I learned about WP Engine a long time ago. When the company started in 2010, I did an online interview with co-founder Jason Cohen.
Few heard of the name âWP Engineâ at that time, but the company was growing exponentially. Many well-known bloggers and companies (including HTC, FourSquare, Balsamiq, Sound Cloud) were changing.
A year after the interview, I received a free account and changed the WHSR. The migration process was very smooth and my website load time was cut in half. It goes without saying that I was very happy and stayed for over 2 years.
Shortly after Google Penguin (which WHSR was very successful), I decided to change and started rebuilding everything from scratch. The idea was to turn WHSR into a web service provider, build a community around ourselves and rely less on Google traffic. This was the time when the WHSR Uptime Monitor was made and we went back to the conventional VPS hosting environment .
Today’s WP engine
Over time, WP Engine has become an extremely popular WordPress hosting.
Many things have changed since the WHSR changed. Several new features have been added as technological advances, the company is funded by a large group of investors, including Automattic (the folks behind WordPress.com), and many bloggers and WP experts consider them as one of the best managed hosting on the WordPress (there were also some that go against them, more on that later).
Is the WP Engine as good as the words on the street? Let’s find out.
Review summary
BENEFITS
- Solid server performance – hosting uptime above 99.99%
- Fast server speed – Time-to-first-byte (TTFB) below 250ms
- Try it without risk – 60-day money back guarantee
- Good billing practices: Users can easily refund or cancel their account
- Reseller-friendly – Transfer billing to your customers
- Agile developer environment – Ready development and preparation sites
- Genesis Framework and StudioPress themes included
DISADVANTAGES
- Expensive addon features
- No email hosting – users will need to pay more to third parties (like Google Suite or Rackspace) to host their email
- There is no direct access to the .htaccess file
- Self-help site migration service only
- Big SEO problem with the “Redirect Bot” default setting
- Slightly expensive – Price increased in March 2018
- Costly for owners who run multiple WP sites
WP Engine alternatives
Users considering WP Engine may also want to check out Kinsta , Pressidium or SiteGround .
Quick links
Learn more about my experience and review of WP Engine Hosting from different perspectives:
- P Engine Server Performance
- WP Engine Prices
- Customer Service
- WP Engine features
- Verdict: Should you host on WP Engine?
WP Engine Platform Performance
Our experience and thoughts:
Hosting uptime above 99.99%
Time-to-first-byte (TTFB) below 250ms
A + rated on Bitcatcha Speed ââTest
Server location in the United States only
WP engine platform uptime (Feb 2018): 100%
Older server uptime records
* Click to enlarge the image.
Jun 2017: 100%
Feb 2016: 99.97%
Nov 2015: 100%
Sep 2015: 100%
Sep 2014: 99.99%
Personal experience (2012 – 2013)
As I mentioned earlier, I switched WHSR to WP Engine in 2012/13. My personal experience with WP Engine at that time was just WOW.
The response time of the site has improved 100% according to Pingdom shortly after the site migration. Note that no further fine adjustments were made when this was measured.
WP Motor Bitcatcha Speed ââTest Results (Mar 2018): A +
WP Engine Bitcatcha Speed ââTest Results (Jun 2017): B +
WP engine speed test at WebpageTest.org
WP Engine Customer Service
Our experience and thoughts:
Clear terms of service and guarantees
60 day money back guarantee
24 7 useful live chat and phone support
No contract lock – cancel anytime
Good billing practices: Users can easily refund or cancel their account
Customer complaints about after-sales services
Proactive live chat support
A WP Engine sales team is ready to welcome you as soon as the user accesses your site.
My recent experience of live chat with WP Engine support was good. WP Engine live chat support is one of the top five according to my studies in 2017 .
Huge knowledge base in the WP Engine support section.
User complaints in support of WP Engine (mainly in 2014/2015)
Support for WP Engine was first class during my stay (2012 – 2013). Every individual support team I spoke to was a WordPress assistant. And they were so passionate about their work – you can tell with the speed with which they respond to your emails – that the ticket support system was like a live chat, where I received almost instant responses every time.
But, of course, things changed later, if you researched it and noticed that there were some complaints about WP Engine customer support in 2014, including this long review by Matthew Woodward . Complaints generally focus on two things –
- Uninformed / inexperienced support staff,
- Slow responses (some even said their requests were ignored), and
WP Engine Response
The company’s growing criticism prompted the response from WP Engine founder Jason Cohen on his blog in May 2014 – Growth is difficult .
To solve the problem, seven immediate actions were taken, including hiring new support teams (they have increased the support team by 50% since then) and allowed customers to directly contact the company’s engineer (read the quotes below).
Hiring 1
We closed the C Series financing in January and immediately put him to work on hiring the support team. We have increased the team by 50% since then. It is very difficult to hire quickly and still maintain our standards of attitude (culture) and aptitude (capacity). We even hired additional internal recruiters to help us accelerate this process.
2- Direct-to-Engineer
Some of our customers are highly technical, so whenever they contact us, it is with difficult and interesting problems – not those that can be solved with a knowledge base article or a simple and obvious answer. So we started to create ways for these customers to reach engineers more quickly – people who can work with things that are difficult to understand. Of course, we still don’t have 24/7, as we do with regular support. Fortunately, these problems are usually resolved during normal business hours, so overall, this approach has been effective.
Updates: User comments after Jason’s message
Recent user feedback (following Jason’s message) indicates that the quality of WP Engine’s customer support is returning.
Comments for BRet Wegner, Drive Social Now
Extremely likely, between simple setup, automated migrations and great support when you just need a little more control, WP Engine hasn’t left me yet. There seem to be times when the administrator side of a website seems a little slow. This usually occurs during peak hours, but if the site is on a server with other sites with heavy loads, you could be affected. But you can usually ask them to move your site to another server and they will take care of taking you to a more reliable environment. – Bret Wegner, Conduct Social Now / quoted from Fit Small Business .
Comments from Dave Warfel, WP Smack Down
Waiting times for live chat [with WP Engine] will depend on a few factors; mainly, time of day and if they are experiencing any server problems. I think the longest I’ve had to wait is 15 minutes. Most of the time, I get an answer in less than 5 minutes. Compared to other hosts, I would rate this as very good (8.5 / 10) – Dave Warfel’s WP engine review .
The WP Engine visit counts
A few years ago, a complaint you frequently hear about WP Engine is how they charge customers. WP Engine users are charged based on the visit. The WP Engine entry plan, for example, allows for up to 25,000 visits per month. If your blog attracts more than 25,000 visits in a month, you will need to pay more.
So, more visits = more CPU resource usage = higher hosting rates. Fair?
No. Because WP Engine is also charging for bot visits and has not implemented any measures to block bad bots (unlike conventional hosting, users cannot configure their robots.txt to block bad bots on WP Engine). Users were forced to pay surpluses due to bot visits.
WP Engine Response
WP Engine removed bot visits from its billable visit calculations on October 13, 2015 .
Learn how WP Engine defines a “visit” in this article .
WP Engine features
Our experience and thoughts:
Geographic segmentation and external backups
Agile developer environment – ready development and preparation sites
Reseller-friendly: transfer billing to your customers
StudioPress and Genesis frame included
Expensive addon features
No email hosting
There is no direct access to the .htaccess file
“Redirect Bots”, causing major SEO problem
Important to know: WP Engine is only for WordPress sites
Keep in mind that WP Engine is a WordPress-only hosting.
This means that if your website is not WordPress, you will not be able to host your website on WP Engine.
Billing Transfer
The developer can create a website on WP Engine and easily transfer the hosting account / website to its customers.
Migration of the self-help site
The migration service from the WP Engine provider’s website? Do not.
However, WP Engine developed an automated and hassle-free migration plugin. All you need to do is provide some account details and the migration process (ie searching / replacing values ââin the database, updating the link structure and migrating multiple sites, etc.) can be done automatically with the plug -in.
For detailed instructions, read this post . To download the migration tool, here .
Screenshot of the WP Engine migration plug-in – this is where you add your migration information to the tool.
Accessing the .htaccess file on WP Engine
In WP Engine, the .htaccess rules are defined on the user’s portal (see image).
You will need to go through technical support to access the .htaccess file (for example, to copy and go through a large part of .htaccess redirects).
Expensive add-ons
There are many great features with WP Engine, but they are not free for users of startup and growth plans.
Sending and receiving emails
WP Engine does not provide email or webmail capabilities.
This means that if you want an email address that ends with your domain name (something like [email protected] ), you will need to host your own email accounts.
Yes, I know you can always go with Gmail, as Google provides free email hosting services (as recommended by WPEngine); but not all website owners want their data to be hosted with the big G (me included!).
However, don’t be afraid. I tried a few different solutions when I switched my host to WP Engine and wrote this email hosting guide .
Studio Press Themes and Genesis framework
The acquisition of RainPress Digital LLC ‘s StudioPress Themes and Genesis Framework in June 2018 further strengthens the WP Engine platform, allowing for faster time-to-market, with greater ease and agility.
Genesis is a huge ecosystem of parts for WordPress and is essentially what is needed to build a better WordPress site in building blocks. From speed to security and even aesthetics, there’s something about the Genesis Framework that simply screams ‘professional WordPress’ – and that’s what you pay for.
The StudioPress Themes, on the other hand, is a collection of over 35 professionally designed, optimized Gutenberg, WordPress themes built with Genesis that support a range of vertical use cases.
Redirect bots = big SEO problem
By default, sites hosted on WP Engine with a page ending in a number (for example, example.com/page/1) or a query argument (for example, example.com/mypage/?myproduct=name), will be redirected to the page before the query arg number or sequence begins (site.com/page, site.com/category, site.com/mypage/).* This setting, known as “Redirect Bots”, is a big SEO problem, as it limits Google robots to discover content on your site and affect the flow of PageRank on the site.
Fortunately – this setting can be disabled by contacting WP Engine support.
* Note: This is quoting the WP engine exact words from this blog post . WP Engine is selling this feature as a “benefit” as it saves server load (and money) for users.
Price: Is WP Engine good value for money?
Our experience and thoughts:
Currently on sale – get 2 months free and 10% discount
No hidden fees or increased renewal fees
No contract lock – cancel anytime
Good billing practices: Users can easily refund or cancel their account
Costly for owners who run multiple WP sites
Slightly expensive – Price increased in March 2018 (for existing users, September 2018)
Promotional code for the WP engine: WPE3Free
Beginning users who sign up for WP Engine will receive 2 months of free hosting and 10% off their first payment when the promotional code âwpe3freeâ is applied.
The startup plan after the discount costs $ 22.50 / month (with annual plan).
WP Engine 2018 price changes: before and after
WP Engine announced its new plans on February 28th, 2018. The original plans – Personal, Professional and Commercial – are replaced by slightly more expensive plans called StartUp, Growth and Scale.
The new price ($ 30.00, $ 115.00, $ 290.00 / mo) is slightly higher than the old ones ($ 27.55, $ 94.05, $ 236.55 / mo).
WP Engine Entry Plan Prices (Before and After)
| Personal Plan (Before) | Startup plan (after) | |
|---|---|---|
| Plans | Folks | Start |
| Number of sites | 1 | 1 |
| Visits / month | 25,000 | 25,000 |
| WP Multisites | – | + $ 20 / mo |
| CDN | $ 19 / mo | Free |
| Price (monthly basis) | $ 29 / mo | $ 30 / mo |
| Price (12-mo contract) | $ 27.55 / mo | $ 25.00 / mo |
* Note: On January 22, 2020, all current customers on the startup plans will be converted to the new price (reduced from $ 35 to $ 30) on the renewal date for monthly or annual billing. For updated pricing and plan details, visit: https://wpengine.com/plans/
Costly for users with multiple sites
As long as the fast server and WP experts support it, it’s nice to have; WP Engine is not exactly what you need for your low traffic, less important sites.
The startup plan allows for only one installation per account and charges $ 20 / month per additional site. Your hosting cost would easily be up to hundreds of dollars a month.
For users with multiple low traffic sites, it is much cheaper to go with a shared hosting service that usually costs less than $ 10 a month .
Compare price: WP Engine vs FlyWheel, Pressidium, Kinsta and Pressable
Here is a quick comparison of WP Engine prices with other managed WordPress hosts (plans similar to WP Engine Startup).
| Characteristics | WP Motor | WP web host | Kinsta | Pressidium | Pressable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plans | Start | Light | start | Folks | Folks |
| Number of sites | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Monthly visits | 25,000 | 20,000 | 20,000 | 30,000 | 60,000 |
| storage | 10 GB | 30 GB | 10 GB | 10 GB | – |
| CDN | Free | Free | Free | Free | Free |
| Regular price (12-mo subscription) | $ 25 / mo | $ 7.00 / mo | $ 25 / mo | $ 42 / mo | $ 20.83 / mo |
| Visit / Order | Visit | Visit | Visit | Visit | Visit |
* Note: I am comparing the normal WP Engine price in this table. WP Engine is running a special promotion – you will get 2-months free if you sign up for the annual plan (which averages $ 22.50 / month).
Verdict: Should you host with WP Engine?
To recap – here are the pros and cons of hosting with WP Engine:
BENEFITS
- Solid server performance – hosting uptime above 99.99%
- Fast server speed – Time-to-first-byte (TTFB) below 250ms
- Try it without risk – 60-day money back guarantee
- Good billing practices: Users can easily refund or cancel their account
- Reseller-friendly – Transfer billing to your customers
- Agile developer environment – Ready development and preparation sites
- Genesis Framework and StudioPress themes included
DISADVANTAGES
- Expensive addon features
- No email hosting – users will need to pay more to third parties (like Google Suite or Rackspace) to host their email
- There is no direct access to the .htaccess file
- Self-help site migration service only
- Big SEO problem with the “Redirect Bot” default setting
- Slightly expensive – Price increased in March 2018
- Costly for owners who run multiple WP sites
I have no doubt that WP Engine is one of the best WordPress hosting services on the market. However, I do not recommend WP Engine to everyone. For example – if you don’t intend to run your site on WordPress, then there is no reason for you to be here. Or, if you’re new and just started, I suggest you go with conventional shared hosting services, like InMotion hosting , A2 Hosting or Interserver . I believe that you will thank me for the much cheaper option. Or, if you need to host multiple low-traffic sites, which don’t need as many server resources; so the WP Engine is definitely overkill. That said, however, WP Engine can be a gem for developers or high traffic WordPress sites. If you read Devesh’s article Best options for managed WordPress hosting , this is what he wrote on WP Engine –
If you want a little bit of everything, go with WPEngine. This option is for you if you want to scale without compromising the quality of support and losing developer-friendly tools. And at the same time, you don’t want to spend a fortune. I have been using WPEngine for a long time and have never had a problem with them.
The WP engine is recommended for:
- Users running a single WordPress site with medium to high traffic,
- There is a possibility that your site could go viral and access the Reddit homepage,
- Your WordPress site is your main source of income
- Youâre always worrying about hackers and malware,
- You don’t like dealing with tedious WordPress maintenance work – like backing up your site and adjusting your file cache;
Make the move as I did with the WHSR and stop worrying about the site being hacked or disabled due to increased traffic.