WP Engine review that's detailed, straightforward, based on first-hand experience, extensive examination, etc, is what you need if you're considering WP Engine hosting.
This review post is exactly that and will provide the info you need to help you make an informed decision.
WP Engine is one of the best and the OG provider of true premium and VIP-managed WordPress web hosting.
And this honest, first-hand experience and easy-to-digest WP Engine review for their hosting features, plans, and prices will help you see why.
- WP Engine hosting review for features, plans, pricing details
- WP Engine FAQ
WP Engine hosting review for features, plans, pricing details
The WP Engine hosting platform has been around for years with over 185k customers including small businesses like you and big brands like the NBA, Dropbox, Soundcloud, HelloFresh, Thompson Reuters, National Geographic, AFtv,
So let's see why all these small businesses and large enterprises choose them.
Because reviewing the various WP Engine parts like the features they offer, plans and pricing lets help you understand who the platform is best for and the reasons to choose them.
WP Engine is best for:
- People who want a true fully-managed WordPress hosting
- Non-techies who want a company to proactively apply and implement things on their site and server that help with WordPress security, speed, scaling, etc
- Those who appreciate and want top-notch customer service and tech support
- Businesses who want a performance-oriented WordPress hosting site
Reasons to choose WP Engine:
- Is GZIP or Brotli Compression Enabled in the server or do you have to do it yourself: Every website needs a GZIP or Brotli compression to load faster. Most people are novices and even if you are not, you don't want to waste time implementing this or money hiring someone to do it for you. So we picked website hosting companies that already do this for you at the server level. This is good because you do not have to spend time learning or paying a developer to do it for you.
- Is Browser Cache Enabled for SEO & Speed in the server or do you have to do it yourself? Nothing will kill your website's SEO and speed more than not having and implementing the correct browser cache, especially, Cache-Control headers.
- Researched web hosting providers' knowledgebase: We looked at how easy it is to find easy information on the most important hosting facts like how web hosting handles GZIP and Browser Cache. For example, if you go to google and type the hostname + browser cache and you can't find results coming from that host website about how they handle that then be wary. It is usually a sign that you have to optimize that yourself.
- Do you need to pay extra for plugins, premium themes, malware removal, etc: This is one area that many people ignore. They focus just on hosting service providers' prices instead of what they get in actual long-term value. If a web host price is $3/m but you have to pay $49/year for a good caching plugin like WP Rocket, $499/year like SUCURI to remove malware, premium themes with prebuilt websites (they are helpful if you are a novice because they will save you thousands from hiring a developer. Even if you are a pro, having a theme with pre-built templates will save you money because you don't have to spend time and money building things from scratch. Just remove certain features and optimize it correctly for speed as a lot of site builders are bloated), thousands to hire a developer to implement other basic optimizations like GZIP or Cache-Control that should have been done on the server level, then you really not saving money with that 3/m. So you are better off paying about $20/m and getting all or most of the above already in place with a company like WPENGINE.
Features review
Below are reviews of WP Engine hosting amazing features.
They provide some of the best features for WordPress hosting.
1. Specialized web hosting
Fully managed WordPress hosting
The company only hosts WordPress websites. This is the specialty that allows them to provide a VIP fully managed hosting experience.
E-commerce optimization
For those running an e-commerce store on WordPress WP Engine hosting is the real deal as they have optimization features that will speed up and secure your store.
They have specialty solutions for woocommerce and other eCommerce platform hosting.
Small business & enterprise hosting
The company's premium solutions and services are geared toward bloggers, entrepreneurs, small biz owners, large enterprises, etc.
Upon reviewing their customer base you find that they have a healthy mix of all types of people using their platform.
2. Web servers
Nginx
Personally, this is of their top features I love.
The company uses Nginx as its web server program to host websites. This is the software program that powers and serves a web page to a visitor upon request.
Nginx is considered to be better for performance (efficient and fast) and scaling.
It is the chosen server for top-trafficked websites which attests to its performance and scaling capabilities compared to Apache.
Google, Amazon(AWS), Azure servers
WP Engines uses premium Google, Amazon, and Azure cloud servers to power their client's websites.
These are the same cloud servers that Google uses to power its cloud services. And the same cloud servers Amazon uses to power amazon.com.
This leads to better storage, speed, security, and other performance benchmarks making their hosting for WordPress sites top-notch.
3. Datacenter (option to select & change)
A facility that stores and maintains web servers and applications for its clients is called a data center.
When you host your WordPress with WP Engine company, based on your plan, your website will either be on Google, or Amazon web servers, or the Microsoft Azure server platform and their data center locations.
Option to select a datacenter
You have the option to pick a data center closest to where your clients are for faster speed for your web visitor.
This is a great feature.
Change a datacenter later
If for any reason you want to change a data center location, you can do that easily with WP Engine hosting.
This is an amazing option to have as most hosting providers don't offer this feature.
I love this feature because if you move your business or if your target audience changes geographically, you can switch data centers to better serve them.
Google cloud servers
Most shared hosting plans are hosted on the Google cloud server and data centers.
So if you are on a shared plan your website server will be located in one of the following locations:
| Region | Location |
|---|---|
| North America | U.S - Iowa, North Carolina, Oregon; Canada - Montreal |
| Europe | Belgium; U.K - London; Germany - Frankfurt*; Netherlands; Finland* |
| Asia | Japan - Tokyo; Australia - Sydney; Taiwan; Singapore* |
Note:
Premium plans can also be on the data centers above and below. And for the locations with asterik, a shared plan can pay a little extra to be located there.
Amazon web servers (AWS)
Only premium plans are hosted on the AWS server.
| Region | Location |
|---|---|
| North America | U.S - Virginia, Ohio, Oregon; Canada - Montreal |
| Europe | Ireland, England, Germany |
| Asia | Singapore; Australia - Sydney |
Microsoft Azure servers
Another server location only premium plans can be on.
| North America | U.S - Washington |
| Europe | Netherlands |
4. Speed
The company uses various advanced methods to speed up your WordPress sites such as CDN, NGINX web extensions, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), SSD technology, Global server locations, Ever-cache, etc.
Server Cache
The company's WordPress hosting services include a top-notch server caching setup. You don't need plugins as they handle all caching server side.
Custom & Enterprise CloudFlare CDN
WP Engine hosting service includes a custom Cloudflare setup for basics plans and an enterprise setup for higher tier plans.
So no matter where you are, your website will be blazing fast.
5. Backup
Daily automatic backup
WP Engine automatically does a complete backup of each customer's website daily.
Backup on Amazon S3
WP Engine stores your website backups offsite on Amazon S3 (this is the same storage that Amazon uses for amazon.com, how cool!) and they encrypt your backup in transit and at rest.
One-click manual backup & restoration
You can easily back up your website manually and restore them with one click of a button in your customer dashboard.
It is super easy, especially for non-techie types.
Backup retention for 60 days
One of the WP Engine hostings features that we enjoy is the fact that they store backups for 60 days.
I don't know of any other managed WordPress hosting companies that do this.
This is a big deal because if for any reason you need to go back 60 days prior to restoring your website you can do it.
6. 24/7/365 Tech & customer support
24/7 phone, Livechat, ticketing
Live chat
The company offers a 24/7/365 day chat option for both customer services and tech support.
They have both junior and tech support teams. If you are not happy with a support expert you can request to chat with a senior rep.
Phone
You can call and speak with a human too 24/7.
Ticketing
WP Engine hosting clients can log into their portal and start and respond to tickets.
They use Zendesk features for this.
You can also send an email to billing at billing@wpengine.com
7. Security
One of the important features you need to review for any web hosting company is its security.
This WP Engine review section will share those.
Free hacks & malware removal
If your WordPress site is hacked while with them WP Engine hosting will clean and fix them for free.
Rare to see website companies offering this. You're mostly on your own with other companies if you have malware issues.
For their plans pricing this is a steal and of their top best features.
Other security features include
- managed Web Application Firewall (WAF)
- advanced DDOS Mitigation
- enterprise Cloudflare CDN integration
- free and premium SSL certificate
WP Engine plans & pricing review
This web hosting review won't be complete without discussing WP Engine pricing and plans.
So let's get to their various awesome WordPress fully-managed plans.
Starter pricing plan
Pricing: $15/m to $30/m
Professional
Pricing: $59/m
Growth
Pricing: $115/m
Scale
Pricing: $290/m
E-commerce hosting solutions
WP Engine offers fully manage e-commerce solution for all website and company size.
Pricing: $36/m to $350/m
Custom
Pricing: Contact the company for pricing
WP Engine FAQ
Why should I choose the WP Engine hosting service?
A:
- GZIP or Brotli compression enabled in a plan
- Is Browser Cache Enabled for SEO & Speed in the server
- Extensive knowledgebase
- No need to pay extra for plugins, premium themes, malware removal, etc, as the company offers all that
- Award-winning 24/7 customer support
- You can easily contact the executive team
Who is WP Engine?
A: WP Engine is the most popular and respected fully managed WordPress hosting company.
The company hosts both small and large enterprises.
Some of the companies, WP Engine hosting hosts are household names like the NBA, Discover Financial Services, Instacart, SoundCloud, Marriott, AMD, National Geographic, HelloFresh, AFV, Dropbox, UnderAmour, Pingdom, etc.
Where is WP Engine based?
The company is located and headquartered in Austin, Texas, U.S. with offices in San Francisco, Omaha, San Antonio, Australia, England, Poland, etc.
Is WP Engine safe and secure?
A: Yes, WP Engine is a safe fully managed WordPress hosting provider. WordPress.
Each website is hosted on its own container thus not sharing resources and isolated for a stronger layer of security.
Is WP Engine fast?
I wouldn't be doing this WP Engine hosting review if the company services are slow and shitty.
Is WP Engine worth the money?
WP Engine hosting is worth it without a doubt. You can tell by their reviews of their features and services.
If you can, save yourself headaches and roll with them.
A Los Angeles resident who loves to write awesome guides on SEO, WordPress speed/security, content strategies, business and personal finance, digital and growth hack tools, legal stuff, etc, that are helpful to businesses, solopreneurs, bloggers, and consumers.
What I write about is based on tests, extensive research, and 11+ years of experience as a former Senior digital & content marketing consultant with a division of Thomson Reuters and running a successful digital marketing agency...[Read full bio]