What Is WP Engine?
WP Engine is specially made for WordPress and is preferred by many people who are looking to have their website managed with minimal involvement. Its services provide a nice user experience and higher levels of security. Their main focus is to provide WordPress managed fully optimized plans.
This web hosting is especially popular among business websites. Currently, WP Engine hosts more than 40,000 websites. However, it is quite expensive but is it worth the price?
In this Wp Engine review, I will try to tell you everything about this web host server.
WP Engine For WordPress
If you are looking for Managed WordPress hosting, look no further because the WP engine is one of the top managed WordPress Host services available today.
WP Engine managed hosting plan will keep your website secure, optimized and fast at all times and they are experts at it.
Enhanced Security
WordPress is vulnerable because it connects to a database and it runs on PHP.
It also comes up with a variety of premium security options to prevent the most common problems for WordPress.
What is WP Engine Security Features?
-Blocking certain plugins is one of the strategies used by WP Engine to increase security.
There are tons of plugins for WordPress, and many of them create security loopholes upon installation.
The W12 Engine servers will detect and block any plugin that creates vulnerabilities in your website’s security.
-It continuously monitors the versions of your WordPress core and plugins.
Because of this, you don’t have to worry about the latest security updates. You will get notified in case there is something out-of-date.
Also, if you don’t upgrade the versions, updates are automatically done for you after a period of time.
-It continuously monitors the versions of your WordPress core and plugins.
It has proprietary intrusion detection and prevention system which blocks any DDOS attacks and JavaScript/SQL injection attacks.
-Another nice security feature is the system scan. W12 Engine performs regular highly efficient and secure scans for damaged files and malware. It also has a daily updated firewall to block any threats rapidly.
Their servers will alert you if something wrong comes up. Shared hosting services usually provide similar add-ons.
Finally, code reviews and security audits are ongoing via third-party security firms(WordPress-trained experts) associated with WP Engine.
WP Engine Features
Performance and Speed
Let’s talk about speed and performance: is WP Engine worth it?
So, for a WordPress website, it is the best alternative if you are looking for a combination of speed and performance.
Wp Engine provides the following options and features to increase the speed of your website:
Integrated CDN
Wp Engine CDN, or Content Delivery Network, is a service used to increase the speed of a website.
A built-in free CDN is provided (in partnership with MaxCDN) that will make the content of your website load faster. This is a huge benefit and will save you money.
Furthermore, this service is efficient and easy to use. You can simply go to the user area to turn it on or off.
Performance Dashboard
This is a unique feature offered by W12 engine, and you can find it in the user main area in wp-login.
You can use the performance dashboard to see the loading process of your website.
This feature will also provide recommendations to increase the speed of your website.
Overall, the dashboard is nice looking, and you can use it to perform scheduled speed checks.
Quality caching
There are many caching plugins that you can use, but WP Engine cache works better than any of them as a simple WordPress website can load in under one second. With EverCache, a built-in caching system, your site’s static content is automatically cached.
Additionally, it evaluates incoming traffic and selectively decides which one to serve or block.
Restoring, Backups, and Migration
Thanks to W12 Engine’s automated backup system, restoring and backups are easy to make.
If your WordPress website is on a different host, you can easily migrate with an easy-to-use plugin provided.
You only have to install it and enter the credentials. then, the plugin does the work for you.
Customer Support
Customer support has an excellent knowledge base, provides everything you need to solve your problems rapidly, and enhances your experience.
You can contact their support 24/7 via email, live chat, or ticket support and they are real WordPress experts. Note phone support is available 24/7 for all plans except for the Startup plan which is unfortunately only available from 7 am-7 pm (CST) hours.
Staging Environment
The staging environment is a nice and useful feature that allows you to create a clone of your website.
You can use this to experiment with different themes, codes, and plugins and easily switch between the live and staging environment. Thus you don’t affect the site functionality or user experience.
Wp Engine Pricing
Start-up package
This is the most basic plan ideal for small blogs or websites at $30 per month. This plan is ideal for 1 website that comes with 10GB of storage,50GB bandwidth/month, and can handle 250000 visits per month.
Even though you have a cheaper alternative, if you are looking for great uptime and peace of mind that your website handles 250000 visits without any issue, then this plan will be the right one for you.
Growth
This is a plan which is ideal for growing businesses and costs $115/month.25 GB of storage,200GB bandwidth/month, and 100000 visits are included in this plan for up to 10 websites. Annual billing can prove to be an idea as this means a saving of you can get 2 months free worth $230.
Scale
This plan costs $290/month and is ideal for fast-growing businesses and offers you 50GB of storage,500GB bandwidth, and 400000 visits/month for up to 30 websites. Annual pre-paid billing brings you additional savings($580)along with being advertised as the best value on their website.
Custom
Ideal for a large business and where you have to get a personalized quote, this plan comes with 100GB-1TB of storage, more than 400GB bandwidth per month for 30 sites inclusive. Proprietary support is offered as well as an impressive million of visits per month as well.
You can also sign up for a Managed hosting professional plan at $59 per month and make a saving of $118 if paying annually. You can have 15 GB of storage, and 125 GB bandwidth/month for up to 3 websites.
Pros of WP Engine:
- 60-day money-back guarantee policy;
- Customer support available 24/7
- Access to numerous eCommerce and email marketing tools along with 35+Studio Press themes
- Excellent website loading speed due to a combination of custom NGINX extension, built-in CDN, and SSD technology used.
- WP migration plugin to migrate site easily from another web host for free.
- 99.95 server uptime which can be increased to 99.99% with enhanced SLA
- Automatic daily backup or manual backup is possible.
- Multiple data centers (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Taiwan, and Germany) deliver content to users according to their location. This has the advantage to help reduce the load on your server.
- Access to more than 55,000 WordPress plugins
Cons
-CMS users other than WordPress are unable to benefit from the services of WP Engine as the latter only works with WordPress and that’s one of the reasons why they are real experts in the focus on a single market.
-Even if you can upgrade to a higher plan when your site grows, WP Engine is really not flexible if you exceed the number of visitors includes in your plan and you end up paying high charges.
-No domain or email hosting is offered meaning you will need to purchase a domain separately elsewhere as well as an email account.
-Shared, VPS and dedicated hosting are not available.
Conclusion: WP Engine Reviews
WP Engine is the best web hosting service designed for WordPress that ensures security, speed, and performance.
It has 97% of its customers who are really happy with the service
It is really meant for people on a higher budget (For newcomers with a small blog or website, I will recommend Bluehost; which is a lot cheaper to start a blog).
You can find another hosting that handles the same amount of traffic as WP Engine for really much cheaper.WP Engine’s price is high as some dedicated hosting plans.
The ultimate goal of purchasing a hosting plan on WP Engine relies on the fact they offer excellent speed, high security, and performance which brings you a fundamental thing in life: peace of mind
Other than that, the service offers many useful plugins, and it comes with a friendly user interface.
Additionally, it has a great self-help center full of in-depth help articles, FAQS, and other resources to help the less tech-savvy clients.
If you got no budget restraint and are looking for a highly customizable, safe, and performant hosting service, then WP Engine hosting is definitely your best possible bet.
Its hands-off approach to website hosting(for medium or high-traffic websites) and server management makes it the best-managed WordPress hosting by far compared to shared, VPS, and dedicated web hosts.
Which web host do you use? Let me know in the comments below.
Read also: Bluehost Review
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About Ross
Ross is the founder of Hostingwhich, a free resource site where you can learn about Starting your own Blog & also find out about Web Host Services. Click here to learn more if you want to start a blog.
