If you are a blogger or website owner who is looking for the best web hosting service, then you came to the right place. In this blog post, we will be talking about Siteground Vs Wp Engine and compare which one is better for WordPress.
We will also talk about the features and pricing of both these web hosts so that you can decide which one suits your needs more. You don’t want to go through all the hassle of finding another host when there are some good ones out there already!
Sit tight as I show you everything you need to know about Siteground Vs Wp Engine in this detailed article. I will focus on their shared plan in this comparison since it’s the most popular.
Wp Engine Overview
Wp Engine is a managed hosting company offering WordPress-optimized Webhosting with code configuration and execution optimization, staging environments, cloud backups, and other advanced features.
Jason Cohen founded the company in 2010. He invested money for the platform’s initial development while at his first startup (which he didn’t even end up selling). He launched the initial version of the platform as a one-click installer for WordPress. The tool allowed users to install WordPress with automatic configuration and optimization.
You see, the main goal of the platform was to make it easier for WordPress beginners to get started on using the Content Management System. The company now has a more than 1 million worldwide market base and numerous data centres.
SiteGround Overview
SiteGround is a Webhosting and cloud computing solutions provider. It has a market base of more than 1,000,000 people in 130 countries and was founded in 2004 by Vladimir Prelovac and Stephan Schütze. Since 2013, they have been operating from their data centre in Bulgaria.
The company has been awarded 22 annual awards since 2007. Reports indicate that the company is currently the fastest-growing Webhosting company in the world. I can attribute this to their robust features, high uptimes, excellent support, and a wide range of pricing plans to choose from.
SiteGround Vs Wp Engine: Which Webhosting Company is Better?
Let’s compare the features, pricing, and ease of use to determine which company you should choose.
1.Ease Of Use – Use Custom Dashboards
Both companies are easy to use. Just press the sign up button, and you are in. after signing up, you will select any of the pricing packages you like, checkout, and get a mailing notification about the same.
There will be a link to access the client area. That is where you will manage most of your website functions. Both SiteGround and WP Engine have a C-panel section to manage your files, emails and install WordPress.
However, WP Engine needs to do something about its pricing packages. Someone can easily be overwhelmed by their pricing plans and end up making the wrong choice.
2. Hosting Providers Features
Let’s study the Webhosting features of both companies under the following domains:
Custom Server Configuration
Both companies have servers configured to run under a certain amount of memory, CPU resources, storage, and bandwidth. If you exceed those limits, then it may result in your website getting blocked such that no search engine bots and other crawlers will visit. You can increase the server configuration limits by upgrading from an entry-level plan
.
SiteGround provides multiple options for increasing the server configurations such as SSD storage upgrade, Ultra memory upgrade, etc. In contrast, WP Engine uses a cloud flare CDN (Content Delivery Network) service to reduce server resource usage by serving cached versions of static files.
SSL Certificate
SiteGround offers a free SSL certificate for all their accounts, a migration service to migrate your website if you’re coming from another host (this might be useful if you transfer from shared Webhosting to VPS or dedicated). WP Engine offers a free SSL certificate as well for all their accounts. It also allows WordPress multisite installation.
GIT Response And Staging Areas
When developers want to make some changes and update a few elements, they will always do so in a staging hosting environment. While SiteGround offers GIT in its top-tier plan, WP Engine offers it beginning from the entry plan. It allows programmers to check out how the website or application will look before clicking the ‘publish’ button.
Bandwidth For A Positive User Experience
SiteGround doesn’t limit the number of visits you get per month. Hence, it’s the winner here. If you exceed the number of monthly allowed visitors in WP Engine, it will cost you about $2 for every 1000 visitors. The company limits visitors depending on the plans you purchase. It can be 25,000 100,000 or 400,000.
Thus, the winner here is SiteGround.
3. How Secure Is Your Site?
Let’s compare these two companies based on security issues that arise in day to day blogging operations such as:
SSL Certificate Information
Both companies provide managed Webhosting services. Therefore, the companies have their SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates for securing your data and website from hackers, etc.
They also provide a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate as a part of the free plan to all new webmasters without any hidden fees or charges – something found in most other web hosts such as Hostgator or BlueHost.
Automatic Malware Scanning
Both companies have tools in place for detecting malware, phishing, and spamming activities on websites. When blocked, the process results in alerts being sent to the respective website owners. That’s cool, right?
Data Backup And Restoration
Both companies provide automatic data backups. They also have an option of restoring a demand backup within minutes – a fast process of creating a staging environment for testing purposes or in case of any sudden server failure.
They also have an option of restoring data from a previous backup version if any accidental loss or corruption of data. All the backups are stored on different physical servers, making it more reliable than most other services such as HostGator, where backups are not made on different servers.
Protection Against DDoS Attacks
Cloudflare protects WordPress Webhosting companies. It’s a free security add-on that provides robust protection against all kinds of DDoS attacks and other threats such as malware, hackers, and spambots. Cloudflare shifts the traffic from the targeted website to another server with more capacity in case of a DDOS attack.
Firewall Security Protection
Both companies provide different levels of permissions based on pricing packages:
As for the Free and Starter Plan, the servers are open to access for script installations. It is recommended that you only install necessary scripts to counter crawlers, spammers, and other threats on your website. Higher Tier plans such as the Business Plan have permissions for file transfer protocol (FTP) access, allowing users to upload many files to the server file system.
You may not require FTP access for uploading images, videos, or other media files. But I would recommend that you only download sources and not any hacked versions of such files from third-party sources to avoid copyright infringement issues in the future.
4. Uptime And Downtimes
This is always a challenging thing to measure. The best you can do is setting up ping monitoring/page visits to see how often your website is down. If you do a little research, you will discover that there isn’t as much difference in their downtimes and uptimes. Both companies promise a 99.99% uptime guarantee.
I’m not sure how critical these features are if you’re going with a small company. But something worth noting is that SiteGround has native IPv6 support. You can also add server response time monitoring with a free service like Pingdom. WP Engine doesn’t seem to have any built-in uptime monitoring.
SiteGround gives you options to host your website in either of the following locations:
- Iowa
- Oregon and Montreal for North America
- Belgium
- London and Frankfurt for Europe
- Taiwan
- Tokyo
- Sydney
WP Engine has servers in the following locations:
- Chicago
- Iowa
- London
- Singapore
- Amsterdam
Wpengine wins when it comes to maintaining high up times.
5. Load Time And Performance
SiteGround offers more storage per website than Wp Engine, which gives a smaller website space.
However, WP Engine has a feature called “Rocket Loader”.When a performance test was done, the tool was found to deliver page requests up to 2x faster than other hosting providers. It works best for pages with java scripts to speed up performance. That is technically not equivalent to having more RAM available, though.
Another thing I like about SiteGround’s shared server is its CPU usage. Most websites ran with a low CPU usage of up to 50%. SiteGround has a technology called SSD Nodes that offloads database and caching operations onto solid-state drives.
SiteGround supports caching plugins such as W3 total cache, which becomes crucial if you’re trying to squeeze as much speed as possible. It helps not just for speed but with the overall load times.
In addition, not only does SiteGround’s shared WordPress hosting have native support for W3 Total Cache, but it also allows you to install additional caching plugins in their VPS and Dedicated server via a one-button click to enhance performance.
Wp Engine also supports W3 Total cache, but only when your upgrade to top-tier plans. Otherwise, you’ll have to configure it manually. I don’t recommend W3 Super cache, by the way. It has had its heyday a long time ago and is now outdated.
Guess who the winner is? Well, it’s SiteGround, obviously.
6. Pricing
Let’s see their differences and similarities based on their pricing packages. We will begin with SiteGround.
SiteGround Pricing Packages For Users
The web host comes with three packages, as seen in this screenshot.
StartUp $4.99 Per Month
It’s the first plan and allows you to create one website, access 10GB of webspace, and 10,000 web visits per month. You will also have free SSL, CDN, and daily backups.
GrowBig $7.99 Per Month
The second plan comes with creating unlimited websites, 20 GB of web space, 25 000 monthly visits, unmetered traffic, and all the features in the StartUp plan. The plan favours multiple website owners and entrepreneurs.
GoGeek $14.99 Per Month
It’s the most expensive plan and lets you create unlimited websites, 40GB of webspace and allow up to 100,000 monthly unmetered traffic. That is in addition to all the advanced features in the first and second plans.
Wpengine’s Pricing Plans
Check out this screenshot
WP Engine has four types of Webhosting, namely:
Managed hosting
Managed Hosting plus
Secure hosting
Ecommerce hosting
Let’s focus on managed Webhosting since it’s the most affordable:
Managed Hosting Startup $25.00 Per Month
The plan allows you to build one website and comes with 10GB of storage, 50GB of bandwidth, free SSL certificate, and SSH, a one-click staging site, free backups, and a whole lot of other features—best for someone starting on WP Engine since it’s less costly.
Managed Hosting Professional $49.17 Per Month
It’s not different from the first plan. All the features in the first plan are intact. In addition, the plan allows you to build three websites, allow up to 75,000 monthly visits, 25GB local storage, 125GB bandwidth, and other features.
Managed Hosting Growth $95.83 Per Month
You can build up to 10 websites for your audience; receive 100,000 monthly visits, 20GB of local storage, and 200GB of bandwidth. That is in addition to all other features in the previous plans.
Managed Hosting Scale $241.67 Per Month
It’s the most expensive hosting plan but also contains many powerful features, which aren’t in other plans. The plan allows you to create up to 10 websites, receive up to 400,000 monthly visits, 50GB of local storage, and 500GB of bandwidth.
Both companies have no problem accepting PayPal or credit cards online (plus they use Authorize.net, which adds to security online). Both companies accept BitCoin. However, as of now, WP Engine requires you to contact them via a support ticket for additional information.
Renewal Pricing Comparison
As you can see, if you press the ‘annually’ button, each plan comes with its total sum at the end of the year. SiteGround will charge $14.99 per month for the StartUp plan for subsequent years, which translates to about $179.88 per year.
WP engine charges $25 per month, which is about $300 per year. So, SiteGround is still the most affordable.
7. Customer support
In 2016, SiteGround achieved a 96% customer satisfaction rate. They have a superb support team. Tickets usually get answered in less than 10 minutes. More serious issues such as migration might take a couple of days but always fast.
Wpengine support is also great. If you ask a question, you will probably get a response within a minute or two. However, it appears that their support team/system has limited knowledge of WordPress and PHP. Users have complained of their website crashing and taking longer to fix.
WP Engine’s support services is a big concern because if they don’t offer good support, it will ultimately put their customers in a bad situation. If you break something on your site, how long will it take for them to fix it?
Therefore, SiteGround wins here.
What I like about SiteGround
This is why I like SiteGround:
It’s A Reputable Company
SiteGround is a well-known and highly reputable company. They’ve been in the industry for over ten years, and they have an A+ rating from the BBB and Internet Chamber of Commerce. Another interesting fact is that over 40 000 webmasters have signed up to SiteGround’s affiliate program.
Loading Speed
Having great speed is not a choice for SiteGround; it’s a must. Their speed is so fast that they even offer an optional CDN service for free.
That is a pretty nice feature, especially for customers looking to increase their SEO page load speed as a whole. SiteGround is currently the only company that provides an optional free CDN service for its entire web hosting clients.
Advanced Features
SiteGround has many high-end security features for web hosts, such as unlimited server resources, automatic backups, and SSD hard drives. Last but not least, SiteGround offers affordable hosting plans. For instance, the StartUp plan is priced at $4.99 per month.
Support
The company has excellent support. If you submit a request to them, they won’t take long to reply to you. When setting up your website, connecting your domain name, or migrating to another hosting plan, you will need a good team.
SiteGround Cons
SiteGround has several cons, as well. First is the fact that they don’t offer free domain names. Other web hosts such as BlueHost provide a free domain name upon signing up. I guess it’s good that you have all your hosting needs in one central place, don’t you think so? They will host your domain name, though.
What I like About Wpengine Personal
This is why I would recommend Wp Engine to you:
Easy To Use Control Panel
Once you access your user portal in the hosting platform and created your website, setting it up and installing WordPress is easy. Just follow a simple process, and you are done. The whole process makes it easy for newbies to get started on their website without much frustration.
They Support Your Growth
Since their goal is to help you grow your website, they provide you with many different performance tools and tutorials, and information that can help you create a successful site. That includes tools, such as a plugin manager that will easily lp you find and download plugins or an auto-installer that automatically installs popular themes.
They also offer a support system where you can chat with representatives or get one-on-one training, including video and text tutorials that will help you get the most out of your website.
Wpengine Cons
There are also several cons associated with WP Engine.
There Are Many Different Plans
WP Engine offers many different plans at different levels, but some people might find it overwhelming and challenging to choose one that works for them. Having so many options can also make it difficult to compare their prices against other hosting services, which is always good to do before signing up.
They Might Be Too Expensive For Some People
The advanced packages are very affordable, but even the basic hosting package at WP Engine is more expensive than other hosting solutions. It can be challenging for people to get started with their website and don’t have much extra money to spend upfront.
Email or Domain Names Hosting Service
Despite their expensive price, you will still need to pay for an email marketing services provider. That will be a company like Aweber, Constant Content, or MailChimp. You will also need to purchase a domain name on Namecheap.
Some FAQs
Let’s answer a few questions that people often ask:
Is Wp Engine The Same As WordPress?
No. WP Engine is a WordPress hosting company with many pricing plans to choose from. Most people use WordPress since it’s the best CMS. You can use it to manage website content effectively.
Is Wpengine Profitable?
Yes, it’s profitable if you have a winning online business plan. It is fast, comes with many powerful hosting features, has multiple pricing plans, and maintains high uptimes. If you host your website here, they guarantee high performance.
WPEngine Vs. SiteGround: Which One Would You Choose?
Siteground offers a simple to use dashboard and great customer service for an affordable price. Check out their website today to learn more about how they can help you get started with your new site!
Wpengine is also worth considering, but the interface isn’t as user-friendly. They offer great pricing options that are competitive with what we at SiteGround have available. If you choose them, you could find yourself in a tough position because of their lack of customer support or high prices once the initial 1-year contract expires.
I would recommend giving both sites some consideration before making your final decision on which one will host your blog!
Affiliate Disclaimer: I hope you liked our Siteground vs Wprngine. Please note that some of the links inside this article may be affiliate links to Siteground and Wpengine. That means that if you click on one of the links and sign up, I may be compensated for it. If you do happen to click, we appreciate it! Any money we make keeps this site running smoothly and allows us to keep writing these high-quality reviews.
