Wondering what wp engine is and what it does?
WP Engine is a hosting company that provides specialized hosting for websites that run on WordPress CMS.
WP Engine gets its ‘WP’ part of its name from WordPress, similar to other sites like CodeinWP, or WPbeginner that want to cash in on over 30M websites that run on WordPress CMS. If you’re not aware, WordPress won a court ruling that gave it trademark rights to the ‘WordPress’ name and brand.
WP Engine is expensive but claims to be the best hosting company for WordPress websites. It was founded in October 2013 by Heather Brunner in the video below.
I have been a paying customer for a while now and it’s starter plan costs $ 29/m. This plan is ideal if you estimate to get about 25,000 visits per month on your blog.
Table of Contents
Is WP Engine Worth it?
It’s an average host and as you can hear from WP Eagle video below, it may not be as worth it.
As you can see from the table above, WP Engine plans are quite expensive and you can see from the comparison tables below that its services are not as expensive.
The table below shows their loading speed time and other hosting companies such as Siteground and A2 hosting have better server response time.
WP Engine pros and cons
Pros
- They offer managed WordPress hosting and support
- It uses a proprietary EverCache technology for faster website loading
- If your site gets hacked, they’ll get it back up for free
- Offers automatic WordPress updates and free data backup
- Offer a separate staging platform for testing plugins and themes
- You get a 60-day trial
- No long-term commitments needed
- Free let’s encrypt SSL
- You get free StudioPress themes
- They get free global CDN
Cons:
- It is almost three times more expensive than most other plans
- It does not work for other Non-WordPress websites built with other web building tools such as Wix.
- They don’t allow some themes and plugins
- If you get more visits (beyond the set limit), you get additional charges.
WP Engine Vs Bluehost
Bluehost offers several hosting options for any website that runs on any website builder such as Webnode, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, and WordPress, among others. On the other hand, WP Engine offer specialized hosting for websites or blogs that run on WordPress.
The comparison below has details on Bluehost’s WordPress hosting package and WP engine comparison. It is important to note that you can choose the shared Bluehost hosting plan as they do not restrict you to go for the optimized hosting.
Advantages of WP Engine over Bluehost:
- You get super customized support for your WordPress website
- it uses EverCache Technology to speed up your site
- You get free StudioPress Themes
- It offers automatic data backups
- Offers full WordPress hosting staging
- offers billing transfers for agencies
- You get free page performance diagnostics
- Its packages have a 60-day money-back guarantee
Advantages of Bluehost over WP Engine:
- It is officially recommended by WordPress.org
- It has a customizable WordPress dashboard
- It has a customizable cPanel interface which is great if you are already familiar with the cPanel interface as used by several hosts. WP Engine uses its custom interface
- One-click install for WordPress
WP Engine | Bluehost |
Price: $35 mo. – $290 mo. (Premium Customized Plans also available) | Price: $24.99 mo. – $169.99 mo. |
Offers limited emails per account | Unlimited emails per account |
Host one website | Host several websites |
Uses WP engine client portal | Uses CPanel |
You can cancel and get full refund within 60 days | You can cancel and get refunded in 30 days |
They offer dedicated hosting plan | They offer dedicated hosting plan |
Storage: 10GB | Storage: 30GB |
Wp Engine Vs Siteground
To find out the difference between WP Engine and Siteground, I contacted Siteground’s excellent support and below is their response:
If the snippet above is not clear, below is the full chat I had with Martin who was kind enough to respond to my questions for over an hour.
Martin V.: Our solution just comes with a lot more, for example, we include unlimited emails and spam filtering, instead of asking you to use third parties for that
Martin V.: We support all WordPress plugins whereas WPE has quite a long list of restricted ones
Martin V.: We do not limit you to one PHP version for the whole account and the separate sites can all be placed on different PHP versions in accordance to the needs
Martin V.: We are just as focused on WordPress and people are happy to see that here, they get the same amazing performance while paying way less, since we mainly use our own tools instead of relaying on third parties which always makes the final price a lot higher
Martin V.: So usually, people go for WP Engine due to their support, however our support here is defining quality as well
Martin V.: So here, you will get similar, if not better support
Martin V.: Here, you will be able to contact us over phone and chat 24/7 and response is always immediate and our advanced team over ticket can help with a very wide variety of questions. I am certain you will be pleased with the technical assistance, its usually the first big difference people notice once here
WP Engine | Siteground |
Price: $35 mo. – $290 mo. (Premium Customized Plans also available) | The starter plan costs $2.98/month for the first year but will renew at $11.95/mo. Other plans cost $4.98/m (renews at $19.95) and $8.86/m (renews at $34.95) |
60-day money-back guarantee | 30-day money-back guarantee |
cpanel | cpanel |
WP Engine VS GoDaddy
WP Engine | GoDaddy | |
Price | $35 mo. – $290 mo. (Premium Customized Plans also available) | $08.99 Mo.-24.99 mo. For renewal packages, while the pricing ranges between 5.99/mo.-$19.99/mo. For new clients. |
Refund Policy | 60-days money-back guarantee | 30-days money-back guarantee |
Bandwidth | Ranges between 50GB-400GB+ depending on the type of subscription | It has unlimited bandwidth in all subscriptions |
Storage | Offers a limited storage of between 10GB-1TB varying with the subscription | It offers unlimited storage except in its Economy package where it provides a storage capacity of 100GB. |
Total Websites | All packages offer a limited number of minimum of websites but unlimited maximum of web. | Supports unlimited websites in all its packages except the economy subscription where it maintains one website only. |
WP Engine Vs Kinsta
WP Engine | Kinsta | |
Packages | It offers three packages, which are Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom. | Provides 10 packages, which are Starter, Pro, Business 1, Business, Business 3, Business 4, Enterprise 1, Enterprise 2, Enterprise 3, and Enterprise 4 |
Pricing | Price ranges between $35/mo. to $290/mo. depending on the preferred features of a website. Prices are discounted with annual prepay. | Price ranges between $30-$1500 depending on the chosen package and its features. There are discounted prices for annual subscribers. |
Refund Policy | 30-days money-back guarantee | 30-days money-back guarantee |
Storage | It provides local storage of between 10GB and 1 TB, where Startup has 10 GB, Growth 20GB, Scale 30gb, and Custom 100 Gb-1 TB. | Offers a limited storage space of between 10GB to 250GB with the Starter package having the least internal storage while Enterprise 4 has the highest storage capacity. |
Number of Websites | It provides a limited number of websites depending on the plan, where Starter supports 1+ WordPress accounts, Growth manages 5+ websites, Scaling has 15+ accounts, and Custom backs 25+ WordPress installations. | Each Package has a limited number of WordPress installations, where Starter has 1, Pro 2, Business 1 5, Business 2 10, Business 3 20, and Business 4 40. Enterprise 1 has a limitation of 60 websites, Enterprise 2 80, Enterprise 3 120, and Enterprise 4 150. |
WP Engine Vs Flywheel
WP Engine | Flywheel | |
Packages | It provides four types of web hosting platforms, which are Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom. | It offers four kinds of web hosting packages, which are Starter, Freelance, Agency, and Custom. |
Pricing | Allows monthly and annual payments. Monthly payments range between $35/mo. to $290/mo. while yearly payments range between $29/mo. to $241/mo. Annual pricing has discounted costs. | Permits both monthly and annual payments. Monthly pricing ranges between $25/mo. to $290/mo. while annual costs range between $23/mo. to $266/mo. Yearly pricing has discounted costs. |
Number of Websites | Each web hosting package has a minimum number of websites but an unlimited number of WordPress installs. Startup backs 1+ websites, Growth supports 5+ installs, Scale manages at least 15 WordPress installs, while Custom includes 25 and above websites. | Each web hosting package has a limited number of WordPress installs, where the Starter package allows one WordPress install, Freelance permits a maximum of 10 sites, Agency has a capacity of up to 30 sites, and the Custom package permits 30 and above websites. |
Storage | The local storage ranges between 10 GB to 1 TB depending on the Webhosting package. The startup has a storage of 10 GB, Growth has 20 GB, the Scaling has 30 GB storage capacity, while Custom has local storage of between 100 GB and 1 TB. | The platform provides local storage of 5GB for the Starter package, 20GB for Freelance platform, 50GB for the Agency bundle, and custom storage for the Custom package. |
Bandwidth | Startup has a 50GB bandwidth, Growth has a 200GB bandwidth, Scale has a 400GB bandwidth, and the Custom platform has a 400 GB+ bandwidth monthly. | The Starter has a bandwidth of 50GB, Freelance has a 200GB bandwidth, Agency has a 500GB bandwidth, while the Custom platform has a tailor-made bandwidth. |
WP Engine Vs Pantheon
WP Engine | Pantheon | |
Plans | It offers four plans, which are Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom packages. | It provides three plans, which are Basic, Performance, and Elite that differ concerning their features such as storage, price, bandwidth, and the number of website capacity. |
Prices | Provides annual or monthly payment plans. Yearly prices are $29/mo., $95/mo., and $241/mo. for Startup, Growth and Scale plan respectively. Monthly prices are $35/mo., $115/mo., and $290/mo. for Startup, Growth, and Growth plans respectively. The Custom package has tailor-made costs for annual and monthly payments. Annual payment plans are discounted. | All plans require annual prepayments, where the Basic platforms mandates at least $29/ mo., performance orders a minimum payment of 4114/mo., and the Cost for Elite plan is dependent on its custom features. |
Traffic Capacity | The Startup Plan supports 25,000 a month, the Growth package facilitates 100, 000 visits per month, Scale provides 400, 000 visits a month, and the Custom package provides millions of visits per month. | The Basic Plan provides 25, 000 visits per month and the performance package offers monthly visits of between 25, 000 and 300, 000 depending on the plan level, which could be Small, Medium, Large, or Extra Large. Traffic for the Elite Plan depends on the wishes of the .of the client. |
Storage | Provides monthly local storage of 10GB, 20GB, 30GB, and 100GB-1 TB for Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom plans respectively. | The Basic plan has a storage capacity of 20GB per month and the Small, Medium, Large, and Extra Large packages of the Performance plan have monthly internal storage of 30GB, 50GB, 100GB, and 200GB respectively. The Elite platform has a storage-specific to the needs of a client. |
Earnings | Pays $2/1000 visits for traffic coverages. | Pays $2.50/1000 visits for traffic coverage |
WP Engine vs Amazon Web Services (aws)
WP Engine | aws | |
Plans | It provides four web hosting plans, which are Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom that serve different purposes. The Startup is efficient for starting a small website or blog, Growth is suitable for a growing business, Scales facilitates in gauging experiences, and the Custom package is suitable for large businesses and mission-critical sites. | Provides various web hosting plans, which are Virtual Servers ( for Linus/Unix and Windows), Managed Databases, Load Balancer, Block Storage, and Instance and Disk Snapshots (manual and automatic). |
Pricing | Offers monthly and yearly payment plans vary with the preferred web hosting platform ranging between $35/mo. and over $290/mo. and $350/yr. and over $2900/yr. | AWS has monthly payment plans ranging from $0.04/mo. to $240/mo. depending on the plan and different features. Instance and disk snapshots are the cheapest because they attract a subscription of $0.05/mo. Block storage attracts monthly charges of between $0.80/mo. and $24.60/mo. |
Storage | The maximum storage that WP Engine provides is 1 TB its most elite package, Custom. | The maximum local storage that AWS offers is 640GB that is available in its most prestigious plan, the Virtual Server for Windows that costs $240/mo. |
Bandwidth | It provides a bandwidth of over 400GB for its Custom plan. | It offers a bandwidth of 1TB for its Virtual Server plans. |
Refund Policy | 60-days money-back guarantee | It does not have a refund policy. However, it offers one month of free usage. |
WP Engine VS Liquid Web
WP Engine | Liquid Web | |
Plans | It provides four Website hosting platforms, which are Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom. | It offers five web hosting infrastructure, which are Dedicated Servers, Cloud VPS, Cloud Dedicated, Private VPS Parent, and Cloud Sites. |
Pricing | Provides monthly and annual payment plans. Monthly costs range between $35 to $290 while yearly subscriptions range between $350 to $2900. | Provides monthly and yearly payment plans. Monthly subscriptions range between $149/mo. and $549/mo. for Dedicated Servers depended on individual features. Pricing for VPS Hosting ranges between $29/mo. to $129/mo. while the cost for Cloud Dedicated Servers starts from $109/mo. and the maximum cost of $199/mo. Monthly cost for Private VPS Parent range between $329 to $599 while that of Cloud Sites start at $150/mo. |
Websites | Supports a limited number of domains depending on the package. For example, Startup mandates a minimum of one website, Growth requires at least 5 domains, Scaling needs at least 15 WordPress installs, and the Custom package needs a minimum of 25 domains. | Liquid Web, for example, the Cloud Sites platform, backs unlimited domains |
Bandwidth | Offers a minimum bandwidth of 50GB for the Startup package and 400+ transfers speed for the Custom web hosting platform | Provides a minimum bandwidth of 1TB and a maximum of 15 TB bandwidth |
Site Visitors | Limits site visitors depending on the web hosting platform. | Facilitates an unlimited number of site visitors |
WP Engine VS Cloudways
WP Engine | Cloudways | |
Application | Supports WordPress websites only | Supports WordPress, Magento, Laravel, and PHP websites |
Hosting Plans | Offers 4 hosting plans, which are Startup, growth, Scale, and Custom. The plans differ in features and also their pricing. | Provides different hosting plans that suit different clients due to their varying feature and pricing, which are DigitalOcean, Linode, VULTR, aws, and Google Cloud. |
Pricing | It permits monthly and yearly payment plans. Startup monthly cost starts from $35 and its annual price begins at $29. The monthly cost for Growth starts from $115 and its yearly price starts at $95. The monthly cost for the Scaling plan begins at $291/mo. and its annual cost is $241/ month. The pricing for Custom plans differs from every client depending on the features. | The platform allows hourly or monthly payment plans. DigitalOcean monthly charges range between $10 to $80, Linode prices range between $12/mo. to $90/mo. while VULTR monthly charges are from $11 to $84. aws plan costs between $36.51/mo. to $274.33/mo. Google Cloud costs between $33.30/mo. to $226.05/mo. |
Bandwidth | Each hosting plan has alimited bandwidth. Startup has a bandwidth of 50GB, Growth has 200GB, Scaling has 400GB, and Custom has over 400GB. | The bandwidth depends on the hosting plan and the pricing. DigitalOcean and Linode provide bandwidths of 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 5TB. VUTR provides bandwidths of 1TB, 2TRB, 3TB, and 4TB. aws and Google Cloud has bandwidths of 2GB for all their different packages. |
Storage | The startup has a storage of 10GB, Growth has local storage of 20GB, scaling has a storage of 400GB, while the Custom PLAN has storage of between 100GB to 1TB. | Aws and Google Cloud provide storage of 20GB for all their packages, while DigitalOcean, Linode, and VULTR offer storage of 25GB, 55GB, 80GB, and 160GB for their packages. |
WP Engine VS a2 Hosting
WP Engine | a2 Hosting | |
Money-Back Guarantee | 30-days money-back guarantee | Provides Anytime Money Back Guarantee |
Support | Provides 24/7 support, where it offers the Startup plan 24/7 chat spot and Growth, Scaling, and Custom receive 24/7 chat spot and 24/7 phone support. WP Engine Support Center has articles that help clients resolve common challenges. The articles include Caching (EverCache), Automatic WordPress updates, Server maintenance and security, Performance audits, Content Delivery Network (CDN), Redirects, Domain Mapping among others. | 24/7/365 Crew Support |
Storage | Provides monthly local storage of 10GB, 20GB, 30GB, and 100GB-1 TB for Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom plans respectively. | Provides unlimited SSD Space and Transfer |
Speed | Facilitates 99/99% uptime commitment with an average speed of 338m/s | Facilitates 99.99 Uptime Commitment |
Pricing | Provides monthly and annual payment plans. Monthly costs range between $35 to $290 while yearly subscriptions range between $350 to $2900. | Provides services through Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Dedicated Server plans who monthly billing range between $2.96 to $99.59. |
WP Engine VS DigitalOcean
WP Engine | DigitalOcean | |
Services | WP Engine is a WordPress Managed Hosting that provides its services through four platforms, which are Startup, Growth, Scaling, and Custom that differ in features and prices, catering to different needs of clients. | DigitalOcean is a corporation that provides cloud services that facilitate to deploy and scale applications that run on multiple computers simultaneously. Their plans include Droplets, Kubernetes, Databases, and Spaces. |
Speed | Has an average speed of 338m/s | Facilitates 99.99% uptime SLA. |
Support | Provides 24/7 support, where it offers the Startup plan 24/7 chat spot and Growth, Scaling, and Custom receive 24/7 chat spot and 24/7 phone support. WP Engine Support Center has articles that help clients resolve common challenges. The articles include Caching (EverCache), Automatic WordPress updates, Server maintenance and security, Performance audits, Content Delivery Network (CDN), Redirects, Domain Mapping among others. | Provides 24/7/365 world-class support. The platform also offers paid support plans for huge businesses, which guarantee response times and live communication with the support team. |
Storage | The startup has a storage of 10GB, Growth has local storage of 20GB, scaling has a storage of 400GB, while the Custom Plan has storage of between 100GB to 1TB. | Facilitates an SSD-based Block Storage volumes to your Droplet that suits your database, file storage, applications, service, mobile, and back up needs of between 200GB to 16TB starting from $0.10/GB per month. |
Bandwidth | Each hosting plan has alimited bandwidth. Startup has a bandwidth of 50GB, Growth has 200GB, Scaling has 400GB, and Custom has over 400GB. | The platform provides bandwidths starting from 1TB, which increases incrementally for all its DigitalOcean account holders. |
WP Engine VS Rackspace
WP Engine | Rackspace | |
Services | WP Engine is a WordPress Managed Hosting that provides its services through four platforms, which are Startup, Growth, Scaling, and Custom that differ in features and prices, catering to different needs of clients. | Rackspace is a managed cloud computing corporation that provides expertise on cloud platforms such as Microsoft Cloud, Azure, OpenStack, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, Kubernetes among others. Rackspace also provides fully managed hosting services that cater to everyone’s needs and budget. |
Support | Provides 24/7 support, where it offers the Startup plan 24/7 chat spot and Growth, Scaling, and Custom receive 24/7 chat spot and 24/7 phone support. WP Engine does not provide email support. | Provides phone, email, or chat 24/7/365 support for all its managed hosting plans. |
Pricing | It permits monthly and yearly payment plans. Startup monthly cost starts from $35 and its annual price begins at $29. The monthly cost for Growth starts from $115 and its yearly price starts at $95. The monthly cost for the Scaling plan begins at $291/mo. and its annual cost is $241/ month. The pricing for Custom plans differs from every client depending on the features. | The platform does not provide its pricing to the public, a common practice with web hosting companies as a management strategy. However, Rackspace informs you that they have a suitable budget for everyone’s needs. |
Storage | The local storage ranges between 10 GB to 1 TB depending on the Webhosting package. The startup has a storage of 10 GB, Growth has 20 GB, the scaling has 30 GB storage capacity, while Custom has local storage of between 100 GB and 1 TB. | The platform provides custom storage for each client depending on the growing needs and one’s budget. |
Speed | WP Engine has a strong uptime time owing to its adoption of Google Cloud Platform, the Compute-Optimized Virtual Machine (VM) (C2). | It has an impressive uptime always, which it maintains by using dedicated server plans. |
WP Engine VS DreamPress
WP Engine | DreamPress | |
Hosting Plans | The company provides managed WordPress hosting through four plans, which are Startup, Growth, Scaling, and Custom. | DreamPress is DreamHost’s managed WordPress hosting that offers three plans, which are DreamPress Basic, DreamPress Plus, and Dream Press Pro. |
Pricing | It permits monthly and yearly payment plans. Startup monthly cost starts from $35 and its annual price begins at $29. The monthly cost for Growth starts from $115 and its yearly price starts at $95. The monthly cost for the Scaling plan begins at $291/mo. and its annual cost is $241/ month. The pricing for Custom plans differs from every client depending on the features. | The cost for DreamPress Basic plan starts at $16.95/mo., the price for DreamPress Plus begins at $24.95/mo., and DreamPress Pro prices start at $71.95/mo. |
Bandwidth | It provides limited bandwidth for all its plans. WP Engine offers bandwidths of 50GB/ mo., 200GB/mo., 400GB/mo. and 400GB+ per month for Startup, Growth, Scaling, and Custom plans respectively. | Provides unlimited bandwidth for all its hosting plans |
Storage | The local storage ranges between 10 GB to 1 TB depending on the Webhosting package. The Startup has a storage of 10 GB, Growth has 20 GB, the Scaling has 30 GB storage capacity, while Custom has local storage of between 100 GB and 1 TB. | DreamPress Basic provides 30GB SSD storage, DreamPress Plus offers 60GB SSD storage, and DreamPress Pro has 120GB SSD storage/ |
Monthly Visitors | The Startup plan backs 25, 000 visits per month, the Growth plan is designed for 100, 000 visits per month, Scaling backs 400, 000 visits, and Custom backs millions of visits on a monthly basis. | DreamPress Basic Supports 100k visitors, DreamPress Plus backs 300k visitors, and DreamPress Pro manages over 1 million guests |
WP Engine VS Pressidium
WP Engine | PRESSIDIUM | |
Pricing | Provides monthly and yearly payment policies. Month to month billings range between $35/mo. to over $290/mo. while yearly pricing is billed between $29/mo. to over $241/mo. | Provides monthly and annual payment plans. Month to month payment ranges between $49.90 to $599.90 depending on the preferred plan. Annual billing ranges between $42/mo. to $500/mo. |
Visits per Month | The Startup plan backs 25, 000 visits per month, the Growth plan is designed for 100, 000 visits per month, Scaling backs 400, 000 visits, and Custom backs millions of visits on a monthly basis. | Supports a limited number of unique visits per month. The Personal plan is designed for 30, 000, the Professional plan manages 100, 000 visits, Business allows 500, 000 visits, while Business Plus backs 1000 000 visitors. |
Total Websites | It allows a limited number of websites for every plan. Startup maintains 1+ sites, Growth backs 5+ websites, Scaling supports 15+ sites, and the Custom plan maintains 25+ sites. | Each plan supports a limited number of WordPress websites. PRESSIDIUM backs 3, 10, 25, and 50 sites for Personal, Professional, Business, and Business Plus plans. |
Bandwidth | It provides limited bandwidth for all its plans. WP Engine offers bandwidths of 50GB/ mo., 200GB/mo., 400GB/mo. and 400GB+ per month for Startup, Growth, Scaling, and Custom plans respectively. | It offers unlimited bandwidth for all its plans. |
Support | Provides 24/7 support, where it offers the Startup plan 24/7 chat spot and Growth, Scaling, and Custom receive 24/7 chat spot and 24/7 phone support. WP Engine Support Center has articles that help clients resolve common challenges. The articles include Caching (EverCache), Automatic WordPress updates, Server maintenance and security, Performance audits, Content Delivery Network (CDN), Redirects, Domain Mapping among others. | Has a reliable support team because its customer care employees are WordPress experts and experienced Systems Engineers. For example, PRESSIDIUM provides 24/7 on-call engineers. |
WP Engine VS DreamHost
WP Engine | DreamHost | |
Plans | Its web hosting plans are Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom. All plans include managed WordPress hosting services. | Its web hosting plans are Shared Hosting, DreamPress, and VPS Hosting. The platform offers both managed web hosting services and self-managed sites. |
Pricing | The platform facilitates both monthly and annual payment plans. Annual pricing is discounted and starts from $29/mo. to over $241/mo. Monthly pricing starts at $35/mo. to 0ver $290/mo. | The site has both monthly and yearly payment plans. Monthly prices start from $4.95/mo. to $15.00/mo. while yearly plans range between $2.59/mo. to $13.75/mo. |
Bandwidth | It offers metered bandwidth, which varies with its plans. The startup has a 50GB bandwidth per month, Growth has 200GB bandwidth per month, Scaling has a bandwidth of 400GB per month, while Custom has a bandwidth of over 400GB each month. | Provides unmetered bandwidth for all its hosting plans |
Number of Websites | Each hosting has a minimum number of sites that it supports. Startup should have at least 1 site, Growth should have a minimum of 5 sites, Scaling should have at least 15 websites, and Customs plans support a minimum of 25 websites. | Each hosting plan supports a limited number of websites. Shared (starter) plan supports 1 website, while shared (unlimited) backs unlimited website. DreamPress (Pro) supports 1 WordPress and Staging Website while DreamPress (Plus) maintains 1 WordPress Website. VPS (Basic, Business, Professional, and Enterprise) manages unlimited sites. |
Speed | Has an average speed of 338m/s | Has an average speed of 654m/s |
WP Engine FAQs
Yes, WP Engine is shared hosting because it offers managed hosting services to users who develop their domains and blogs using WordPress. Also, WP Engine is shared hosting because it manages technical details involved such as plugin management and website performance. In fact, WP Engine is the best company that provides shared hosting because it focuses more on the specific needs of WordPress users such as optimizing caching, security, and support.
It is critical to uninstall plugins often to enhance the security and performance of websites. One can remove WP Engine plugins by deactivating them or deleting them. Deactivating plugins will eliminate their functionality in your site but still use the site’s storage space. Deactivated plugins are also a security threat if they become outdated. The first step in either method is backing up your site to protect the day in case of any eventuality. Deleting WordPress plugins entail three steps, which are:
Step 1
Navigate to your WordPress back end, and the main dashboard as the focal point, move to the plugins> Installed Plugins screen. A page listing all current plugins installed on your website (active and inactive) will pop up.
Step 2
Browse through and locate the plugin you wish to delete once you have accesses accessed your list of plugins. Choose the ‘Deactivate link’ of the plugin you wish to delete if it is active. If the Deactivate link is inactive, move to step three. This action will stop the plugin from running on your domain.
Step 3
A Delete option appears for the deactivated plugin.
A window will pop up once you hit the Delete asking you to confirm the deletion of the plugin. Click yes and WordPress will run through some automobile tasks. You have just completed the permanent removal of WP Engine plugins.
One uses WP Engine as a web host for a WordPress site through implementing 7 simple steps, which are adding a site, adding an environment, login to the new environment, adding content, adding plugins, and going live.
One uses WP Engine as a web host for a WordPress site through implementing 7 simple steps, which are adding a site, adding an environment, login to the new environment, adding content, adding plugins, and going live.
i. Add Site
You will engage in various steps to complete the ‘Add Site’ phase, which are:
i. Log in to the User Portal
ii. Click Sites
iii. Click +Add Site
iv. Fill in a domain name of your choice, which must not be unique because it can be changed later
v. Site group -Optional Stage you group your domain to other similar websites if you so wish.
vi. Transferable step, which is optional is the stage where you move your site to another hosting engine before going live because live domains are fixed to a specific web hosting engine.
vii. Click Add Site
ii. Add an Environment
An environment is the individual installation of WordPress and can also manage production, Staging, or Development. The process of adding an environment entails various steps, which are:
i. Clicking Add Production, Add Staging or Add Development.
· Remember, the Production environment is the only one that permits the addition of a website name.
· WP Engine allows the added environment to be shifted to a different environment later.
ii. WP Engine provides options for creating an environment
· Create a new Environment by installing a default WordPress afresh
· Creating from template, which involves a new installation of WordPress and installing and activating specific themes or plugins
· Copying from the existing environment by using a backup point of the existing Environment. Remember to keep the original Environment
· Moving the existing Environment. Reposition an existing Environment into the new kind of Environment.
iii. Fill in an Environment name, which must be unique (must not have been used by another environment in the past).
iv. Click Create Environment
iii. Login to the New Environment
i. You will receive an email to finalize the setup of your admin-level user after creating an Environment.
Note, WP Engine recognizes the first user as the email address of the Billing level possessor of the account hosting.
WP Engine assigns the first admin user with the same name as the environment. For instance, if you named your new Environment “peaches”, your first admin username is “Peaches”. Note, the users will be shifted to your new site as they are from the backup point chosen id your domain is a copy.
ii. WP Engine also provides several login options if you fail to receive the email to set up your admin user.
· Reset your login using the password prompt on the new Environment
· Reset your login from the database
· Add a new user to the database
iv. Choose a Theme
A WP Engine-driven website uses a default theme. As such, WP Engine provides you with a powerful Genesis Framework and 35 premium StudioPress themes for free that you access from your User portal to enhance your creativity in choosing and installing a new WordPress theme to your website. Follow the following steps to select and install a WordPress theme.
i. Click Appearance
ii. Click Themes
iii. Add New
iv. Click Install when you have chosen a theme of your liking
v. Click Activate
vi. Click Customize to modify your theme to your liking
vii. Click Publish to save your modified theme when you are satisfied with the changes you have made to your theme.
v. Add Content
It is time for you to add some content to your website once you have set up the appearance of your website. You add content by:
i. Selecting either Pages or Posts from the WP Engine admin dashboard menu.
· Pages- content added in pages will forever be relevant. Hence, the content should be in the navigation menu of your domain such as About US, Pricing, and Menu Pages.
· Posts- content that is relevant for a period of time such as elections and presidential candidates is added to the posts section.
ii. Select Add New
iii. Add a title, content, median, and any other thing that is relevant to your posting
iv. Click Publish
vi. Add Plugins
Ensure that you add plugins because they facilitate the functionality of your website. For example, plugins help you add special functions such as a contact for or social icons, change default WordPress functionality by adding custom post types or special user riles, and changes the appearance of your domain by adding more menu fields or adding custom fields to your editor page.
It is advisable that you read reviews and ratings of the thousands of plugins available before adding them to ensure that you choose the most suitable for your website.
Follow the following steps to add plugins successfully.
i. Access your WP admin dashboard and click Plugins
ii. Click Add New
iii. Search for the plugins you wish to add to your site
iv. Click Install Now
v. Click Activate
Remember, keep your plugins updated always to secure your website.
vii. Going Live
Taking your website live entails three steps, which are:
i. Adding a domain to the User Portal
It is critical to add the domain to the WP Engine User Portal because it maps the website to your specific WordPress environment on the WP Engine Server. Note, be sure to add the domain with or without “www” irrespective of which one will be the primary name to prevent the other from resulting in a ‘404’ error.
You add a domain to the User Portal by:
· Log in to the User portal
· Selecting Sites
· Clicking on the production environment name
· Clicking Domains
· Clicking Add Domains
· Entering your domain
Note, you may be redirected to automatically point your DNS if your website is registered with a supported Domain Connect Provider.
Do not panic if you see Failed Check or Pending Check because it often takes WP Engine some time to check their DNS records and update the Domain Status Lights.
ii. Updating WordPress URL Settings
Ensure that you update your WordPress URL settings because it directs your website on which domain it should ultimately resolve in the browser. Keeping your WordPress URL settings outdated yields in redirecting loops and login issues.
Note, you must use HTTP or HTTPS to update your WordPress URL settings. A security warning message will pop if you use HTTPS, which you resolve by adding an SSL after setting up your DNS.
However, you need to follow different steps to change your URL settings if you have a multisite, which are as follows:
· Login to your website’s WP-admin area
· Open Settings
· Update two values to your new domain, the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL)
· You will be logged out and will only be able to access the WP Engine version of your site again until you point DNS in Step 3.
Check if fields on this page are greyed out. If so, open your wp-config.php file using SFTP and remove the following lines:
define (‘WP_HOME’, ‘https://somedomain.com’);
define (‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘https://somedomain.com’);
You can also update your URL settings from the database if you fail to access the wp-admin area of your website by:
· Log in to the User Portal
· Clicking on Sites
· Clicking on the production environment name
· Clicking phpMyAdmin
· Expanding the wp-environment name database
· Expanding the WP-options table
· Updating two option values, the site URL and home
iii. Setting Up DNS
It is critical for you to set up your DNS because it forms the domain which server to send traffic to when a browser makes a request.
The DNS setup process varies by the particular host such as CNAME, ANAME, alias, or an A record.
Do not panic if WP Engine does not update your DNS immediately. WP Engine takes a maximum of 24 hours to update the DNS depending on the DNS provider. It is advisable to inquire from your DNS host the expected duration it will take for your DNS to be updated.
Note: You can still preview your site at the new domain without pointing your DNS to WP Engine. To do so, you need to use the Hosts File Trick to make your computer think DNS points to WP Engine without changing the DNS at your host and without affecting any live visitors.
Your WordPress Website with WP Engine is LIVE
WP Engine is a leading WordPress digital experience platform that facilitates the development and hosting of fast, reliable, and secure WordPress websites. WP Engine is the first and only WordPress Digital Experience Platform.
As I have stated above, WP Engine helps individuals to develop WordPress websites on a proven, reliable platform that offers unmatched speed, scalability, and security. WP Engine provides companies solutions they require to make outstanding sites and apps on WordPress, which enhances the growth of the businesses.
WP Engine is relatively costly compared to other managed hosting platforms. However, WP Engine is justified to be more expensive because of the unmatched managed hosting services it provides.
WP Engine is unique from other managed hosting platforms because it pays closer focus on the needs of WordPress users such as bloggers. For example, WP Engine is undefeated in handling all complex challenges of blogging, optimizes caching, security, and support.
· WP Engine is costlier than other managed hosting platforms because it provides the best website performance.
WP Engine optimizes the performance of websites through its “Performance Intelligence” solutions that inform an account owner the real-time data concerning how a domain is doing and possible steps to enhance its performance.
WP Engine also allows you to review their site analytics to confirm the efficiency of your tweaks. Note that WP Engine is the first managed WordPress platform that offers a web page speed performance tool that is integrated into the user dashboard to allow you the site owner to improve your website’s need as nee arises.
The following image highlights WP Engine’s Page Performance Metrics:
· Secondly, WP Engine is costlier to other managed hosting providers because it has better Response Time Tests. For example, a Pingdom report on WP Engine and other top hosting organizations for a period of 12 months revealed that WP Engine has a better response time compared to Bluehost and HostGator for a period of 12 months with an average page load time of 338m/s.
· WP Engine provides its customers with frameworks, plugins, and free premium themes.
Access to StudioPress’ Genesis Framework that customers use to develop their unique themes for their blogs is one of the most major perks that make WP Engine more expensive. For example, all WP Engine plans have specific frameworks and over 35 StudioPress themes that are valued at over $2000.
· WP Engine Offers Monetization Options and Support
WP Engine is more expensive than other managed hosting platforms because supports monetization by:
a) Installing the Google AdSense plugin on your website
b) Joining an affiliate program and places the products’ advertisements on your site to earn revenue from purchases yielding from click-throughs. Also, WP Engine clients receive revenues through referrals. For example, a link to Alibaba for a product that you recommend in a blog post or page.
c) Accept sponsored posts from brands aiming to increase awareness through the audience base that your site has developed.
d) Selling digital products and using a plugin to add the essential functionality to your site. For instance, WP Engine uses a plugin to add shopping carts and shipping calculators to enhance the digital shopping experience.
e) WP Engine provides subscriptions and memberships with the assistance of appropriate plugins to manage the segregation of content.
i. You should use WP Engine it is one of the best-known companies that provide managed hosting, supporting personal sites, small businesses, and large corporations such as Asana, Rogers, and TELUS because of its varied plans, which are Startups, Growth, Scale, and Customs that serve different missions.
ii. You should also use WP Engine because it offers adequate security, code updates, staging environments, and customer support.
· It provides WordPress-specific support
WP Engine provides outstanding support because it relies on its over 100 full-time WordPress expert employees, which facilitates the availability of 24-hour, 365 days’ support. WP Engine avails their support via live chats, emails, and phone calls (not available in the Startup plan).
· Uses fast and reliable servers
· Offers free CDN, SSL, and Themes
· And provides automatic site backups
· The WP Engine has a very knowledgeable puzzle too because it consists of hundreds of pf tutorials and guidelines to solutions for common problems. The WP Engine is also categorized, which makes it easy for you to locate what you are looking for. Also, support articles are written clearly, with distinct steps and images to assist you to solve your WordPress issues.
iii. You should also use WP Engine because it has a reasonable billing and Money-Back Guarantee policy
· WP Engine does not lock you into long-term contracts because it permits you to choose a monthly payment plan that allows you to cancel your plan each month.
· WP Engine also offers you a 60-day money-back guarantee as a new customer to its hosting services.
iv. WP Engine Uses Simple and Automatic Backups
One of the unique benefits of using WP Engine is that you will have access to snapshot backups that are easy to use and also reliable. A snapshot backup is a backup that is scheduled for a specific point of time that you can restore your website to as required. You only need a few seconds to create a snapshot (manually).
Also, the WP Engine takes a snapshot of your website at least twice a day automatically.
v. Diversified Staging
You should use WP Engine as a host for your WordPress domain because it allows you to test all your changes before publishing them.
WP Engine allows you to create three versions of your website promptly to compare changes and consequently assist you in choosing the most suitable look for your domain.\
Also, WP Engine allows you to create a development server (feature included in all plans) to enhance your staging experience.
vi. WP Engine is fast
Finally, you should use WP Engine because it is fast, owing to its stable and fast servers and its inbuilt Page Performance.
· WP Engine has fast and reliable servers. WP Engine has had an uptime of 99.99% over the years, with 4 minutes of downtime per month only.
· The WP Engine is also fast because its page load speeds averaged 331m/s, which is unmatched by other WordPress hosts.
WP Engine claims that its websites run 4-6 times faster than others.
WP Engine-hosted sites are super-fast because they use EverCache, which is an advanced caching system that WP Engine developed particularly for their sites.
· Finally, the WP engine is fast because it integrates a page performance tool into your WordPress dashboard that simplifies your page load speeds. For example, the page performance tool informs you what parts of your website are slow and consequently provides you with recommendations on how to fix them. Besides, WP Engine allows you to set up automated reports that help you view how any changes to your domain affects speed.
Jason Cohen, Ben Metcalfe, and Cullen Wilson are the principal owners of WP Engine. WP Engine is also open to shareholders.
WP Engine is worth the extra dollar because is a reliable provider of managed hosting. WP Engine ensures that your website performs optimally, secure, and fast because all at your comfort because it is one of the tops platforms that provides managed WordPress hosting.
Also, WP Engine offers several WordPress-specific features such as:
· Quick and easy shift from your old host.
· A free Secure Socket Layers (SSL) certificate that acts as an essential security measure
· Offers support for setting up staging sites
· And provides many performance measuring and diagnostic options.
Finally, WP Engine provides plenty of dedicated and expert support that is fast, knowledgeable, and helpful. WP Engine support also includes a resource center and comprehensive knowledge epicenter that have lots of well-written documentation and tutorials.
So yes, WP Engine is worth the extra expense!
My name is Nate Reiner and I am the editor here at 10Webtools. I have 8 years of experience using 50+ different web tools ranging from podcast, web hosting, email marketing, and much more. I previously managed a team offering support services to a large conglomerate that utilized tens of software solutions. I now run this blog full-time and when I am not reviewing or testing software, I enjoy riding bikes and supporting my clients achieve internet success. You can reach me directly at [email protected]