Important note: Since originally publishing this review, some WP Engine customers such as Jerry from WebHostingSecretRevealed.net have had issues with WP Engine adding footer links to their sites without permission. We’ve heard of other worrying reports of this occurring too, and because of these we have lowered the rating previously given to this host. While we’re sure this issue isn’t too widespread, it’s difficult to be sure and it’s very concerning. To find an alternative web host, please see this page.
You care about your WordPress site, right?
What if you had a membership site which blocks your users due to “suspicious login attempts”, or shuts down during sudden traffic spikes?
You hurt your business.
When you’re in the big league, you cannot rely on traditional shared hosts or unmanaged dedicated hosts. You need someone who has got your back.
Security, reliability, speed, scalability and disaster recovery are the most important factors you need to consider when looking for a web hosting company.
When you’re running a WordPress site, you need a reputed webhost which is experienced and provides best-in-class services.
This is where I introduce you to WP Engine – the managed WordPress hosting company. Not only does WP Engine ace the aforementioned webhost selection criteria, it has grown to become one of the leading managed WordPress hosting providers in the industry.
Our review of WP Engine covers its best features and explains why you should consider shifting your host today!
Features that make WP Engine awesome
- Bulletproof security and malware scanning with free hack repair
- Lightning-speed performance with superior caching algorithms
- High scalability to gracefully handle traffic spikes
- Advanced development tools like Git control, Staging Area and GeoIP caching
- 24/7 live chat, ticket and phone support (varies with plan)
Bulletproof security
Security is one of the most undermined yet inexcusably important factors of any modern website.
Given the recent brute-force attacks on the ‘admin’ username which affected over 60% of WordPress sites, you need pay serious attention to security.
Things get intensified when you’re running a membership site in WordPress. You have members who are paying for your content, but aren’t able to access it. Not only do you lose customers, you lose reputation – something that’s far more valuable than money.
WP Engine tightens your WordPress site’s security to the teeth.
With hundreds of known and unknown security loopholes pre-plugged and advanced DDoS attack countermeasures in place, WP Engine is so confident that they promise to repair your hacked WordPress site for free.
Lightning speed performance
Speed is something everyone loves. You, me and Google. Well, search engines to be precise. WP Engine uses its proprietary “Evercache” caching algorithm that guarantees amazing speed. All your data is cached to the last character and distributed over a worldwide CDN network which ensures that your website loads in the fastest possible time.
To emphasize just how serious WP Engine is about speed, they recently introduced a GeoIP based caching feature. In a nutshell, if you’re using location aware content, WP Engine will even cache those location-based pages, and serve them to the right visitor. The visitor’s geographical location is determined by performing a reverse IP lookup on his IP address.
Effortless scalability
The big league or the even semi-big league blogs experience what we call “traffic spikes”. When your site reaches Reddit’s front page or gets featured in Medium, you’re going to see a huge influx of visitors.
Even if your site’s hosted in a very powerful dedicated server, the traffic requirements could very well outweigh the specifications of the server. Thus, as soon as the increased traffic would begin to flow, your site would go down. The moment of glory would be lost.
This is where WP Engine’s scalability saves the day.
How?
WP Engine is designed specifically to tackle such situations. When your site experiences a traffic surge, the hardware resources are automatically increased to handle the huge number of visitors.
As a result, each and every one of your (new) visitors gets a blazing fast response time. Your conversions and social media following soars through the roof!
Advanced tools
WP Engine’s Staging Area is the perfect example. This incredibly helpful tool replicates your live WordPress site. You can perform all your operations in the copy version. Once the new change are made, you can swap the replicated site with your live site with just a click of a button.
While migrating to-and-fro between the “staged” and the “live” version, you can select the database tables you want to replace. This ensures that any new comments or posts in the live version of your site remain intact.
WordPress Multisite and worldwide CDN is included from the Professional Plan.
Simple pricing
WP Engine’s pricing policy is based on the number of visitors that visit your site. That’s it. There are no other restrictions at play. You get unlimited storage and bandwidth (along with a host of other awesome features) in all WP Engine plans.
Plans start from $29/month for a single site with 25,000 visitors/month. Enterprise level plans with isolated hardware are also available for high traffic (1M+) requirements.
However, it is important to note how WP Engine counts visitors.
In a nutshell, the total number of unique IP addresses that visit your site in a day are counted as visitors for that day. Accumulated over a thirty day period, this figure makes up your total number of visitors/month.
The downside here is that pricing can get very high if your website gets a lot of traffic, a lot more than other web hosts.
Traffic spikes are counted differently. After your site exceeds the pre-allocated number of visits, a free of $1 is charged per 1000 visits.
Heroic support
WP Engine prides itself with the quality of support it offers. WP Engine employs WordPress experts and experienced WordPress support staff to address any of your hosting related issues. With 24/7 live chat, email, ticket and phone support, your problem will not be left unattended.
Justifying the high price
30% extra price for 400% performance
This is arguably one of my favorite quotes on this topic. You pay a premium price for a much better deal. Another interesting way to look at this is using the “Bad neighborhood analogy”.
It is much better to choose home with a higher rent in a good neighborhood, rather than settle for a cheaper one in a bad neighborhood. I don’t need to spell out the dangers now, do I?
Performance benchmarks
Coming to my favorite part of the review – the place where only numbers talk. For this review we used the Vertex theme from Elegant Themes with its demo data loaded. No caching plugin was installed – we ran the test on the default WP Engine settings.
Pingdom
- Score: 93/100
- Faster than: 94% of all websites
Pingdo’s test give an excellent preference grade of 93/100, without me having to worry about caching plugins and tweaking settings.
When not to use WP Engine
I’m just as money-conscious as the next guy, so here’s some solid financial advice for you. If you’re just launching a site – don’t get WP Engine now. It’ll be like throwing away money (donate it to charity if you must!).
In your site’s infancy consider going for a more cost effective host such as SiteGround.
When your site continues to grow and thrive, take another look at your hosting options, you may find that WP Engine is a better fit for you at that time.
Conclusion
When you have a reputed site, you have people who look up to you. A site with frequent downtime or hack attempts can ruin your business and tarnish your hard-earned reputation. Nobody wants that.
Therefore it is fundamentally important to invest in a solid hosting infrastructure to accomplish new features of success in your online business.
If WPEngine isn’t for you, check out our comparison of other WordPress hosts to find the best fit for your website.
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