When it comes to web hosting and domains, you can find thousands of companies and services on the internet. Some brands like GoDaddy, WPEngine, Bluehost, and HostGator are pretty good in web hosting and provide ultimately fast speed. However, they usually have high prices, especially when we talk about Bluehost. We would also like to mention here that they don’t have optimization for a single platform. Instead, their servers are supposed to work with almost any website platform.
But, is optimization with the platform important? The short answer is Yes! It does matter. We’ll talk about it later! In this article, we’ve dedicatedly chosen WPEngine to review for you. But, why only WPEngine? We’ll talk about it later in the article!
In this guide, we’re going to cover every feature that WPEngine offers, and this review is going to be the ultimate review of this hosting company. We’ve also mentioned its up-time, load impacts, and everything you need to know about before purchasing. If you’re fed up with reading the same typical useless reviews and paid promotions, then you’re in the right place. We’re an affiliate of WPEngine, but every opinion is ours, and we’re going to do a completely honest review! So let’s get into it!
Why WPEngine?
Now, the question is that when many other popular hosting brands exist in the market, then why we’ve chosen WPEngine only? The reason lies behind its optimization and speed. WPEngine is especially for the WordPress platform. Therefore, its servers work great with WordPress in comparison to other brands. Optimization in software plays a very important role in the overall performance—no matters how powerful the hardware is, it is not optimized with the software.
Then the hardware is completely useless. That’s why we’ve mentioned this brand as our winner for this review, as its name suggests. WPEngine servers have great optimization with the WordPress platform. It means you get better optimization than other hosting companies + better prices. We’re not saying to don’t use any other brand with WordPress. But a great optimization could give you better results!
About WPEngine
Currently, this hosting company has more than 120,000 customers in more than 145 countries. This company isn’t the first to offer managed WP hosting, but you can expect the best from it! WPEngine is currently the leader of managed hosting for WordPress websites. According to the company itself, about 5% of the world population knows about WPEngine. Through this strategy, you get high performance and better results at the same price. In this hosting, you get a server that works only with WordPress. They are aware of how the platforms works, security rules, and many other things. Another benefit of using managed hosting is that you get regular updates.
If your budget is lower, then you can use managed hosting that uses a shared server. In this type of package, the server also handles other websites with you. As a result, you can expect quite low performance than a dedicated server. However, the demand for WordPress has increased massively, and 80% of the websites are made on WordPress. It means 8 out of 10 people who are reading this use have a WordPress website. For new start-ups and new websites, shared WordPress hosting is the best as they are affordable and perform quite well than typical hosting servers.
WPEngine Managed WordPress Hosting
A WPEngine managed to host is somehow close to automated services. In this package, the company will optimize your website and maintenance of your servers. You’ll have fewer customization controls over the server if compared to other usual plans. But, you’ll get the top-end security and experts that are always working for you on servers. As the name suggests, managed hosting means your hosting’s IT member will handle everything for you. In this case, they are WPEngine experts.
Although, WPEngine managed to host is usually a bit expensive than unmanaged hosting. But, if we talk about reliability, then this plan is far more reliable! However, note that it is not always compulsory that managed plans have a high SEO score. It mostly depends on your website’s optimization. In some cases, managed hosting does give you a bit higher SEO score than un-managed. But the difference is extremely low that can be neglected, bigger to focus on your website! In our opinion, if you’re just starting in the website business and then managed to host is perfect for you. Also, people are now focusing on WPEngine managed to host more than shared hosting as it’s easier to manage and provide good output and performance.
Dedicated WordPress Hosting
Dedicated server or hosting is specifically for those websites that usually have a high amount of traffic and needs to store large data. In this type of plan, the hosting company dedicates one whole server to the website. The server then only works for that website, and no other website can interrupt it. As a result, you get better speed and extremely low crashes. Rather than sharing one server with other websites, a dedicated server is more reliable. Although the company gives you their whole server, you get unlimited bandwidth, more storage, and more reliability.
There’s also a high price tag attached with dedicated servers since no other website works on that server. Above all, the most highlighted benefit you’ll get is customization. You can customize the server according to your preference. Since all servers will be yours, so you can customize them in the way you want. Other hosting plans like shared or managed don’t provide this feature. Therefore, only companies with an extremely high amount of traffic and large audience base choose dedicated hosting. If you think you’ll get better results in an entirely new website, then it’s not the truth. New websites don’t have enough traffic, nor is high processing required. So, consequently, you can never get the full performance from the server. Therefore, it’s better to go ahead with shared hosting for new setups.
Customer Support
Customer support in every business plays an extremely important role in customer satisfaction and loyalty. Without good customer support, no business can succeed in the world. Moreover, the CS reflects the brand image and its loyalty to the customers. In the case of web hosting, you might face errors and issues in your plan. Therefore, it’s important to consider the CS of any hosting you’re choosing. Especially in hosting companies, good customer support is compulsory because you get in trouble. The CS can resolve your problems.
WPEngine offer’s the world’s best customer care in hosting providers. It’s the world’s first hosting provider that offers 24/7 live call customer support. However, many other companies now provide 34/7 live customer support. But, WPEngine was the first-ever company to introduce live support call. Not just a live call, you can do a live chat with their CS agent, or for better results, you can write an email to WPEngine.
Moreover, if you’re from the USA, UK or Australia, you can visit their office for more assistance. That’s the reason why they won the 3x Stevie Award winner for customer service & support. We decided to take a test of WPEngine CS, and according to our experience, it was fabulous. The agents were live 24/7, responsive, and were helpful. We tried to confuse them, but they still stayed humble and replied to every message in less than a minute.
CDN
WPEngine offers CDN in every basic to a premium plan. All the servers of this hosting are optimized for CDN. The Content Delivery Network (CDN) helps your website to load faster and perform better in the user’s browser. It saves the server resources and allows your server to handle more traffic load with better performance. The question that appears here is what the heck is CDN of WPEngine, and how does it work in? IN WPEngine, the CDN (Content Delivery System) refers to servers located in different countries around the world. Since we’re talking about geolocated servers and not a specific single isolated server, it means the servers can easily handle your data.
The server holds a copy of your website on each independent server all over the world. As a result, when you change your website, all the server’s copy is affected respectively. Since all the servers of WPEngine support CDN, therefore they tend to be geographically distributed. As a result, your audience from all over the globe can access your website faster. Through this model, the WPEngine automatically assigns your visitor the most nearby server in his area. You don’t need to pay an additional cost for each server. Instead, you pay one fixed amount for your main server, and the main server will distribute the copies to all over the CDN servers. Talking about benefits, you get a performance boost in your website because then the geographical distance between visitors and servers reduces. Hence, you get better speed.
Loading Time
Features and options do matters in hosting, but most importantly, the performance of the hosting is the main point you want. The loading time of any website is considered an important part of SEO and for readers as well. It reflects the quality of your hosting server and shows how efficient your hosting server is. Not just that, a slow loading speed of any website can make your visitors close the tab because no one has enough time to wait for the page’s loading. Therefore, due to the high load time, people will exit your website, which increases your bounce rate and SEO score.
Loading time is usually slower in cheap and unbranded hosting companies. Since they put a huge load on their servers, that reduces the server’s speed, thus lower loading speed. However, in WPEngine, you get lighting fast loading speed that you can expect from a flagship company. We assure you that the speed you get is fast enough to not harm your SEO or user experience. WPEngine claims to give you extremely fast loading speed on the website, but we don’t believe in any advertising text. Therefore, we decided to take a test to get actual insights. We have used proxies to change the location because that the only way to change location. Below are the results:
- Melbourne: 1.6 seconds
- New York: 1.6 seconds
- San Jose: 0.4 seconds
- Stockholm: 1.6 seconds
- San Jose: 0.4 seconds
Load Impact
Besides page loading speed, there’s also another term that you should consider, which is Load Impact. A load impact is the hosting server’s performance when multiple users access the website at a time. It’s also known as the load impact test, its important to know how your server would perform when many users access the server at a time since you’re creating your website for the public, not for any restricted people. So, many visitors may be accessing your site at a time. The above page loading speed test was for ideal conditions when no one is accessing the site. Therefore, actual results might differ from the scores mentioned above. For the real-life test, you need to load impact performance. Moreover, it also affects your user experience because no one wants a slow responding website.
The scores you’ll get in load impact are the real-life performance you can expect from the server. In WPEngine, they claim to have the best servers that can handle multiple loads at a time easily. Since they use the CDN method, you’ll most likely get better results than other companies. As usual, we don’t believe in what they say on advertising banners, so we test the load impact to get real insights. In our opinion, these results are great! The maximum time we get is 0.59 seconds that is pretty good. Because the loading speed lower than 0.8 seconds will not harm your SEO or disappoint your visitors.
- Test Server: Ann Arbor, USA
- Load Generator: Ashburn, USA
- Minimum Response Time: 0.51 seconds
- Maximum Response Time: 0.59 seconds
Studio Press themes
In July 2018, the WPEngine announced that they had acquired StudioPress themes. The company is popularly known for creating professional Genesis Framework themes. StudioPress is an authentic and verified theme developer. Due to this benefit, customers of WPEngine can now access all the themes of Genesis Framework. Currently, StudioPress has a range of over 80+ themes. However, they are not free, and the themes would cost you about 130$ for the subscription fee. We don’t know about the StudioPress plans or features they give in subscription, but we can assure you that they are worth purchasing!
We decided to take a look over StudioPress, and they give the best quality themes. They offer themes for almost any category like online store, blog, portfolios, and man more. Although some themes look outdated and don’t have much better SEO, most of them are awesome and comes with good on-page SEO. This collaboration between WPEngine and StudioPress, not only reduces your efforts and time but your money and Increases are loading time as well. With WPEngine hosting, you can save up to 40% on StudioPress themes. Of course, you can use any other theme you want with WPEngine.
WordPress Software Updates
Updates in websites are an important thing to consider in websites. They protect your website from any unknown attack and keep your website up to date from any new feature. In the case of WordPress, they have great importance. Unlike other platforms, 90% of hackers keep an eye on WP for their hacking attacks. One of the main benefits that you’ll get from managed WP hosting is the auto-updated feature. Because the server is completely optimized for WP, and you receive updates 60% faster than any other hosting plan.
As we’ve said earlier that WPEngine is a managed hosting service. Their workers and experts automatically take care of everything for your WordPress website. WPEngine will keep the core WP software of your site up to date all the time. As a result, you’ll always get the latest and up-to-date WP software on your website. Moreover, they don’t just install updates. The team of WPEngine will first review and test the update before installing it on your website so that your website will stay safe from any kind of bugs and errors. Not just that, on the C-panel of WPEngine, you can postpone the installation of updates on your website.
The postpone will be held for 30 days; after 30 days, the system will automatically install the update on your website. In this way, you’ll have time to test and search on the update on the internet before installing it on your website. For more detailed information, you can visit the official page of WordPress on WPEngine’s official website. We like to mention that, unlike any other hosting, the plugins don’t get updated automatically without your permission.
WPEngine Site Staging
Making a change in your website can involve several risks. For example, making a big change in your website and realize that all your main website has crashed. However, we’re not saying to never make a change, but a small error that is natural can take down your entire website. As a solution, there is a feature known as “Site Staging.” In a simple definition, a site staging means to clone your real live website, copy all of its files and create the same new website again. That clone copy is then used for testing purposes. You can install any plugin or update and check its reliability before making it live on your website. This whole process is known as Site Staging. It gives you a secure environment to work on your website, and site staging will give you advance notice of any errors or problems.
Today, many hosting platforms provide this feature in some of their plans (mostly premium). It’s because site staging requires the resources and efforts of the server. You know that the more resources you need from the server, the more prices the company will charge. Unlikely, SiteGround or Bluehost provides site staging in only premium plans and not in basic ones. But, WPEngine is one of the few hosting companies that provide site staging in ever their basic plans. This company doesn’t offer traditional Windows or Linux-based servers. Therefore, it is not possible to upload your Windows-based or Linux non-WordPress site.
Advantages of using Site Staging:-
- Produce a better website: The main benefit you’ll get from site staging is that it enables you to produce a better website. Instead of first uploading the update to your real website and then realizing it’s a bad update, you can install the update on the clone of your real site.
- Provides you the opportunity to detect errors and bugs: Without making a change in your main website, you can never know where the bug is. You need to run a desk checking to find out the bug that is causing damage. Sometimes in the removal process of a bug, your website crashes due to a wrong code. You can use site staging to prevent this and use the correct code in your real website.
- Reduces disruptions when updates are carried out: Yes, instead of closing your real website for updating purposes, you can install the clone updated copy in your real website.
WPEngine Migration
Now that you’ve picked your web hosting or want to change your web hosting provider to WPEngine. Suppose you’re changing your web hosting provider, most probably because you didn’t like the service of your hosting or the pricing of that company. In moving your website towards the WPEngine, the question that appears is how you can do it? How can you migrate your website from any other hosting towards the WPEngine? Fortunately, migrating your site from any other hosting to WPEngine isn’t complex as you think. Although it can take few hours, the entire process is entirely smooth as butter. Plus, if you have chosen to manage to host, the process will become easier.
To migrate your website first, you need to choose the plan of WPEngine that you want to work on. We recommend you choose basic starting plans for new and start-ups, as they are affordable and provide value for money services! For emergency purposes, we must recommend you first take a backup of your website on your local PC or anywhere you want because things can happen anytime. On WPEngine, go on your backend C-Panel, there you’ll “Migration Checklist.” Follow these steps, and you can migrate your website in just a few hours successfully. Or, if you want, you can use their customer support for assistance in real-time.
Security and Backups
Security Backups of your website matters. Because you’re making you’re website live for everyone on the internet, it means you’re opening a door for hackers to hack your website as well. Did you know that 8 out of 10 hacked websites are WordPress-based websites? It’s because WP holds about 80% shares of website’s platform so that eight out ten websites appears to be a WordPress site. Moreover, many website hackers are ow focusing on WordPress codes and loopholes because most of the internet is filled with WP. Now that you know the importance of security for your WP website, it’s important to consider the security of your hosting company. In the case of WPEngine, the company takes several measures to keep your website’s security up to date!
First of all, if you use WPEngine, you’ll notice that they run malware checks and virus detections once after 24 hours. They have a partnership with Sucuri to make sure their virus definitions are up to date. Sucuri is a website security solution that focuses on securing websites from viruses and hacking attempts. The WPEngine comes with a firewall. Just like Windows, it also blocks any unknown or suspicious attempts on your website. All plans of WPEngine come with SSL certificates. This SSL makes your website “https” even with the basic plan. Moreover, for security reasons, every website is backed up once after every 24 hours.
Money-Back Guarantee
Unbelievably, WPEngine offers a 60-days money-back guarantee. It means you can claim a refund within 60 days of purchase. We know their subscription fee is quite higher than other hosting platforms, but its money-back guarantees have covered this disadvantage. The policy works on every plan basic, standard, and premium plan. However, the money-back guarantee doesn’t apply to a custom enterprise plan. We don’t know why they did this, but it’s their policy. But, we know 90% of our readers will purchase the first three plans. However, you need to tell them why you want a refund for claiming a refund. They also have a right to reject your claim of refund, but it merely happens. Most of the time, they issue you a refund.
Pricing of WPEngine
Now, here comes the most important part that is the pricing of WPEngine. We know you’ve been waiting for this part since you’re reading. In this section, we’re not just mentioning the price. Of course, you can see it yourself. We’re going to give you our opinion of their pricing. WPEngine hosting plans start from around 25$ monthly, and it’s the most basic managed hosting plan you can get in WPEngine.
Not just in WPEngine, it’s one of the most affordable basic plans of managed hosting on the entire internet. You’ll get one website to host in the basic package, 25k monthly visits, 10GB storage,, and 50GB monthly bandwidth. The standard package would cost you 50$. You’ll get three websites, 75k monthly visits, 15GB local storage, and 125GB bandwidth. The most expensive package would cost you 240$, where you would get 30 websites: 400k visits, 50 GB storage, and 500GB of bandwidth.
Our opinion of WPEngine Pricing
No, here comes our opinion: If you’re a newbie and want to get perfect web-hosting for your website with a higher budget, WPEngine’s 25$ package is best! Since it’s managed to host so, you’ll get rid of any kind of changes. However, it’s only if you have a high budget for a hosting plan. If you’ve high scale website and large audience base, then it’s up to you whether you want to go with managed hosting and get rid of all kinds of hosting issues. Or you may want to go with a common shared hosting with common bugs and where a regular checkup is needed. We know on the internet you may find many bad things about WPEngine from reviewers.
It’s because those reviewers are only considering its pricing. Only the pricing of any hosting can’t determine whether it’s worth buying or not. If the hosting provides extra useful features, then it’s worth buying even at high pricing! In the case of WPEngine, you pay them extra money, but you get some extra features. Like, CDN that most other hosting only provides in premium features, but WPEngine even provides in its basic one! Similarly, they provide managed to host and are affiliated with WordPress, that most others don’t have this authenticity. In conclusion, WPEngine isn’t a waste of money, it is just different from others, and this difference makes its price relatively higher but worth its buying.
GEO Targeted Location
Another great benefit that you’ll get from using WPEngine is its GEO Targeting websites. As the name suggests, this feature offers GEO TArgeting for different customers. It allows you to display different website layouts, pages, and custom actions according to the visitor’s location. For example, if you visit YouTube, you’ll see your country’s short name on the logo. If you’ve visited YouTube from the USA, you’ll have the US on the YouTube main logo. If you visit from Canada, you’ll see CN.
It’s all possible through GEO Targeting. You can set a custom page or action that would be displayed according to the location you specified. If a visitor visited from that location (country,) the corresponding page will be displayed to the user! Above all, only a few hosting providers offer this feature of GEO Targeting, which is why their pricing is fairly higher than others. You can set custom actions, custom pages, or even design a whole new page that will be displayed if the visitor visits from the country you specified.
Pros and Cons of WPEngine
Everything has something, and there’s nothing perfect in this world. Like other reviewers, if we only mention the pros of our product, it’ll be considered an unbiased review because it’s never possible that the product or service you’re reviewing is perfect. There’re some cons that every service or product has, but some reviewers hide them from you. But, we care about your money and the time you’ve spent in the reading of this ultimate review. Therefore, in this review, we’ve mentioned pros. At the same time, the cons of WPEngine that you should know before buying the hosting of this company. So let’s get into it!
Pros
- Managed to host in 25$: Going with managed hosting for your website will take a lot of stress from your head. First of all, you don’t need to keep an eye on your server and do regular optimizations for your servers. The company will do everything for you. They’ll install the WP for you, check for updates, remove malware and viruses, and many other things for you. Hence, named as managed hosting. For all these things, paying 25 bucks isn’t a bad decision.
- 60-days money-back guarantee: WPEngine offers a 60-days money-back guarantee that is much higher than other hosting providers. Many hosting providers don’t need a private even 7-days money-back policy, whereas WPEngine offers a 60-days money-back policy. This policy makes it risk-free for you to use WPEngine. However, you need to explain why you want to take the refund, and they have a right to reject your refund claim.
- CDN: Another great benefit of using WPEngine is that you get CDN with every plan. Raging from basic – premium CDN comes with every policy. The CDN Will allow you to geo-target your visitor to the corresponding server near them. It will reduce the load impact and reduce the page loading time as the geolocation will decrease.
- Site staging: Site staging is another useful feature that comes with every plan of WPEngine. It allows you to create a copy of your real website for testing purposes. So that, on the clone copy, you can install updates and make changes on the clone version. In this way, you can check the stability and bugs for the new update without disturbing your real website. Unlike WPengine, in other hostings, this feature only comes with premium or enterprise plans.
Cons
- Only works with WordPress
- Prices are relatively higher than other companies.
- Not good if you have a low budget.
- Limited storage, limited space, and limited website’s in seven standard plans.
Conclusion
WPEngine, in our opinion, is a pretty good option if you have a high budget. We wrote this ultimate review to let you know about the actual truth of WPEngine. We know the prices of WPEngine are quite higher, but at least they offer some extra useful features that completely worth buying. Moreover, it’s not wrong to say that WPEngine is a leading managed WP hosting provider on the internet with the best plans and features. With all these features and services, paying some extra bucks isn’t a loss, in our opinion.
