In the past, I have tried various hosting companies like Cloudways , Kinsta , and a few others.
But due to the complexity of my WordPress configuration (more than 40 plugins and many custom scripts), I decided to ditch these hosts and look for a solution that would give me complete peace of mind.
My goal in choosing a new host was to be able to forget about the hassles of hosting and focus on what I do best:
Create content.
It was then that I learned about the best managed WordPress hosting and stumbled upon WPEngine .
WP Engine specializes in managed WordPress hosting. They have a large client list including AMD, National Geographic, Dropbox, SoundCloud, HelloFresh, Texas A&M University, and many more. Overall, WP Engine is suitable for those who are looking for hassle-free, premium WordPress hosting. Read our expert WP Engine review to see if they are the right choice for you.
It’s easy to get carried away by all the hype and marketing jargon when you’re looking for managed WordPress hosting, so we take a look at the sales pitch and test all the products ourselves.
For this WP Engine review, we’ll break down the most important things you should know before choosing them as your hosting provider:
- 🚀 Performance: We’ll check how fast the WP Engine website loads and how well its servers can handle real-world traffic.
- 🔒 Security: From malware scanning to daily backups, we’ll look at what WP Engine offers to keep your site safe.
- 📞 Support: We tested how fast and helpful their customer support team is when you need help.
- ⚙️ Features: We’ll explore WP Engine’s tools like staging, auto-updates, developer options, and whether they actually make your life easier.
- 💰 Pricing: WP Engine is a premium host, so we’ll take a look at whether its price is worth it and who should consider paying for it.
If you’re serious about your website, WP Engine promises to provide you with speed, security, and maintenance services. Let’s see how it performs.
This will be a detailed WP Engine review that takes an in-depth look at their services. If you don’t want to read the full article, here’s a quick summary of our rating for WP Engine.
WP Engine Review Summary
| Performance level | A+ |
|---|---|
| Average loading time | 656 ms |
| Average response time | 123 ms |
| Free domain | No |
| Free SSL | Yes |
| One-Click WordPress | Yes |
| support | Phone/Live Chat/Knowledge Base |
Conclusion: In our WP Engine hosting review, we found them to be a reliable and well-balanced managed WordPress hosting provider. They offer an optimized platform with fast servers, security, and peace of mind that users demand from managed WordPress hosting.
That being said, let’s dive into the details and examine how we came to this conclusion.
About WP Engine
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is one of the leading WordPress hosting companies. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen founded WP Engine when he saw an increase in demand for professional WordPress hosting due to the growing popularity of WordPress.
WP Engine is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with offices in San Antonio (Texas), London (England), Limerick (Ireland), Brisbane (Australia), and Krakow (Poland).
Additionally, the company has won multiple Best Places to Work in Austin awards.
WP Engine Hosting Plans
WP Engine only offers WordPress hosting services. Its managed WordPress plans include the following hosting options:
- Managed WordPress Hosting – Fully managed hosting environment suitable for small businesses and blogs
- Managed WooCommerce Hosting – WooCommerce hosting with powerful store search, eCommerce templates, and more
- Secure Hosting – Additional layer of security with website firewall and DDoS protection
- Custom Solutions (Enterprise Hosting) – Premium plans for enterprise customers, offering dedicated resources, white glove onboarding, advanced security, and more.
Customers can choose a plan level based on the number of websites, bandwidth, disk space, and other resources they use.
WP Engine plans are different:
- Number of WordPress installations
- Traffic (number of visitors per month or number of visits per month)
- Disk storage capacity
- Bandwidth requirements
Each WP Engine plan limits the number of visits your hosting account can receive. If your account exceeds these limits, you may be charged overage fees for additional visits.
WP Engine offers some unique features for WordPress users that most hosts don’t offer or charge extra for. These special features include:
- Git Version Control
- Staging environment to instantly create a staging site for testing
- Easily transfer your WordPress installation from a free account to a paid account
- Free SSL Certificate and SSH Access
- Cutting-edge technology, including the latest PHP version
Our review found that WP Engine offers an advanced and comprehensive managed WordPress hosting service.
Advanced security features
WP Engine also offers a variety of advanced security features. WordPress core is automatically updated to the latest version.
WP Engine thoroughly tests any major core update before upgrading it for customers. They have a proprietary intrusion detection and prevention system that blocks any DDoS attacks, brute force attacks, malware, JavaScript/SQL injection attacks, etc.
They also work with third-party security firms to conduct regular code reviews and security audits.
Your security is guaranteed, so if you get hacked, WP Engine will fix it for free.
Customer Support and Services
WP Engine has a dedicated support team of WordPress experts who interact with thousands of customers every day and have a customer satisfaction rate of over 97%.
All customers have access to 24/7 support via live chat, and all plans (except the "Startup" plan) have access to 24/7 support via phone. If the issue cannot be resolved immediately via chat or phone, support will create an internal support ticket for you.
Enterprise customers receive 24/7 ticket support via email. Premium and Enterprise customers also receive a one-on-one consultative onboarding experience.
WP Engine also has a dedicated Customer Experience Operations team that is committed to continuously improving the customer experience.
Additionally, they have a rich library of knowledge articles, how-to guides, and tutorials for users who want to fix the problem themselves.
CDN for faster loading speed
WP Engine uses Cloudflare's Edge Network to provide CDN (Content Delivery Network). This innovative cloud network has a global network of servers.
This CDN network has low latency, blazing-fast speeds, and built-in security to ensure your website performs well no matter where your customers are coming from.
36+ Premium WordPress Themes
WP Engine has acquired StudioPress, a popular premium WordPress theme company .
Now, all premium StudioPress themes and the famous Genesis framework are available for free to all WP Engine customers.
The code base of all StudioPress themes has been optimized to speed up page load times without compromising functionality.
Yes, you can get all of these great looking and well-coded themes for free - that’s over $2000 worth of extra value for free!
Money Back Guarantee
WP Engine offers a generous 60-day money-back guarantee. If you’re not satisfied with their service, you can cancel your account within 60 days and receive a full refund.
This guarantee applies only to annual billing plans.
Pros and Cons of WP Engine
WP Engine is a popular web hosting company, but it might not be right for everyone. Consider these pros and cons before choosing a plan.
Advantages of choosing WP Engine
- Security – WP Engine protects your website with many other advanced features that other hosts don’t offer.
- Fast Loading – WP Engine’s Evercache technology optimizes WordPress servers to ensure your site loads quickly. Plus, you get access to a CDN to further improve performance.
- Reliability – WP Engine’s proprietary front-end tier system can easily handle traffic spikes without slowing down your website.
- WordPress Expert Support – WP Engine’s support staff consists of highly trained WordPress experts.
- Rave Reviews – WP Engine is a very popular host that has received rave reviews from many customers for its reliability and excellent customer service.
Disadvantages of choosing WP Engine
- Disallowed Plugins – WP Engine does not allow you to install certain WordPress plugins on your site because they conflict or duplicate WP Engine functionality or cause excessive load on the server. This includes many caching, backup, related posts plugins, etc. (https://wpengine.com/support/disallowed-plugins/ "WP Engine Disallowed Plugins").
- No Domain Registration Required – WP Engine only provides hosting services and does not provide domain registration services. This means that you have to register your domain name with another company, which may be inconvenient for some users.
- Higher Cost – WP Engine is pricier compared to shared hosting, but the services it offers are well worth the investment.
WP Engine Performance Test
WPBeginner users trust our reviews because we only recommend products and services that we’ve used ourselves. We contract with each of the top WordPress hosting companies and thoroughly test their claims with our own industry-standard tests.
For this review, we created a WordPress site on WP Engine. We used the default theme and populated the site with some dummy data, including media and images. This way, our test site looked and behaved like a real WordPress site.
WPEngine speed test results
After setting up our test site, we first ran a speed test. We used the Pingdom tool to test our sample site on the WP Engine servers.
The results are as follows:
Our test site loaded in less than a second. Considering we didn’t have to install any performance optimizations, this is pretty good.
WP Engine Stress Test
Next, we wanted to test how WP Engine servers responded under peak traffic. To test this, we used a tool called K6 from Grafana Labs. We gradually increased the number of unique visitors to 50 to see how the server handled a large number of requests from multiple connections at the same time.
The results are as follows:
The light green line represents the response time and the grey line represents the number of users on the site. As you can see, our test site performed well with only slight spikes. It maintained an incredible response rate throughout the test.
Uptime remained stable, with no downtime recorded during the stress test.
WP Engine Server Response Time
Next, we tested server response times in different geographic regions using a tool called Bitcatcha.
Here are the server response time results for WP Engine:
As you can see from the screenshots, WP Engine’s server response times remain under half a second in all geographic locations. The difference is particularly dramatic in the United States.
Is WP Engine right for you?
Now that you’ve read our entire WP Engine review and checked out the performance scores, you might be wondering if WP Engine is the right web host for you.
After reviewing WP Engine’s services in detail, we found that they offer a balanced approach in terms of performance, security, and features.
If you are looking for a completely hassle-free web host for your WordPress website, WP Engine is an ideal choice.
It is suitable for beginners, bloggers, and businesses who need faster servers and optimal performance.
Developers and freelancers will find that WP Engine's advanced features can save them time developing WordPress websites for their clients.
Growing businesses will find plenty of room to scale up their hosting as their traffic increases.
Ready to get started with WP Engine? Click here to choose your WP Engine plan now .
Frequently Asked Questions About WP Engine
We’ve been answering readers’ questions about WordPress hosting for a long time. Here are some of the most common questions users ask about WP Engine.
1. Is WP Engine a shared hosting company?
No, WP Engine is not a shared hosting company and does not offer services similar to shared hosting plans. WP Engine is a WordPress hosting company that provides hosting solutions specifically for WordPress.
2. What is Managed WordPress Hosting?
Managed WordPress hosting is like a dedicated butler service for your WordPress website. WordPress is a powerful content management system and website building tool. Managed hosting companies provide optimized solutions and take care of updates, security, backups, caching, and more. This frees you up to spend more time growing your business.
Managed WordPress hosting is slightly more expensive than shared hosting plans.
3. Is WP Engine worth buying?
Yes, WP Engine is worth the money. Especially when your business outgrows the limitations of shared hosting and shared VPS plans, WP Engine is the best scalable upgrade option.
It allows you to easily manage updates and security, and scale your website as your business grows.
4. Why is WP Engine so expensive?
WP Engine is more expensive than shared hosting plans because it offers superior performance, advanced security, and expert support. These features come at a cost, but can enhance the customer experience.
5. Where are WP Engine servers located?
WP Engine uses Google Cloud servers and Amazon Web Servers as data centers. This allows you to choose data centers in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
6. How does WP Engine compare to other hosts?
We’re often asked how WP Engine compares to the other best WordPress hosting companies.
When it comes to managed WordPress hosting, WP Engine has a slight edge over Kinsta, Flywheel, and other competitors, mostly due to its better technology, user experience, and customer support.
WP Engine’s pricing is more expensive than shared hosting providers like Bluehost, Hostinger, HostGator, GoDaddy, InMotion Hosting, DreamHost, and SiteGround.
For more information, see our detailed comparison of SiteGround , Bluehost , and WP Engine .
6. Does WP Engine support WordPress multisite?
WP Engine supports WordPress multisite functionality as a paid add-on for the Growth and Scale plans, but not the Startup plan. The feature is also included in the Custom plan for agencies and enterprise customers.
7. Can I cancel WP Engine hosting and get a refund?
You can cancel your WP Engine hosting service at any time from your account dashboard/user portal.
For users who prepay their annual fee, they offer a full refund within the first 60 days of hosting.
8. Which WP Engine hosting plan is right for me?
If you are only hosting one website, you can sign up for their Startup plan. However, if you have a busier website or need to manage multiple installations, you can choose the Growth or Scale plans.
WP Engine is offering 20% off for WPBeginner users. Click here to get started with WP Engine .
in conclusion:
I would only recommend WPEngine hosting for commercial WordPress sites or blogs with low traffic requirements.
If you decide to use WPEngine's hosting, make sure to use CloudFlare as well , otherwise you will pay high overage fees.
The overage issue was such a bummer. Not only did it make me stop using WPEngine, it made me lose respect for this company.
For medium to high traffic blogs, stay away from WPEngine because it 's not worth it.
This is my personal review of WPEngine. I share everything I've learned from working with them for a year. Ultimately, it's up to you whether you should host your WordPress blog on WPEngine.
I recently found Kinsta or WPXHosting to be better than WPEngine in terms of pricing and service.
If you are a WPEngine customer and would like to share your stories and experiences, I would love to hear from you in the comments section below.
If you found the information in this article useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Further reading:
- How to Save on WordPress Blog Web Hosting Renewal
- How Much Does It Cost to Start a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog?
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