WP Engine Review

Is WP Engine right for your website needs? Read this WP Engine review to decide.

WordPress is a versatile and popular content management system (CMS) that literally powers millions of websites. As a result, many web hosting services, like WP Engine in the top tier, devote all their resources to it.

WP Engine has quality managed hosting that offers excellent uptime, WordPress-centric security, cloud platform flexibility, daily backups, and many other great features.

They’ll fall short of giving you an email account and domain name; that’s not what they do. But, they are a great choice for WordPress hosting as you will see on this detailed WP Engine review.

WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host that offers managed plans fully optimized for the platform. Of course, plans aren't going to be cheap compared to lesser WordPress hosts.

So, the goal of this WP Engine review is to help you determine if its cost as a hosting service is worth it for you.

What is WP Engine?

WP Engine is a website hosting provider that aims to provide specialized managed hosting solutions for websites using the popular WordPress CMS.

WP Engine was founded in 2010 and is based in the United States, but with offices and data centers around the world.

It was born from a recognized opportunity to offer better WP hosting services.

This would include data centers geographically located close to the bulk of site visitors - which can improve website speed, benefit SEO, improve security, and simplify data management.

WP Engine Review: Pricing

WP Engine only offers one type of service: managed WordPress hosting, but it also offers a variety of tiered plans to choose from.

These plans vary by the number of resources they offer and the sites they serve provide opportunity for a highly scalable service.

Let’s take a quick look at each of WP Engine’s plans.

• Startup ($23/month): This entry level supports up to 25,000 visits/month, 1 website, 10 GB storage, and 50 GB bandwidth.
  
  You also get an SSL certificate, access to a global CDN, and a few other important features.
  
  
• Professional ($44/month): This plan allows you to set up 3 websites and serve up to 75,000 visitors per month. 15GB of storage is also available.
  
  
• Growth ($86/month): This plan increases traffic support to 100,000 and offers 10 websites.
  
  In addition to other resources, you can access 24/7 phone support and import your own SSL certificate.
  
  
• Scale ($181/month): This tier is pretty much the same as the last, providing even more resources, increasing the number of websites up to 30 and supporting up to 400,000 monthly visits.
  
  
• Premium and Enterprise: These are custom plans and prices may vary. They offer a lot of extra resources and support, moving hosting from shared setups to dedicated servers.

While these plans aren't cheap, they offer a lot of features, starting small and adjusting to plans with room to grow virtually limitlessly.

Clearly, if you’re looking to build one or more serious business or ecommerce websites, this is a service worth considering.

WP Engine Review: Features

Page loading speed

WP Engine loads in under 3 seconds wherever you use it. This includes Australia that has a reputation for laggy web hosts taking more than 5 seconds to load pages.

WP Engine uses a combination of SSD technology, CDN, and NGINX web extensions to boost your website to optimal speed.

The host distinguishes between users visiting your website and bot requests, then prioritizes humans so that visitors always have the best experience. CDNs work based on the visitors’ location and serve the right content accordingly.

Performance

WP Engine has a 99.95% uptime guarantee, which increases to 99.99% when you receive an extended SLA. This amounts to less than an hour of downtime per year.

It also comes with a page performance tool that runs tests and suggests ways to improve your site’s performance should it not be optimum.

Additionally, it optimizes your site on the basis of location.

WP Engine has server locations in four continents: North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia whereas competitors only have local servers.

Security Features

WP Engine includes a free SSL certificate, unlike many other hosting services.

Its firewall also scans malware continuously to provide protection against threats. This is particularly important for ecommerce sites dealing with customers’ sensitive information, like credit card and personal data.

Not only are threats caught instantaneously, WP Engine employs security experts who work on its advanced firewalls to neutralize and overturn hacking attempts.

Its security detail is more advanced than most other web hosting services, and many of its free services are things you normally have to pay to get.

Staging environment

A staging environment allows you to create a copy of your website so you can make changes and test them. You don't have to go live before seeing it in action.

This allows you to test changes to your site and make sure your site continues to work properly before your customers start using the new version.

Working on these changes will not affect the behavior of your public site. Your changes can be published at your convenience.

Ease of Use

WP Engine makes starting a new site simple. Three areas of operation are in use: Production, Staging, and Development. This facilitates implementation with more advanced options and a higher caliber but straight-forward process.

It also reduces disruptions to your site as you maintain it and grow your business. WP Engine’s platform offers plenty of options to meet the needs of professionals.

Seasoned pros will get an instinctive feel for it and find it straight-forward.. Newbies will not find it that hard to work with, and support is always available to help.

Customer Support

WP Engine allows you to communicate with Customer Support 24/7. From the user panel, simply activate the chat and you will receive suggestions or generic replies to your query and possible answers.

If you need more in-depth help, you are asked to provide your Support Pin that you will find in the navigation menu. Agents will then join you promptly in the live chat to assist you with any issues your site may be experiencing.

WP Engine Review: Who is WP Engine Best For?

As a managed hosting service, WP Engine is particularly suitable for anyone who prefers to leave all the website hosting needs expertly handled behind the scenes.

It is however a high-end service that may not really be needed for a small website or blog with only a few thousand monthly visitors.

On the flip side, if you are interested in web hosting’s technical aspects but don’t want to be too hands-on, WP Engine is for you. Site performance, security, backup, cloud platform flexibility, migrations, and optimization are top WP Engine elements that make it an industry leader. It works really well for:

• Fast-growing startups
• Medium to large publishers
• WordPress websites with e-commerce sales
• Professional web designers and developers building from scratch or redesigning sites

WP Engine Review: WP Engine Pros and Cons

WP Engine focuses on managed WordPress hosting. It's a business model that allows the company to offer unparalleled service in a variety of ways.

• With access to dozens of e-commerce and email marketing tools, 35+ Studio Press themes, and dozens of WordPress plugins, it will facilitate the growth and impact of your online business.
  
  
• WP Engine boasts a 97% customer satisfaction rating. The company has a dedicated development team to take customer feedback and implement suggested changes and new feature ideas. That means your experience with WP Engine is likely to improve over time.
  
  
• WP Engine has a Support Guide and WP Engine Reviews Help Center.
  
  
• Multiple data centers around the world serve content based on the visitor's location. This feature helps reduce the load on the server particularly during peak times and unexpected traffic spikes. Data centers are located not just in the U.S., but Asia, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany and the U.K.

Regrettably, WP Engine cannot be all things to all people. It ought to be a good fit for your project. Otherwise, it may be too much in scope and also may not justify the cost. If budget is no object, this is a top of the line pick for any savvy user.

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