WP Engine is a very popular name in the segment of Best Managed WordPress Hosting. WordPress hosting is a very popular term these days and if you want more power, you must try managed WordPress hosting. In this WP Engine review, we will talk about every single aspect (Pros & Cons) of this hosting company.
By the way, WP Engine is name recently after acquiring StudioPress Themes & FlyWheel managed Hosting. That means you can actually save more than $2300 on premium WordPress themes (All 35+ StudioPress themes FREE) when you go for WP Engine hosting plans. They do also offer first few months FREE for new customers.
For more details, Visit the WP Engine Official website.
Disclaimer: This website is hosted on SiteGround WordPress Hosting (GrowBig Plan) and I also recommend beginners to start with SiteGround. They are quite cheap and have almost every single features to speed up your website for the best performance. WPEngine is for them who has an established online business and can’t able to take care of their website maintenance. WPEngine will take care of your website completely.
About WP Engine Hosting Company
WP Engine is the WordPress digital experience platform that gives companies of all sizes the agility, performance, intelligence, and integrations they need to drive their business forward faster.
WP Engine’s combination of tech innovation and an award-winning team of WordPress experts are trusted by over 80,000 companies across 135 countries to provide counsel and support, helping brands create world-class digital experiences.
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has offices in San Francisco, California; San Antonio, Texas; London, England; Limerick, Ireland, and Brisbane, Australia.
WP Engine Review For WordPress (Key Features)
As mentioned earlier, WP Engine is a managed WordPress Hosting service, which is extremely popular among the majority of the customer mainly due to its amazing features and top class customer support facility.
As a beginner, you may not find WPEngine as a suitable product for your online business. The reason is that WPEngine is only for them who need 100% WordPress assistance for their web hosting maintenance. Another factor is obviously the high price tag which is very difficult to bear for a beginner.
If you are a beginner, then you must start with a shared hosting or quality WordPress hosting. Following 2 articles will help you to get a cheap hosting compared to WPEngine, in case pricing is your topmost criteria.
- Best Cheap Web Hosting For Beginners in 2019
- Top 10 Best WordPress Hosting Companies in India
- 7 WPEngine Alternatives To Host Your Website in 2019
- Best Web Hosting Black Friday Deals for Bloggers 2019
- Web Hosting Deals (2019) – Prices, Coupons & Promo Codes
Key Benefits Of Using WPEngine (Pros)
WPEngine is very popular and provides awesome features & service to its customers. Here are the Top 10 features of WPEngine that will help you to find why WPEngine is the best WordPress hosting for your online business.
1. Automated Backups & Updates
It is always essential to update a particular website because by doing so, there is a minimum chance of cyber-attack. Regular updates are also necessary for a site to stay updated with all the new features.
Majority of the users prefers WPEngine because it generally provides backups of any website on a nightly basis, although it offers a full website backup as well.
Each backup contains the WordPress core, site databases, plugins, themes, and site changes, etc. Moreover, a user can do a full site restore from every single backup, which is one of the main positives of this hosting company.
Beyond the automated backups, users also get the options to conduct a manual backup as well. All the backups are stored on the WPEngine dashboard, although users can also download the backups for additional storage and safety.
2. Offers Daily Security Scans
Website security is something any user should take very seriously, especially if they are running WordPress. WordPress is by far the most popular CMS, which makes it a very likely target for hackers
In order to secure WordPress sites users not only need to install, activate, and set up the proper plugins but also they need to always ensure that their plugins are up to date. Forgetting a single link in the chain can totally hamper the security features.
However, luckily, WPEngine takes care of all the security features for their customers. They have automated daily security scans to ensure a user doesn’t have any active security risks. Moreover, they also offer automated backups for disaster recovery.
Apart from the security features mentioned above, WPEngine offers custom security procedures on the server level as well. Last but not least, they provide regular third-party security audits to ensure their practices, servers, and codebase are up to the latest security standards.
Also Check List of Best WordPress Security Plugins in 2019
3. WordPress Staging Area
By selecting WPEngine, apart from standard hosting users also gets additional access to multiple WordPress staging areas.
These staging environments can be used to fully create and test the WordPress website before pushing it live on to the internet, or even a developer can use the staging environment to build their client sites and make any changes before transferring the site to their possession.
However, pushing the site, or transferring it to a client is very straightforward, and everything takes place within the hosting dashboard.
4. High-class Servers
If a user wants his/her site to remain competitive in today’s online world, then his/her site must load quickly, which means that lightning page load times are essential.
There are a lot of different things that determine the speed of a particular website. First of all, users need a host that places a focus on performance, and secondly, users need a website which can be optimized properly for getting adequate speed.
It is true that a good-quality host is required in order to have a fast loading website, but it doesn’t always mean a user will need more server space. Instead, every user should look for a hosting company that has a server environment fully optimized for WordPress.
Therefore in order to get a fully optimized server for WordPress, users must go for WPEngine. They offer a completely customized server stack with effective caching protocols. Moreover, they have dedicated staff whose sole purpose is to identify any performance issues and take the necessary steps to fix them.
WP Engine’s load speeds are extremely fast even without having the proper site optimization. No matter how large a site grows, page loading speeds and overall performance is never something users will have to worry about.
5. Uptime Guarantee
It is very essential for a top hosting company to have a higher percentage of Uptime Guarantee as uptime guarantee is one of the significant factors which determines the actual standard of a hosting company.
WPEngine is considered as one of the best hosting company because it offers a reasonably good uptime guarantee of 99.95% and can even offer an uptime guarantee of 99.99% for users with enhanced SLA.
6. Bundled StudioPress Themes
StudioPress has created some of the most elegant WordPress themes available on the market today. In 2018 they were acquired by WPEngine.
While signing up for WPEngine hosting package users get access to the entire library of StudioPress themes free of charge, which is one of the main advantages of WPEngine. The above-mentioned advantage is beneficial for those users who are planning to host multiple sites with WPEngine, or for those developers who want to use the Genesis framework to build out client sites.
There are different types of themes in StudioPress, from standard blogging themes to e-commerce, news sites, and health sites, etc. Just because there are various types of themes so users will always get a theme that will match with the main subject of their website.
Users can make a child theme of their choice from scratch through WPEngine because they can access the Genesis parent theme, which is another significant advantage of this hosting company.
7. Offers 60-day money back period
Generally, the majority of the hosting companies offers a 30-day money back guarantee, but WPEngine, on the other hand, offers 60-day money back period which is one of the main advantages of this managed WordPress hosting company.
Within this 60-day period, if the users don’t like the services of this company, they can give up their service and eventually get back the entire invested amount.
Therefore, we can say that unlike other hosting services, users get an extra 30 day period to judge whether the service of WPEngine is good or bad, which eventually helps them to come to an accurate conclusion.
8. Free Site Migration
It is really very easy to migrate a particular WordPress site over to WPEngine. Through WPEngine, not only a user will be able to migrate a particular WordPress site but also without investing a single penny, which is an added advantage of this hosting service.
In order to prepare any site for migration, users will need to have an active WPEngine hosting account, and along with that, they will need to create a new website from within their hosting dashboard.
Once the above-mentioned processes are complete, they need to install the free migration plugin on their existing site and do all of the necessary site preparation. The plugin will do all of the technical heavy liftings for them like downloading and migrating all of their site content, databases, and settings.
Majority of the hosts will charge for the processes mentioned above, or will only migrate a portion of the website for free but in WPEngine with the WP Engine migration plugin users can easily migrate their site for free in the most efficient manner.
9. Customer Support facility
WPEngine offers top-class customer support facility which users can avail at any point of time as they provide 24/7 customer service. Users can contact the customer care agents either by telephone or through live chat.
Other than seeking help from efficient customer care agents through live chat or telephone, users will also get a considerable knowledge base at WPEngine support section, which generally solves most of their issues.
Therefore, it is quite evident from the above statements that WP Engine has a top class customer support facility, and hence, it is always a wise decision to select this WordPress hosting service.
10. Possesses some great additional features
Apart from all the benefits mentioned above, WPEngine offers some exceptional features which help users in a number of ways. Some of the top class additional features of WPEngine includes Custom-built EverCache technology and multi-site feature.
Custom-built EverCache technology helps to make content delivery within a flash, while on the other hand multi-site feature, allows users to coordinate and run multiple websites so that new content can be distributed amongst them.
Moreover, WPEngine also comes with the Proprietary LargeFS Storage feature, which helps to increases the possible storage space for users, almost making it practically infinite.
Disadvantages Of WPEngine Hosting (Cons)
So, there are really some amazing features of WPEngine hosting which makes them unique. But there are certain concerns which will definitely discourage you to look for a better alternative of WPEngine.
Limitations of Plugins
As they are managed WordPress hosting providers, they are not going to allow all the plugins you love. Yes, if you switch to WPEngine, then you might get surprised that a couple of few plugins are not working. Here is a list of disallowed plugins on WPEngine.
Too High Price
WPEgine hosting plans are too costly. You can read the below section for detailed pricing, but just let me tell you that their first plan starts $35/mo. This is almost the price of 1 year hosting on many cheap web hosting providers. But as I said, this will be unfair to compare WPEngine with another shared hosting.
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WPEngine Pricing 2019 (Which Plan Is Best For You)
Let’s explore the pricing details of WPEngine hosting plans. They do offer 4 different plans where plans are starting as a monthly billing option. Yes, you can pay your hosting bill on a month-to-month basis also.
- Startup ($35 per month): With this entry-level tier, you get support for up to 25,000 visits per month, one website, 10GB of storage, and 50GB of bandwidth. You’ll also get an SSL certificate, access to a global CDN, and a few other key features.
- Growth ($115 per month): This plan increases your traffic support to 100,000 and provides you with five sites. In addition to more resources, you get access to 24/7 phone support and can import your own SSL certificates.
- Scale ($290 per month): This tier is largely identical to the last. It simply provides even more resources, bumps your site count up to 15, and supports up to 400,000 visits per month.
- Premium and Enterprise: These are custom plans, so pricing will vary. They provide lots of additional resources and support and move your hosting up from a shared setup to dedicated servers.
As a beginner, if your website traffic is under 25,000 monthly visit then StartUp plan is quite good to start. But this may not be enough for a decent traffic website. So, make sure you pick the best WPEngine plan after comparing all the plans StartUp Vs Growth Vs Scale.
WPEngine Coupon Code 2019 (Get 10% OFF on the first-month pay)
WPEgine also offers an exclusive coupon code with which you can avail a flat 10% discount on the first-month billing. E.g. their StartUp plans start @ $35/mo and after applying this WPEngine promo code you have to pay only $31/mo. In case you want to pay for 1 year, then you will get 2-month FREE hosting as well.
Get 10% Discount on WPEngine Hosting
Conclusion: Should I Buy WPEngine Managed Hosting Plans?
As promised at the beginning of this article, we have given in-depth knowledge about the key advantages of WPEngine and also the disadvantages of WPEngine.
According to that, there is no doubt about the services and the quality hosting WPEngine is providing to their customers. But their problem is the high pricing hosting plans. But don’t judge them as they are the king of Managed WordPress hosting companies where Kinsta is also another big competitors.
So, you have to understand your need and accordingly buy hosting. As a beginner or regular blogger, you would be happy to get a shared hosting or WordPress hosting plans from popular companies like SiteGround, Bluehost or A2 Hosting, etc.
But if your need is different and you need a helping hand to maintain your WordPress site backend then WPEngine is worth paying the money (solid performance, and reliable support). Check the below screenshot why top brands are preferring WPEngine. Don’t forget to avail 10% Discount on WPEngine, Click Here To Get.
Make sure to share your views on this review of WPEgine and write a comment below. Have you ever tried WPEngine plans and how were your experiences?