supported on WP Engine as a paid addition for customers on the Growth and Scale plans. For customers on the Startup plan, WordPress multisite is not supported. Additionally, it is included into ‘Custom’ plans for both business customers and agencies.
7. Can I cancel WP Engine hosting and get a refund?
You have the ability to terminate your WP Engine hosting service at any moment using the user dashboard associated with your account.
Users who have pre-paid for a whole year’s worth of hosting are eligible for a complete refund within the first sixty days of service.
8. Which WP Engine hosting plan is right for me?
You are eligible to sign up for their Startup plan if you are just going to be hosting a single website. On the other hand, if you need to manage several installations or have a website that gets a lot of traffic, you should choose either the Growth or the Scale plan.
