WP Engine Review – The Best Managed WordPress Host in 2022?
$25 / mo.
- Fantastic server uptime
- Amazing customer support
- Daily data backups
- Supports AWS and Google Cloud
- Wordpress optimized hosting plans
- Easy website management
- Advanced security features
WP Engine is an incredibly popular managed WordPress hosting service that powers 1.5M+ websites worldwide. On top of that, it has maintained a decent customer rating on Trustpilot that falls close to 4 stars. But is WP Engine the best managed WordPress host you can choose for your website? That we’ll find out today.
For instance, this review will dive deep into the performance, uptime score, customer support, and price value of WP Engine. This way, it’ll be easier for you to find out if WP Engine is the right solution for your needs. That said, let’s dive in.
WP Engine: Quick Overview
WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting provider that came out back in 2010. Headquartered in Austin, the company has various additional offices across San Francisco, London, and California. As a large WordPress host, WP Engine has over 1000 employees that work together to serve over 175,000 customers located in over 150 countries worldwide.
At WP Engine, you can avail of a variety of managed WordPress hosting plans. Managed hosting means you won’t need to configure, manage, and maintain your server on your own but WP Engine’s team will take care of it. In simple terms, WP Engine is an extension of your technical team.
The managed WordPress plans of WP Engine are suitable for agencies and freelancers as well as business owners themselves. All plans include 24/7 customer support to help you through any issues you may be facing. Apart from that, you get a lot of collaboration features for seamlessly managing your WordPress projects as needed.
WP Engine Review : Pros
Here we’ll explore the top benefits of choosing WP Engine as your managed WordPress host.
Fantastic Server Uptime
It doesn’t matter what type of website you’re creating, you’ll want it to be accessible to your target audience 24/7. But that requires choosing a host with a great uptime score so your hosting server (and website) is not down from time to time.
WP Engine is among the finest web hosting providers in terms of decent server uptime. The company has maintained a terrific server uptime of 100% over the past. On top of that, WP Engine also offers a 99.95% uptime guarantee to get you peace of mind.
Moreover, WP Engine also offers an uptime monitoring plugin to help you determine the average uptime of your server. This plugin automatically pings your server from different locations over time to notify you in case a downtime is detected
Amazing Customer Service
Of course, you wouldn’t want to run into technical issues when setting up your hosting account and website. But in case you encounter a problem that’s hard to solve, contacting your host’s support can be a good solution.
Unlike many of its competitors, WP Engine offers 24/7 support service to all its customers. You can either opt for its email or phone call support as you prefer. In our experience, WP Engine replied to our query pretty quickly and gave some knowledgeable information in a friendly yet professional manner. So, overall, WP Engine’s support service is great.
Apart from that, WP Engine offers a detailed knowledge base and blog on its website. They contain in-depth tutorials and articles respectively to serve self-service enthusiasts who like to do everything on their own. On top of everything, their publications are up-to-date to minimize the chances of issues.
Daily Data Backups
As an online business, you would never want to lose your website’s data, which makes data protection a priority. Thankfully, WP Engine offers daily data backups to ensure your data is safe and recoverable. For instance, even if something goes wrong with your site's data, you can restore the most recent copy from the backup stored in a safe cloud server. Most importantly, WP Engine includes daily data backups for free with all its plans.
Supports AWS and Google Cloud
Most web experts prefer the most reliable cloud platforms like AWS and Google Cloud over any other. The reason is simple: these are backed by giant companies and are bound to provide a highly reliable infrastructure to keep your website safe and secure.
Not many hosting providers use cloud servers of AWS or Google Cloud for powering their hosting solutions, but WP Engine is an exception. It lets you choose between Google Cloud and AWS platforms for managed WordPress hosting. This means you’re free to host your WordPress projects on your desired infrastructure while having your projects managed by WP Engine’s trusted team.
WordPress-Optimized Hosting Plans
All plans of WP Engine are optimized for WordPress at their best. Firstly, WP Engine’s servers are optimized for running WordPress applications, minimizing glitches and performance delays. Apart from that, WP Engine’s team is highly knowledgeable regarding WordPress so any WordPress-related issues you face will be solved immediately.
Moreover, installing WordPress at WP Engine is a piece of cake. You simply have to activate the pre-installed WordPress and you’re good to go. As you do that, you can start managing your website using WordPress right away. The WordPress-friendly features like the inclusion of 10 premium themes for free and free automated migrations are another significant addition.
Easy Website Management
The focus of WP Engine is to help website owners save time by handling their server and website management tasks to ensure their sites run smoothly. But when it comes to viewing your site statistics and managing your website, WP Engine also takes the lead in this regard.
At WP Engine, you get an intuitive, attractive, and user-friendly control panel allowing you to make changes with your hosting account and websites. These could include adding or removing a website, attaching a domain name to a site, and scaling your servers up or down.
Moreover, you can also get a breakdown of the performance reports of your websites. For instance, you’ll be able to detect the accessibility and resource usage of your sites to make effective decisions accordingly.
If you get away with an eCommerce plan, you’ll be able to churn out the product research faster with WP Engine’s included tools. Plus, it breaks down your sales for easy tracking.
Advanced Security Features
WP Engine is known to be among the safest and most secure WordPress hosts available. In fact, that’s the core reason many web experts are open to paying slightly higher for WP Engine’s services than picking an average WordPress host.
The top security features of WP Engine include automated WordPress updates, daily data backups, and managed updates. The WordPress updates ensure your website gets the latest security patches to prevent it from hackers and attackers.
Support for Custom Plans
Most hosting providers require you to decide between their pre-designed hosting plans, but they can be often unfit for certain users. Like, if you’ll be hosting a RAM-intensive program, you’ll prefer more RAM in your server without needing to pay more for extra bandwidth.
WP Engine solves most of those issues by offering support for a custom plan. By choosing this plan, you’re allowed to create a server that will fit the number of websites you’re looking to host and the number of website visitors you’re expecting.
WP Engine Review : Cons
Here we’ll look into the major downsides of choosing WP Engine.
Domain Registration is Unavailable
One major con of WP Engine is it lacks a domain registration service. In simple words, you can only get the hosting service from WP Engine; registering a domain name for your website will require choosing a third-party domain registration service like Namecheap.
The key drawback of this method, as you might expect, is you’ll have to pay separately for the domain name. Plus, you’ll have to connect your domain name to your website. Anyhow, the lack of domain registration could also be a good feature of WP Engine as it enables them to focus on their key service, which is to provide high-quality WordPress hosting.
Lacks Email Hosting
Like domain registration, WP Engine also doesn’t offer professional email hosting, leaving you with no choice but to pick a third-party service. Once again, not providing professional emails may be helping WP Engine focus on its main trade of offering reliable WordPress hosting.
Anyway, if you are to pick WP Engine, we’d recommend choosing a single third-party service for domain registration and email hosting. Namecheap can be a good solution. If you’re wondering why you need email hosting in the first place, well, your business and website won’t seem that trustable or professional without it.
A Bit Pricey
It’s clear WP Engine is pretty expensive as you can get a better deal of hardware resources and managed hosting from an alternative like Bluehost. But note that WP Engine isn’t really charging high for the hardware resources it includes, but for the infrastructure, security, and user experience it provides.
For instance, WP Engine rules out most of its alternatives in terms of uptime score, customer support, and security features. Plus, its managed WordPress hosting is actually pretty high-quality, as its team takes proper care of your server so you can focus on scaling your business.
Dedicated Servers Only Come With Custom Plans
The regular managed WordPress plans of WP Engine are backed by virtually dedicated servers (VPS) rather than entirely dedicated servers. A VPS server is essentially a partition of a dedicated server but is isolated from other similar partitions of the same server.
This way, you get dedicated hardware resources, servers, apps, and operating systems but the overall server is shared among multiple users.
The VPS servers work well for most entry-level and medium-level businesses but if you’ll be hosting a mission-critical app, going for a dedicated server may be worth it. If that’s the case, note that WP Engine only offers dedicated servers with its custom plans. So, there’s no other way of getting a dedicated server at WP Engine without opting for a custom package.
WP Engine Pricing
Though WP Engine is quite expensive, what matters more is whether or not its service justifies its price.
Essentially, we cannot compare WP Engine’s pricing to its alternatives on basis of the included hardware resources. It’s because, as mentioned, WP Engine costs high for its high-end infrastructure, security, and user experience rather than the hardware juice it offers. With that in mind, WP Engine does offer a good price value for users who care about these features.
Managed WordPress Hosting
STARTUP | PROFESSIONAL | GROWTH | SCALE | |
Annual pricing | $25/mo | $49/mo | $95/mo | $241/mo |
Monthly pricing | $30 | $59 | $115 | $290 |
Websites included | 1 | 3 | 10 | 30 |
Visitors per month | 25,000 | 75,000 | 100,000 | 400,000 |
Local server storage | 10 GB | 15 GB | 20 GB | 50 GB |
Bandwidth per month | 50 GB | 125 GB | 200 GB | 500 GB |
Common Features
Here’s a list of common features included with all WP Engine’s plans mentioned above:
- 24/7 customer support accessible via email and phone
- 10 premium WordPress themes for your website
- Free automated WordPress migrations
- Daily data backups to protect your site’s data
- Free SSL certification and access to SSH
- One-click staging environment
Managed WooCommerce Hosting
STARTUP | PROFESSIONAL | GROWTH | SCALE | |
Annual pricing | $30/mo | $62/mo | $116/mo | $291/mo |
Monthly pricing | $36 | $75 | $140 | $350 |
Websites included | 1 | 3 | 10 | 30 |
Visitors per month | 25,000 | 75,000 | 100,000 | 400,000 |
Local server storage | 10 GB | 15 GB | 20 GB | 50 GB |
Bandwidth per month | 50 GB | 125 GB | 200 GB | 500 GB |
Added Ecommerce Features
WP Engine’s eCommerce plans come with some extra features in addition to the regular WordPress hosting features, like:
- 90% more caching for better site performance
- Live Cart to provide a stable cart for WooCommerce
- One-click online shop creation
- Optimized store theme for a good user experience for visitors
- WooCommerce website templates
- Automated plugin updates
Apart from that, the last three WooCommerce plans of WP Engine also include instant store search.
People Also Asked
Is WP Engine fast?
WP Engine’s servers are backed by incredible infrastructures of AWS and Google Cloud Platform to boast a decent server performance. The sites hosted on WP Engine tend to load pretty fast, thanks to its WordPress optimization, caching support, and other performance features.
Is WP Engine Worth It?
WP Engine is worth it for users who prioritize security, privacy, and ease of use over metrics like server hardware resources. In other words, it’s perfect for web experts looking to save time by outsourcing server management tasks to a trustable team or hosting a mission-critical app.
What is WP Engine used for?
WP Engine is used for hosting WordPress websites of all types, including blogs and eCommerce shops. It offers managed WordPress hosting so you don’t have to manage your website and server yourself. Instead, WP Engine’s team takes care of such technical duties so you can focus on growing your business.
Is WP Engine a good host?
WP Engine is hands down a decent managed WordPress host. Though its pricing is a bit steep, it’s worth it for the type of security, support, and user experience you get from WP Engine. If you host WordPress websites and want to keep away from the technical aspects of doing so, WP Engine might be a great solution.
Who are WP Engine competitors?
The top WP Engine competitors include Kinsta (Kinsta review), Flywheel, and Cloudways (Cloudways review). The providers like SiteGround and Bluehost also compete with WP Engine by offering managed WordPress hosting. But WP Engine outruns them with its remarkable infrastructure backed by giant cloud providers like Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
Final Words
When seeking the most reliable managed WordPress hosting providers, WP Engine is among the first few options that come around. In this guide, we’ve dived deep into the key benefits and downsides of WP Engine to help you find out if it’s for you.
To sum up, WP Engine is perfect for users who;
- will be hosting mission-critical WordPress projects requiring top-end security and reliability,
- require top-end cloud infrastructure for their website, and
- need a trustable team to outsource their WordPress server and site management tasks without compromising on inner satisfaction.
But if you find WP Engine is too expensive, consider SiteGround; it’s yet another great WordPress provider available on the market.