WP Engine offers high-quality managed hosting with high availability, WordPress-centric security, cloud platform flexibility, daily backups and other great features. It also has some minor disadvantages; for example, for email accounts and domain names you will have to go elsewhere. WP Engine is one of the best managed web hosting services for website owners who want a hands-on approach to managing their site.
With excellent uptime, a powerful hosting environment, real-time threat detection and many premium hosting features, WP Engine is the best managed hosting service. Their direct hosting offers fast and robust servers that can handle anything. Their website is virtually hacker-proof, and their incredible customer service will make you feel like royalty. They offer automatic security updates, the daily backups, one-click restore points, automatic caching, high-level security, one-click staging area and much more.
WP Engine is like an army of WordPress experts supporting you. Brands like HTC, Foursquare, SoundCloud, Balsamic and many others use WP Engine for their WordPress hosting (just for fun). If you are a business that doesn’t want to deal with the technical side of running a blog, WP Engine is the solution for you. Now get all 36+ premium StudioPress themes and Genesis framework for free with all WP Engine accounts.
Who is WP Engine Best For?
WP Engine is a managed hosting service, so it immediately comes to mind for those who want a hands-on approach to web hosting. However, if you run a small blog or website with few thousand visitors per month, there are much cheaper alternatives that work just as well as the WP Engine. On the other hand, if you are interested in the technical aspects of web hosting but do not want to get your hands dirty, WP Engine is for you. If factors such as website performance, security, backup, cloud platform flexibility, migrations and the optimization keep you up at night, WP Engine might be the partner of your dreams.
Professional WordPress developers can create websites from scratch or make changes to an existing website with this managed hosting service. Developers can create, launch and transfer the website in WP Engine’s staging environment. WP Engine offers only one thing: Managed hosting for WordPress websites. You don’t have to choose between dedicated servers, VPS, shared servers, etc. If you want a practical approach to website hosting and server management for a medium to high traffic website, it’s hard to imagine a better solution than WP Engine.
About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is one of the leading managed WordPress hosting companies on the market today. 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 Krakow (Poland). The company has won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently contributes to the core and community of WordPress.
WP Engine Hosting Plans and Pricing
WP Engine offers one type of hosting service, namely managed WordPress hosting, where you can choose the best option for you and the price depends on the number of visits per month. You have a monthly or yearly payment plan. Hosting options include Startup, Growth, Scale, Custom. You can read the full explanation of WP Engine pricing and choose the best plan for you.
Pricing and plans will be updated in 2022 to reflect the most current and accurate pricing they have. Let’s go through the pricing plans to explain which plan is best for which customer and what it offers. WP Engine now offers ecommerce solutions launched in late 2021 and updated in 2022 to give you a better understanding. They are among the best Woo-Commerce hosting providers if you are looking for an online solution.
Security Features
WP Engine also offers a number of premium security features. The WordPress core is automatically updated to the latest version for you. WP Engine thoroughly tests all major core updates before updating their customers. They have a proprietary intrusion detection and prevention system to block DDoS attacks, brute force attacks, malware, JavaScript/SQL injection attacks and more. They also work with security firms to conduct regular code reviews and security audits. Your security is guaranteed, so if you get hacked, WP Engine will fix it for free.
WP Engine comes with a free SSL certificate instead of having to buy it like many other hosting services. It also has a firewall and runs daily malware scans to block threats. It’s especially useful for e-commerce websites since you’re handling sensitive customer information like credit card details. WP Engine security detects threats in real-time with their enterprise-level firewalls and trained experts performing free hacking fixes. The host’s security is higher than most other web hosting services, and many of its free services are things that you usually have to pay for.
Ease of Use
WP Engine makes launching a new website easy. It shows you three areas to set up – production, staging, and development – giving you advanced options and a better website without complicating the process. It also reduces disruptions to your website while you maintain it and grow your business. WP Engine’s platform offers many sidebar options to make the service work for professionals. Professionals find it intuitive and easy to use. However, it might be overwhelming for some beginners. That said, once you’ve gotten through the learning curve, it’s not too hard to work with.
Customer Support and Service
WP Engine has a dedicated support team of WordPress experts. They boast over 97% customer satisfaction with thousands of customer interactions per day. Support is available 24/7 via live chat support for all customers. Phone support is available 24/7 for all plans except the Startup plan. If an issue cannot be resolved immediately via chat or phone, support staff will create an internal support ticket for you.
Enterprise customers get access to 24/7 ticket support via email. Premium and Enterprise customers also receive one-on-one onboarding guidance. WP Engine also has a dedicated Customer Experience Operations team. It works to continuously improve the WP Engine customer experience. In addition, WP Engine has an extensive library of knowledge base articles, guides, and tutorials for users to troubleshoot things themselves.
Performance
WP Engine Page Performance is designed to help you increase your page speed and conversions by performing page-level performance tests and providing actionable recommendations. There are now many excellent third-party tools for testing page performance. WP Engine offers a 99.95% uptime guarantee, which increases to 99.99% if you get an extended SLA. This means less than one hour of downtime per year.
This hoster has a site performance tool that runs tests and gives you suggestions on how to improve the site if it detects a drop in performance. The GeoTarget add-on additionally optimizes your website based on the visitor’s location. Moreover, WP Engine has server locations on four continents: North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Compare that to Bluehost and DreamHost, which only have servers in the United States.
WP Engine Stress Test
Then we wanted to check how WP Engine servers react during peak loads. To measure this, we used a tool called K6. We gradually reached 100 unique visitors at a time to see how the server would handle the increase in requests from multiple connections at once. The blue line represents the response time and the green line represents the number of users on the site.
As can be seen, our test site performed very well, with small spikes. It maintained an incredible response speed throughout the duration of the test. As can be seen in the graph, the performance of the WP Engine server remained constant throughout the duration of the test as the number of users increased. Uptime remained stable and no downtime was recorded during the stress test.
WP Engine Experience
As you may have guessed, WP Engine only offers WordPress-based shared and dedicated hosting. If you’re looking for traditional shared, VPS or dedicated hosting, you should look elsewhere. Our reviews summaries are a great place to start. WP Engine is a managed hosting environment designed specifically for WordPress installations, themes and plugins.
In fact, you don’t have to install WordPress like you do with most other web hosts; the content management system comes pre-installed. It was refreshing to open our introductory email, see our credentials, and then get started without any further setup. As far as content creation goes, WP Engine works just like any other self-hosted WordPress installation. It’s a breeze to create posts, pages, and galleries.
WP Engine also automates many functions with the Managed Hosting Plus plans and higher, including daily site backups and plugin updates. It also features proprietary Evercache technology that combines caching and proxy servers to load pages quickly. WP Engine does not offer email or domain name registration. You need to sign up with an external email provider and register a domain name with NameCheap or another URL registrar.
Conclusion
If you run a WordPress website with a large audience or have needs that can’t be met with most other providers, WP Engine might be for you. The company offers good customer support and a lot of additional features for people who know how to build and maintain websites. We are an emerging technology company at the intersection of software innovation and service. Our platform provides brands with the solutions they need to build remarkable websites and applications on WordPress that drive their business faster.
