WP Engine Review for WordPress

There are plenty of cheap hosts out there that offer decent service. But what if you’re looking for a more performance-oriented concierge? In that case, you want to check out our WP Engine review WordPress.

WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host that offers hosting plans fully optimized for the platform. Of course, WP Engine’s plans aren’t cheap compared to many other WordPress hosts. So, before buying, you’ll want to know if this hosting service is worth it.

To help you out, we’re going to do a thorough WP Engine review for WordPress. We’ll discuss its key features, support options, performance features, and everything else you need to know. let’s start!

WP Engine Review for WordPress – Specific Features 

If you want to make sure your website is optimized, secure, and loads fast —without having to do a lot of work yourself—managed hosting is an option worth considering. WP Engine is one of the top names when it comes to managed WordPress hosting.

Its service offers quite a few WordPress-specific features, including:

• Migrate quickly and easily from legacy hosting.
• A free Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate, which is an important security measure.
• Support for setting up staging sites.
• Extensive performance tracking and diagnostic options.

support options 

WP Engine plans include tons of support. You’ll get dedicated help 24/7 by phone, email, or live chat. Once registered, support options can be easily accessed directly from your user portal.

We took live chat for a test drive to see the support staff:

The agents are responsive, and helpful, and seem to know the platform inside out. They were able to answer our questions without any difficulty. For more help and information, there is also a resource center and a comprehensive knowledge base with many well-written documents and tutorials.

performance 

Features and support are important, but performance is the make or break of a web host. Fortunately, WP Engine offers many performance-enhancing features such as:

• Free Content Delivery Network (CDN) service, included with all plans.
• Page performance solutions to test your website and help you improve it.
• An add-on called GeoTarget optimizes your website for a specific region.

What’s more, WP Engine offers many server locations. We won’t list them all (there are 19), but they include data centers in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

All of this should translate to excellent real-world performance. Let’s see if that’s the case!

Page Speed ​​Test Using Pingdom

For the next phase of our WordPress WP Engine review, we set up a basic site and tested its loading speed using Pingdom tools from around the world. Here are our results:

• New York: 1.61 seconds
• Melbourne: 1.67 seconds
• San Jose: 0.39 seconds
• Stockholm: 1.60 seconds

These are pretty consistent times (except for San Jose, which is the obvious standout). 1.6 seconds isn’t particularly impressive, but it’s a decent pace that’s still below the all-important two-second mark.

Page Speed ​​Test with Load Impact

It is always wise to test performance using multiple tools. Therefore, we also use load impact to simulate the effect of multiple simultaneous users on a WP Engine site. Here’s what we got:

• Load Generator: Ashburn, USA
• Test server: Ann Arbor, USA
• Minimum response time : 0.51 seconds
• Maximum response time : 0.59 seconds

Basically, this graph shows that page load times for our test sites remain consistent ( green line) as the number of visitors increases ( blue line ). This is a good thing because it means your site will load as fast for the first visitor as it does for the 50th concurrent visitor.

pricing 

While WP Engine only offers one type of service — its managed WordPress hosting — it also offers a number of tiered plans to choose from. These plans vary significantly in the number of resources they offer and the number of websites they cater to, meaning you get a very scalable service.

Let’s take a quick look at each WP Engine plan :

• Startup ($20 per month): With this entry-level tier, you get support for up to 25,000 visits per month, one website, 10GB of storage, and 50GB of bandwidth. You also get an SSL certificate, access to a global CDN, and a few other key features.
• Professional ($40 per month): This plan allows you to set up three sites and welcome up to 75,000 visitors per month. You also get 15 GB of storage.
• Growth ($77 per month): This plan increases your traffic support to 100,000 and gives you ten sites. In addition to more resources, you also have access to 24/7 phone support and can import your own SSL certificate.
• Scale ($193 per month): This tier is basically the same as the previous tier. It simply provides more resources, increases your number of websites to 30, and supports up to 400,000 visits per month.
• Premium and Enterprise: These are custom plans, so pricing will vary. They offer a lot of extra resources and support, and move your hosting from a shared setup to a dedicated server.

These plans aren’t cheap, but they do give your website a ton of features and a lot of room to grow. If you want to build one or more serious business or eCommerce websites, this service is worth a look.

Overall Pros and Cons 

For the final step in our WP Engine review for WordPress, let’s summarize the main pros and cons of this hosting provider.

advantage

Optimized for WordPress users.

Optimized for WordPress users.

Simplify the process of managing your website.

Provides stable, consistent performance.

There is plenty of professional and expert support available.

shortcoming

Not for everyone’s budget.

Managed hosting is only available on shared servers (or dedicated servers on custom plans).

Alternatives to WP Engine Hosting

WP Engine is a solid hosting option if you have a decent budget. However, it’s quite expensive (especially on the higher tiers).

If you like WP Engine in theory, but it’s not in your price range, you can check out some alternatives. For example, SiteGround is a great WordPress-specific provider, and DreamHost offers very affordable managed hosting. For more information, you can check out our full article on WP Engine alternatives.

in conclusion