This WP engine review comprehensively evaluates its features and functionality, including an overall evaluation of the WP Engine. This should help you determine its relevance to your business.
We will be honest. While the phenomenal growth of the hosting industry has recently been largely profitable, it also introduces a whole new complex twist.
It is essentially not one-sided. The industry has developed on all fronts, especially when it comes to the e-commerce platform .
We are already used to simple hosting services and website builders. Then popular self-contained platforms, such as WordPress, joined the action, creating various hosting micro-niches.
Consequently, along with website developers, we now have many services such as SiteGround , HostGator , Bluehost , On the Go and GoDaddy providing various versions of WordPress Hosting , Now add a self-contained WordPress to this mixture, and you acknowledge that now everything is becoming a little more complicated and confusing.
And when we tried to solve all this, the WordPress industry again evolved to create managed WordPress hosting solutions.
Now, here is an interesting bit about it. Managed WordPress hosting is not like the standard hosting space. Instead of the usual purchase of a web hosting, you will pay for the maintenance and optimization of the WordPress site.
Let it sink for a second. Simple enough, managed WordPress hosting takes care of all the technical elements, allowing you to direct your energy to website operations.
Sounds impressive, right?
Well, think of it as a great opportunity for e-commerce players, because now you can comfortably focus on using your WordPress-based online store. Without, of course, worry about lubricating your base platform engine.
This is exactly where services such as WP Engine made the home, subsequently registering more than the 33,000 Unique Domains . In total, the service currently has 35,000 sites , the bulk of which are enterprises.
So what makes it special? And most importantly, could this be the perfect WordPress app for your e-commerce site?
To help you with everything, I jumped from the deep end into the world of managed WordPress hosting to evaluate the services offered from a critical point of view. This WP Engine review comprehensively evaluates its features and functionality, including overall WP engine pricing. This should help you determine its relevance to your business.
But first, let’s see how it started, and whatâs the matter.
WP Engine Reviews: Overview
Until now, WP Engine paper cake has been managing only eight candles. Its founder, businessman Jason Cohen, fired him in 2010 when he realized the growing hunger for optimized WordPress hosting services due to the gradual increase in popularity of the platform at all levels of the industry.
That is how he began to use the whole concept of installing WordPress for users, supporting critical elements, processing updates, caching, making frequent backups, periodically performing security scans, and much more. In general, WP Engine handles all tedious technical tasks that can be a little overwhelming for business owners and bloggers in WordPress.
The company has currently set up a base in Austin, Texas, and is hiring more than 400 technicians who specialize in WordPress hosting.
With the growing growth of WP Engine in over 120 countries, it is obvious that WordPress users are steadily catching up. And they seem to love it, as the company even continues to win local and international awards in various categories of hosting and customer service.
Admittedly, WP Engine may not be a veteran in the hosting industry. But he does not hesitate to take part in the competition, going to a decent bridgehead, which he managed in just 8 years.
Fair enough, but there is a not very pink side. The denials that pull it back are how much WP Engine’s pricing strategy is being discussed. A trade-off on cons such as a user depends on any relevant positive effects that might outweigh them.
So, let’s take a closer look at its main functions.
WP Engine Reviews: Features
Hosting features
Let’s start from the top. With the fact that WP Engine is fundamentally known for hosting.
As a WordPress hosting, we certainly expect it to optimize all of its provisions for WordPress. And WP Engine does a great job with this, with sentences compatible with the corresponding versions of WordPress.
It even goes further to tweak its hosting features to adapt to any upcoming WordPress updates. When WordPress 4 introduced new developer features, for example, WP Engine responded to the systematic integration of all elements into its platform.
Therefore, we can conclude that WP Engine is not just updated on WordPress hosting features. The service is also constantly reviewing its features to offer excellent hosting conditions, well optimized for everything WordPress offers.
By the way, one outstanding feature that I saw on WP Engine is the staging. This allows you to test and critically evaluate any changes to the site before they ultimately go live. The staging area basically provides a test domain where you mirror your site for any experiments you might have in mind.
And finally, WP Engine also contains both automatic and on-demand backups of the site. Subsequently, they are saved for at least 30 days, and the recovery process is as simple as a few clicks.
Uptime guarantee
Admit it. Latency is the biggest problem when it comes to web hosting. Downtime systems not only result in lost revenue, but also potentially damage the reputation of the business.
On average, a system failure within an hour can result in the loss of 686,000 of your business, considering not only lost sales, but also a subsequent drop in overall customer confidence. If you think about it, now everything is clear why the annual total loss of income is billions of dollars in 26.
Given these alarming numbers, I was very happy when I learned about the WP Engine uptime guarantee. And guess what? They do not give a guarantee of 800% or 90% in this regard. But rather, they guarantee users an idle time of 99.95%. Just 0.05 with 100%.
And you know what? They even throw money to support the lawsuit. A 60-minute downtime will pretty much entitle you to a 5% credit on your monthly WP engine bill.
Well, I know that such compensation is nothing compared to the possible corresponding losses, especially on a busy day like Black Friday. But what makes it so special is the fact that the WP Engine seems to be fully committed to full online technical support.
You can even transfer your website from one data center to another without going offline.
Now, this is one trait of confidence. Pretty impressive, to say the least. That’s why I was very curious to see how WP Engine flows around all this time.
But it turns out that the service does not use uptime records. However, after closer inspection, I was able to establish that the past of Amazon EC2 Crash did not spare WP Engine. But, to be fair, these outages can be forgiven, since the main platform is to blame. Not WP Engine.
So far, so good on the side of WP Engine.
High Security
The importance of WordPress as a hosting platform is commendable. But it also has its drawbacks. At the same time, major attacks increase on WordPress-based sites.
Well, the WP Engine was designed to deal with these inherent risks and many other possible vulnerabilities from both the platform and the users.
First of all, you get free SSL certificates regardless of your specific WP Engine pricing package. Configuring them is quite simple and straightforward thanks to an automated process that updates SSL even further before expiration. In addition, you can proceed with their implementation on the selected pages or on the entire site.
WP Engine has also invested heavily in detecting and preventing threats. The system constantly scans your entire site, looking for possible flaws and attempts to penetrate. It scans both primary and secondary files for suspicious activity, and also blocks access to the site using certain traffic sources marked as spam.
Now imagine an unlikely situation where a hacker is extremely skilled and ultimately surpasses all of these layers to gain access to your site. Typically, on most other platforms, you are forced to handle the mess. But, with WP Engine, the service takes care of and repairs completely free of charge.
To prevent such cases from occurring, you will notice that WP Engine is pretty strict, even when it comes to standard WP plugins. Plugins that are outdated or seemingly unstable with insecure code are identified and blocked from the service. Well, of course, sometimes it can be frustrating. But look at the big picture here – your site will be much safer.
However, it is worth noting that WP Engine also implements both small and major WordPress updates as soon as they are released. And no, you donât have to worry about looking for them, because the whole procedure is handled automatically by the update engine. But only after the patches have been comprehensively evaluated and reviewed to ensure that they function optimally.
And if someone tries to access your site through an interface, you can use WP Engine’s two-factor authentication to edit SFTP passwords.
All that is considered, the WP Engine security provisions are by far one of the best in the managed space of WordPress hosting.
Optimized speeds and performance
It is undeniable that WordPress is pretty fast. You should be fine with a typical low volume site attached to several basic plugins combined with relatively light images.
But your business setup can force you to expand plugins, embed multiple widgets, customize your theme files, and introduce additional elements such as HD images, forms, and videos.
Now such a complex site can greatly benefit from the proprietary Evercache technology from WP Engine. This is a pretty aggressive caching system that optimizes overall performance, making your web pages load at an incredible speed. To efficiently handle changed traffic patterns, the technology manages the use of your siteâs resources in real time.
Well, this is the moment when you can start thinking of crazy ideas, such as combining this with another WordPress caching plugin. More like adding a supercharger with a turbocharger in the same engine. This will further increase productivity, right?
Wrong! Here is the kicker. Although this setting makes sense theoretically, WP Engine does not support third-party caching plugins.
I will tell you that. You can use your content delivery network, which WP Engine offers in conjunction with NetDNA.
This greatly facilitates the use of several data centers to transfer site content to users based on the servers closest to them.
WP Engine Reviews: Prices
The pricing structure of WP Engine is mainly divided into four main plans:
Startup
It is perfect for a typical blog and starts at $ 35 per month. In addition to the standard features of WP Engine, it comes with:
- Free page performance
- Free migrations
- CDN and SSL
- 50GB bandwidth
- 25,000 site visits per month
- 3 environments per website
- Starts with one website.
Height
It was designed for small businesses and starts at $ 115 per month. In addition to the standard functions of the service, it provides:
- Free page performance
- Free migrations
- CDN and SSL
- 200GB bandwidth
- 100,000 site visits per month
- 3 environments per website
- Starts with Five Websites
Scale
This is especially suitable for medium-sized enterprises and starts at $ 290 per month. In addition to the standard features of WP Engine, it provides:
- Free page performance
- Free migrations
- CDN and SSL
- 400GB bandwidth
- 400,000 monthly site visits
- 3 environments per website
- Starts with Websites 15
To order
This is the most expensive option, it is built for large enterprises. However, it does not come with a fixed monthly fee, because WP Engine wants to negotiate according to your specific needs. Some of the main features that it provides include:
- Fastest support answer
- Driven Onboard
- Highest Availability / Redundancy
- High performance
- Dedicated environment
It is believed that WP Engine is not cheap. But at least it somehow compensates for this by offering a 60-day money back guarantee. If the service is not impressive, you can cancel everything and request a full refund within 60 days.
Who should consider using WP Engine?
Now that you have read the entire review, you must admit that WP Engine is undoubtedly one of the leading managed hosting services for WordPress. It may not provide everything you might think about, but it only optimized the right features for a fast, secure, and scalable WordPress-based website.
So, the simple truth is that WP Engine is ideal for those who do not intend to cope with the constant headache of technical tricks. Although it is comparatively expensive than most services in the same space, it is still cheaper than hiring a developer periodically to view and code the underlying WordPress framework.
All in all, it deserves a trial.