WP Engine is the original Managed WordPress Hosting provider. They are the first company to provide Managed WordPress hosting services. They are known for their high-quality performance and are a powerhouse web hosting provider in Managed WordPress category.
Verified as one of the most popular web hosts for WordPress platforms and powering over millions of websites across the globe. WP Engine is trusted by large enterprises, bug company websites, and high-traffic sites. They are known to be reliable and trusted.
There are three reliable pillars of any web hosting service: Downtime, Security and Page loading speed. WP Engine beats all the competitors in these three. On top of these, the customer service professionals at WP Engine are known to be WordPress pros. they tend to just “take care” of any issue raised by the customer within the minimum time possible.
The pricing of WP Engine may be a little concern for a few users. They come at the premium end of the services. They make no exceptions in terms of the performance they provide and they charge their customers for the same.
WP Engine is best for which users?
WP Engine is a Managed WordPress Hosting solution provider. So when you hear the term managed you already know the target for the company are the people and companies who don’t want a hands-on approach in running and managing the technicality of their websites.
If you are running websites with huge amount of monthly traffic or you are a large enterprise business that needs a powerful and secure website then WP Engine is the place you go. If you are running a small blog or personal website with some thousand visits a month then there are a lot of alternatives available.
Given the high pricing which is more than correct for the performance you will be getting from WP Engine we recommend WP Engine to the following types of business owners:
- Medium to Large Enterprise business website
- Large blogging website with over millions of page views a month who want to focus more on their content rather than any website technicality
- Growing Start-ups
- Professional web-designers and developers
- Mid-size to large online web stores
These are the major website categories that we recommend using WP Engine.
WP Engine provide only Managed WordPress hosting solutions. There are no other options to choose from like shared hosting, VPS hosting, or any other. This tells why they are so on top of what they provide.
| Pros | Cons |
| Amazing loading time | No free domains |
| Advanced Security | |
| Expert WordPress support | |
| 1 click WordPress install | |
| Staging tool | |
| 10+ premium themes available for free | |
| Free SSL, CDN and backup |
WP Engine Review for WordPress Hosting
We will review the aspects that you need the most from any web hosting service provider. If they are up to the mark of the performance that they are known for. We will look into the following features of web hosting provided by WP Engine:
- Performance and Speed
- Plans and Pricing
- Customer Support
- More pros and Cons
Performance and Speed
WP Engine is known for its performance and speed. They also allow the users to track their website performance from the dashboard itself. This makes it easier for the user to keep a track of their performance.
The loading time for a website hosted with WP Engine is generally under 1 sec which is amazing. Website loading speed matters as it affects your customer user experience and as a result increases your chance of conversions.
They also keep a track of the website cache performance. Website caching is an important feature that results in a faster loading speed of a website. Caching lest website store data at the user end so that every time the user requests any page the transfer between the server and user is less. As a result, making the pages load way faster.
Server Speed
The server response time is also impressive for WP Engine. You can totally rely on them for amazing website loading speed. WP Engine makes sure that you only need to focus on the design and content of the website. You need not worry anything about the technical aspects of your web hosting provider.
With multiple data center locations worldwide the delivery of the content becomes faster. WP Engine has seven data centres located across the globe which helps them in providing lighting fast loading speed.
The data center is located at the following locations :
- United States
- Australia
- Canada
- Belgium
- Taiwan
- United Kingdom
- Germany
Datacenter located at seven major different locations helps them serve customers across the globe better.
CDN
WP Engine provides free CDN with all their plans. CDN plays a major role in content delivery for any website. With the help of CDN, the content reaches the user’s system faster and thus increases the page loading speed.
Content Delivery Network (CDN) distributes your content across numerous of the servers located of theirs and then when any user requests for a page of your website they send that through the nearest server location. This decreases the distance between the server and the user. Lesser the distance between the server and user, the faster the content travels and page loads in minimum time.
Uptime
Server uptime is a crucial factor. If the server is down for any reason your website will be affected. WP Engine ensures uptime of 99.9%. Most of the time the uptime remains at a perfect 100.
WP Engine hosted websites were tested and a track on the uptime was kept. The website maintained a 100% uptime for most of the weeks. On average, they are known to maintain an uptime of up to 99.99%. These are amazing results.
As we saw the performance provided by WP Engine is top-notch and this is the reason why many large enterprises and business owners trust their services. They are known to maintain a high standard in their performance and speed. Now let us have a look at the plans and pricing of WP Engine.
Plans and Pricing
As we know WP Engine only provides one type of Hosting solution, i.e. Managed WordPress Hosting. They offer several plans and options to choose from as it fits the user’s requirement.
Let’s be honest, WP Engine is costly. As mentioned above this is not for small websites and blogs with a few thousand traffic. Paying for plans at WP Engine is worth it when you have a mid-size or large business website or an online store or a blog with millions of traffic every month.
There are four options available in the Managed WordPress hosting category. They are Startup, Professional, Growth, and Scale. All the plans come with all the features included running a WordPress website. The platform is customized for WordPress performance and delivers at its best.
If these four plans are not enough and you need more resources to manage your website, WP Engine has a Custom plan option available. In case of over half a million traffic, you can choose to opt for the Custom plan. In this, they will customize a plan with the requisite resource needed for your website.
Startup
WP Engine Startup Managed hosting plans start at $25 a month if you sign up for a yearly program. If you want to have a monthly payment cycle then it will cost you $30 a month. With the Startup plan, WP Engine targets small websites. The features available in this plan are suitable for a website with around 25000 visits a month.
You will be able to host 1 website with this plan. The plan includes 50 GB of bandwidth per month with 10 GB of storage. You get a free SSL certificate along with CDN features.
Well for a small website with just around 25000 visitors to manage WP Engine is the right choice only if they are making good money. This plan is suitable for small businesses, startup websites, and affiliates who are earning even with a small number of visitors.
For small websites that need quality-assured performance, they can opt for this plan. Paying for this plan is not worth it if you are a small blog. You can get better deals with Bluehost for such small websites. WP Engine does seem to cost more if you are a small website and not making money through it.
Professional
From this plan, it starts to make sense for WP Engine. The websites with high traffic never want to compromise with the quality of service and this is what they will get with WP Engine. You will be paying $49 a month for the Professional plan.
This cost will be more than worth it. Your website will be able to manage the traffic of around 75000 a month without any issue with the performance. High-traffic websites make money too and the pricing of this plan will not be an issue. You are paying for having your website managed by the hosting provider.
You will get 125 GB of bandwidth every month. You will also have 15 GB of web storage and you will be able to host 3 websites with this plan.
WP Engine also provides you with more than 10 premium StudioPress themes for free which can cost you over a thousand dollars if you buy from Studiopress. With this plan also you are getting a free SSL certificate for your website included with the power of CDN.
The resources that WP Engine provides are enough to run your website completely optimized with WordPress. If you sign up for a monthly basis plan then you will be paying $59 a month. We suggest a yearly basis sign up mostly unless you are not sure you want to continue with the platform.
Growth
The growth plan is for high-performing, high-traffic and customer-driven websites. Growth plan will cost you $95 a month. For a website with traffic of around 100,000 Growth plan is perfect.
You also get 200 GB of bandwidth every month and 25 GB of storage space. The free SSL certificate and CDN are also included with this plan. You will be able to host 10 websites with this plan.
The growth plan also comes with a 24/7 phone support feature. This feature will be needed in terms of a large website and if any issue arises you would be able to get in touch with customer representatives in no time.
Scale
Scale plan targets large websites and enterprises with traffic of around 400,000 a month.
Having traffic over 100,000 is difficult to manage by yourself. WP Engine makes sure in any case your website does not slow down. You can host up to 30 websites with this plan. This plan costs you $241 a month.
This plan comes with 500 GB of bandwidth a month and 50 GB of storage area. This plan also has 10+ premium themes for you. You also get the SSL certificate and CDN included with the plan.
With this large number of traffic to manage WP Engine is the best option for any website.
Custom
If you have a traffic of over 400,000 a month and want Managed WordPress hosting solution then WP Engine will make a customized plan as per the requirement of your website. This plan includes all the features with the other plans and much more as your website will need.
You can get up to 1 TB of storage with this plan. You will also have a bandwidth of over 400 GB which will be needed for websites with humongous traffic to manage.
To get this plan you will have to reach out to the sales representative by filling out a form. Then they will get in touch with you and get a customized plan ready after going through your website and the requirements needed by you.
Apart from the Managed WordPress hosting plan category WP Engine provide Managed Hosting in three more categories. They are Managed Hosting Plus, Secure Hosting, and E-Commerce hosting.
Managed Hosting Plus
The Plus category of Managed Hosting provides everything that the Managed hosting category comes with. This includes more integrated marketing and tracking tools for your website. This gives you more personalized features.
You will also have options to select which plugins will be automatically updated and which you want not to do so. This category has also four plan options available namely Startup, Professional, Growth and Scale. You have a Custom plan option also available in this too.
The Startup plan will cost you $28 a month with a 25000 monthly traffic capacity. The Professional plan will cost you $52 a month with 75,000 monthly traffic capacity, the Growth plan at $104 a month with 100,000 monthly traffic capacity and the Scale plan at $258 a month with 400,000 monthly traffic capacity.
Plus plans are suited to you if you want marketing integrated with your hosting environment. You can focus on growing your business rather than maintaining your website. WP Engine hosting services are meant to make your hosting experience simpler.
Secure Hosting
Secure Hosting is suitable for large enterprises which have tons of data transfer. This hosting category has an added security layer with them. Few added features with the Secure hosting are:
- Protects from malicious traffic spike (DDoS)
- Security firewall for your traffic
- Auto rollbacks if issue detected
The Secure plan also has the same four options available, Startup at $44 a month, Professional at $75 a month, Growth at $175 a month and Scale at $291 a month. They also have the Custom plan option for the businesses which need resources and have to manage more traffic.
E-Commerce Hosting
The E-Commerce Hosting plans are specifically designed for online stores. They bring you hands-on features to create an online store with a single click and you can add and remove products easily.
They also provide you with WooCommerece templates and Optimized Store themes. The E-Commerce Hosting plans also have four plan options. The Startup plan at $30 a month, the Professional plan at $62 a month, the Growth plan at $116 a month and the Scale plan at $291 a month. After that, they provide you with a custom plan option if needed by your website.
Customer Support
WP Engine customer support is well known for industry experts sorting your problems out in the least possible time. They have a team of WordPress experts who are dedicated to helping you out and sorting customers’ issues.
They are available 24/7 via chat support to all their customers. They have an average response time of under 2 minutes in chat support. The WP Engine customer support is reachable at all times and is known to provide excellent service.
For customers with a Startup plan, call support is not available. For all the plans other than this the call support is also available 24/7. Most of the issues are solved in chat support itself. For Enterprise customers, ticket-based email support is also available.
Other than this they have a large library available. The Resource Center has tons of questions answered. Many queries can be solved just by going through this. Many frequently asked queries and questions are answered there.
The extensive library also included many videos and blogs for customer references.
WP Engine customer support is top-notch and reliable for their customers. The customer representatives are WordPress experts which makes it a lot easier to explain the problem and get it sorted in no time.
Pros
Advanced Security:
WP Engine security is one of the best in the industry. You would like your website to be secure. Apart from the SSL and SSH certificates they provide they also keep a track of all the traffic coming into your website and scan for malware.
The hosting service keeps everything updated and runs malware scans throughout your website from time to time to keep it safe. They also automatically backup your website to secure the data and everything from any mishaps. They have a one-click restoration feature that enables you to get your website from the backup.
Staging Environment:
The staging environment allows you to make a clone of your website without making it live to test changes and take a first-hand look at what it will appear when it is live. This runs out the chances of any errors in the live website. The Staging environment helps you to try out different changes and updates on your website without affecting your live website. This feature comes in handy to nullify errors.
Free Automation Migration:
With every plan of WP Engine, you get this feature. You can migrate your website from another host to WP Engine without any extra cost. They also make it easier as you won’t have to do it yourself using any technicalities. WP Engine will provide you with a plugin that will automate the migration process and bring your website to its hosting environment. This is an important feature as many users comes to WP Engine by migrating their websites when the site is growing at a larger scale.
Cons
No Domain and Email Hosting:
WP Engine does not sell domain registrations as well as Email Hosting. For email hosting and domain registrations you will need to use third-party tools. After registering for the domain you will need to integrate them with WP Engine. This is not a tough task but if you do not prefer to do this then you will have to look at other options.
Only WordPress based Managed Hosting:
With WP Engine you will only be able to host a WordPress website and that too is only in the Managed Hosting category. If you use any other CMS platform then WP Engine is not for you. Also if you want VPS hosting or Shared non-managed WordPress hosting then WP Engine won’t fit you. The options here are more targeted and limited in terms of Hosting Plan categories.
Conclusion
WP Engine is a great web hosting service provider. They are dedicated to WordPress environment customers and are the most exclusive hosting provider in this category. They were the first company to provide managed WordPress hosting and since then they have set the bar high in WordPress managed hosting.
This hosting provider is the best fit for large enterprises, big blogs with millions of traffic, startups and mid-size to large company websites. If you fall into any of these categories then WP Engine should be your first choice. The only drawback of the WP Engine hosting service is that they do not sell domain registrations and email hosting. For these, you will have to buy from any third-party company and then integrate them with your WP Engine hosting environment.
WP Engine is the best premium hosting service available for Managed WordPress solutions. They do cost a little more bucks but they are all worth the price. Try WP Engine for yourself if it fits your needs.