Wp Engine Review: Is it Best WordPress Hosting Partner?

If you’re looking for a WordPress hosting partner, you’ve come to the right place. Wp Engine is an “all-inclusive” managed hosting company that takes care of everything for your site. They provide fast and reliable service with 99% uptime guarantees.

We’ll show you why in this Wp Engine Review!

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WP Engine Review: Performance Overview

WP Engine chose to focus solely on one of the most popular CMS in the world – WordPress. The company noted that some web hosts were not fully offering what WordPress customers need. They focus on a broader scope and end up offering substantial WordPress hosting services.

WP Engine chooses a different route and left all the other CMS such as Joomla to provide the best WordPress web hosting services.

Founded in 2010, the company now has headquarters in Austine, Texas, and services most of North America. It also has other offices in San Antonio, Limerick, Brisbane, and Krakow in Poland.   

What Does WP Engine Offer?

WP Engine has a lot to offer to anyone aspiring to have dedicated WordPress hosting. I will tell you what each plan offer.

Right now, let’s look at what you can expect from the web hosting company.

Excellent Uptime and Servers Location

WP Engine guarantees a solid uptime. They understand that a few seconds of downtimes could lead to a massive loss of traffic, leads, and business revenue.

With a 99.95% uptime guarantee and a world-class network infrastructure, you can’t fail to trust them. They also have data centers in Tokyo, Midwest USA, and London to ensure your website is always shifted to the next server during upgrades and maintenance.

Blazing Speeds

I know you want a high loading speed, don’t you? Speed is an essential Google ranking factor. 

Well, WP Engine has your back when it comes to this. They have powerful features meant to help you achieve precisely that.

Once you purchase any of their plans, you will have access to a Content Delivery Network (CDN). A system that allows you to distribute files such as images and videos to powerful dedicated servers worldwide such that your users always use the nearest server to access your content. The results are fast loading times.

EverCache is a WP Engine’s built-in application, which caches your web content and allows you to customize your caching needs. When there is increased traffic to your site, the tool will filter out bot traffic and allow only genuine visits.  

Though loading speeds will always depend on the kind of theme installed, content on the site, and a whole lot of other elements, most of the tests done using Pingdom revealed that sites hosted on WP Engine loaded in less than a second.

An All-Round Website Security

They don’t leave anything to chance regarding the security of your site. It’s an essential element in your business. So, it has to be secure from hackers, DDoS attacks, malware, brute force attacks, and people with malicious intentions.

They do this by installing a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate on your URL, such that your website URL begins with an ‘HTTPS address and not the ‘HTTP’ address like most spam sites we all know.

Isn’t that awesome?

I mean, some web hosts charge a fee for this security issue, but you are getting this for free with WP Engine.

They offer real-time 24/7 protection for your site. These celebrated WordPress security experts have an up-to-date firewall to keep all the latest kinds of threats and other intruders at bay. Before any core update, first, they will test it out and ensure it will boost your site’s performance.

And to cap it all, WP Engine sometimes partners with other third-party security firms to offer top-notch security to your site.   

With that kind of security measure, you can focus on other aspects of your business such as marketing, assured that your site is safe and secure.  

WordPress Themes

Every heard of StudioPress? They have fantastic premium WordPress themes.  

It’s now under the WP Engine’s domain. That means it’s in your reach as their customer, as well. I’m talking about a ton 36 plus fast and SEO-friendly WordPress themes and plugins worth over $2000.

If you have heard of the Genesis framework, then you must have known that it’s a recommended theme by most top marketers. You will pay somewhere else to get the Genesis framework, but you are getting it for free with the WP Engine.   

How cool is that?

Automatic WordPress Updates

Who wouldn’t want updated WordPress themes and plugins? Well, your WordPress always needs to have the latest elements and features, such as WordPress editor, plugins, and such. It’s always a nerve-wracking task updating the tasks all by yourself. That’s why WP Engine got your back on this.

They carry out automatic updates and ensure your WordPress software is updated to the core. Yes, they even go to an extend of testing the software themselves before installing it to your site.

And if you want it, you can defer the automatic installation to 30 days and test out the software before installing it entirely on your site.    

Excellent User Support

Who wouldn’t like a company that responds to requests faster and comprehensively? Well, you will love the WP Engine customer support staff. They boost a 97% customer satisfaction rate – something I can agree with because they seem to have many positive reviews regarding this.

WP Engine always ensures that you have a positive experience dealing with them. That’s why they have a dedicated Customer Experience Operations team that works all day long to ensure a 100% satisfaction rate for all their customers.

If you want to call them instead of using the chatbot right at the bottom of their site, you can always call them. They are always available – except if you are a startup plan customer. They also have support ticketing for an issue that needs a deeper look.

Emailing them, too, can do the trick. Yes, just press the ‘email us’ button and send the email. The WP Engine support team will reply as soon as possible. Besides, they have one-on-one experience with enterprise customers and many guides, tutorials, and in-depth articles on fixing simple issues that their customers experience.  

What I like about WP Engine’s Hosting

Several things will make you want to stay with WP Engine hosting forever. Here are some of them:

Advanced Website Security Features

WP Engine ensures your website is secured and backed up. They have excellent tools to do that. From installing a security layer on your URL to giving access to a global CDN that distributes your content to servers worldwide, the security features here are top-notch.

Their data centers are well protected, too. You don’t merely walk in and access their premises. There are biometric scanners and guards at every entry point to provide maximum security. 

An Excellent Website Staging Environment

WP Engine offers users a staging environment right there in the user portal. With that, you can clone your website and see how it performs in real life before publishing it. That means you can make changes to the website, such as changing the elements, colors, and font sizes without touching the website.

Once that is done, press the ‘publish’ button, and your changes are live.

Isn’t that cool? You can hire a developer to work on the site without turning on the ‘site under development’ theme. You can then review the site and make some changes if any. The result is you are preserving the flow of traffic and customers.

There aren’t as many web hosts to this feature.

Highly Responsive Customer Support

WP Engine has an excellent user support team, which ensures you, as their customer, are satisfied and have a seamless user experience. They do this through live chats right on their sites, emails, and support tickets.

The customer support team will handle all your website transfer processes and help you whenever an issue arises.

Fast Load Times

The web host utilizes a global CND with global server locations to ensure your website loads at a terrific speed.

Once you sign up for any of the WP Engine pricing plans, you will access a free CND account and distribute your files, videos, and other content to global servers. 

   

What I don’t like about WP Engine

WP Engine is excellent. However, there are some things that they can improve. Let’s check out these cons:

They Ban Some Plugins

WP Engine bans plugins such as caching, related posts, and backup plugins in the name of improving the performance of your site.

So, if a plugin causes your website to loads slowly or has a plugin version with features that WP Engine already provides, WP Engine will get rid of it. I understand it can be a performance procedure, but sometimes these plugins are helpful.

They Don’t Offer Email Hosting

Marketing products and services through email are highly profitable. In fact, you should expect $42 for every $1 spent on email marketing. That means any company that hosts a website for you need to offer email marketing, as well.

You need to capture the leads landing on your site, engage them through your pipeline, and ultimately convert them to sales with minimum costs.

With WP Engine, you will need to integrate your site with a third-party email marketing company such as Aweber or ActiveCampaign. That could be additional costs, which could have been avoided.

No Domain Registration

While other web hosts such as BlueHost and HostGator offer web and domain name hosting, WP Engine doesn’t. It only hosts your website but not a domain name.

They might focus mainly on web hosting, but a website can’t be a site without a domain name. Customers could easily go with a company that offers both as a package. Bluehost, for example, provides a free domain name for any of their pricing plans.

They Don’t Allow Other CMS

WP Engine is a WordPress hosting company. That means it only supports WordPress as a content management system. It’s the most popular CMS right now, powering about 33.5% of websites on the internet, but look at the people being locked out of WP Engine.

That means if you are using Joomla, you can use the web hosting company. It could do well to offer both WordPress hosting and a shared hosting plan like SiteGround. 

WP Engine Hosting Packages Per Month

The web host has several managed WordPress hosting options:

• WP Engine managed hosting: the plan gives you the tools to improve speed and secure your site  
• WP Engine managed hosting plus: this type of hosting is for someone who wants to backup their sites regularly and adds more security  
• WP Engine secure hosting: this adds a layer of protection to your site and additional features 
• WP Engine e-commerce hosting: the plan is geared towards e-commerce stores that want an all-in-one web hosting package.

Each of the hosting plans offers up to four pricing plans. Let’s check out managed hosting since it’s the most affordable.

Well, it has four pricing options, as you can see in this screenshot.

Managed Hosting Startup ($25)

The plan is the most affordable of all and allows you to install one site, offer 50GB of webspace and 10GB of local storage. It also comes with 24/7 customers support, daily backups, ten premium themes to give you a wide range of options, and a one-click staging site.

Managed Hosting Professional ($49.17) 

If you feel you want to upgrade from the startup plan, go with the professional one. It offers 125GB of bandwidth per month, 15GB of local storage and allows you to create up to 3 websites, which can comfortably receive visits of up to 75,000 per month.

The plan also comes bundled with ten premium themes, a free SSL and SHL, 24/7 support, a staging site, and free migration from other web hosts.

Managed Hosting Growth ($95.83) 

The plan allows you to create up to 10 sites and receive up to 100,000 visitors per month. It also offers 200GB of bandwidth per month and 20GB of local storage.

There are also among all the other features in the previous plans, such as 24/7 support, a one-click staging site, free SSL and SHL, ten premium WordPress themes, and daily backups of your website.

Managed Hosting Scale ($241.67)

The last WP Engine plan is meant for agencies with multiple clients. With the scale plan, you can install up to 30 websites, access 500 GB of bandwidth, 40 GB of local storage, and 400, 000 visitors per month.

That’s in addition to all the features that the other plans offer.

In addition, if you want a dedicated custom hosting offer with increased visits per month, and don’t mind added costs, you can always get in touch with the WP Engine support team.

FAQs

Let’s answer a few of the questions based on research on what people are asking.

Do They Offer Automated Backup?

Yes, WP Engine offers automatic backups of your website content daily and enables you to restore it all without breaking a sweat. And if you want to do manual backup yourself, you can. With just a few clicks, your website content is secure in their servers.

The web host also gives you the option of choosing between Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services, which are optimized for WordPress.

Is WP Engine Legit?

Yes, WP Engine is a trusted online web hosting company with customers like National Geographic, MyFitness Pal, Yelp, Asana, and PBS.

That means it has a global reputation for managed WordPress hosting solutions and excellent performance.

Is WP Engine Profitable?

That depends on your web hosting goals. But since the speed and uptimes matter, they guarantee you fast load times a 99.95% uptime.

And if that isn’t enough, you can always upgrade to a WP Engine 99.99% uptime rate and increase your monthly visitors.

Is WP Engine Free?

It’s not free. You have to purchase any of their pricing plans to enjoy its web hosting features. You can even choose to go for the annual plan. It saves you much more.

They have a 60-day money-back guarantee. That means you can always cancel your subscription with them before the 60 days are over.

Is There A Difference Between WP Engine And WordPress?

WP Engine is a WordPress hosting company whereas WordPress is a content management system that helps you manage your website content.

Don’t confuse the two.

Is WP Engine Worth It?

Yes, it’s worth it. I like its performance, up times, and fast speeds it offers for WordPress websites. It might have some odds, such as not offering domain registrations and email hosting, but the web host provides excellent web hosting services.

Verdit

WP Engine offers the ultimate WordPress hosting experience. With over 36 premium themes and a 60-day money-back guarantee, there’s no better time to try it out than now! Get started today with their hassle-free sign-up process or read more about what makes them so great below. If you have any questions at all, just leave us a comment below and we’ll get right back to you within 24 hours (or less!).

Take advantage of their two-month free offer if you go for the yearly plan.

Check it out today. I hope this WP Engine review has helped you in your decision-making process.