Businesses may find it tough to decide on which hosting to use for their WordPress sites. There are options that match hosting packages such as shared hosting, WordPress Managed, VPS, and dedicated.
Each package comes with its unique features, pros, cons, and special preferences. One of the best hosting plans happens to be WordPress Managed hosting and we will review the best of its kind.
This review takes a deeper look into the WP Engine WordPress Managed hosting platform and the benefits it offers to you.
About WP Engine Hosting
WP Engine hosting is a top-class hosting brand that delivers excellent WordPress managed hosting services. It offers hosting packages for WordPress users who wish to get the best out of their business websites and blogs.
When compared to the pricing of other WordPress hosting services, WP Engine seems quite pricey but it makes up through the quality of the service offered.
Users get access to automatic backups, best-in-quality support, page load speed, and highly skilled technical support.
Different users from all over the world find WP Engine to be the best WordPress managed hosting among the rest. However, you will be the judge of that after going through the details contained in this review about the WordPress hosting service.
Benefits
Here are the main benefits of using WP Engine:
1 – Offers the needed Support for Your Business Website
WP Engine hosting was designed from the ground up to manage all the technical aspects of your business website or blog.
The services are handled by experienced experts who only deliver the best in terms of customer and technical support. Also, users of its services are able to enjoy excellent site performance, world-class security, and high speed.
Other high-performance benefits include automatic caching and security updates, one-click restore points, and daily backups.
As a user of WP Engine, you rest assured that your site is managed by the best, which gives you room to focus on your core business.
2 – Excellent Support
This is one WordPress hosting that boasts of the best and most qualified support team in the industry. The customer and technical support team include members that are handpicked from among the best.
What more? WP Engine offers support in many more ways for its highly-satisfied customers. There is an available resource center and knowledgebase search center where you can access vital information about using the hosting service.
Users can also access one-on-one assistance by simply logging into their accounts and requesting for help from there. The support can be accessed at any time of the day as it is open to WP Engine users 24/7.
Also, for help concerning sales, you can communicate via email through sales@wpengine.com within the time interval 7am – 7pm.
3 – Services Designed to Scale with Your Business
WP Engine hosting services are designed to meet your present WordPress hosting needs and also scale as your needs grow.
You can sign up for a plan that allows for 100,000 monthly visits to millions of monthly visitors to your website. You can also leverage the hosting service to grow your storage and bandwidth requirements to meet any needs.
4 – Built on Amazon Web Services
In partnership with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, WP Engine builds its hosting service on one of the best server architectures.
Amazon Affiliate Program Review: the Best Selling Platform for Affiliate Marketers
This gives your website access to global data centers and cloud coverage that ensure your website is always live. This is why your web pages load very fast for your web visitors no matter what country they’re in.
WP Engine also optimizes these services which make it possible for you to give your visitors the best experience while on your site.
5 – Easy Access to Content Insights
WP Engine lets you access insights from Google Analytics for the content of your WordPress site. This enables easy access to real-time data such as page views, bounce rate, high performing authors, and reasons for doing well.
The Content Performance reports give you insights that will help you improve your content strategy. All these features can be accessed via the WP Engine dashboard.
6 – Free Web Building Kit
WP Engine users are able to access the DevKit which is a free kit that offers tools for site-building.
It is a tool that offers a local development environment for you to build professional websites while offline. After you are done with the website designs, you can easily deploy with easy pull and push tools.
See The Best FREE Website Builder Here
The WP Engine DevKit grants you local and remote SSH access to aid in the site setup and configuration. It’s a complete development kit that has its own build and debug tools to enable you to preview your work.
There are also command line (CLI) and graphical user interface (GUI) for both Windows and Mac users.
7 – 60 Days Money Back Guarantee
WP Engine offers a 60-day money-back guarantee for new users who are not satisfied with the quality of its service. This makes it impossible to be at the receiving end if you sign up for a WP Engine paid plan.
WP Engine Features
Here are the key features of WP Engine:
I – Global Edge Security
WP Engine offers the best in WordPress website security to users of its service. You will be able to receive automatic security updates, daily backups, and one-click restore points.
Other security features include free SSL, very responsive technical support, and continuous site protection against intruders. Built on one of the best server architecture, your site is guaranteed to remain live all of the time.
The global edge security also offers the best in enterprise-grade threat detection and prevention. This solution offers DDoS protection and a web application firewall (WAF) that keeps your site secure at any time of the day.
Despite having in-built security, WP Engine extends the security benefits through Global Edge Security. This also has the capacity to handle 15 times the largest DDoS distributed attacks.
This keeps you rest assured that your site on WP Engine enjoys the best of in-built expert rule sets from some of the most experienced security outfits.
II – Smart Plugin Manager
WP Engine features Smart Plugin manager which is a fully automated plugin update tool. It is designed to keep all your plugins up to date through daily checks for plugin updates that didn’t break their functionality. However, if it detects any problems, then it performs a rollback and restores your site to a previous working state.
In case you’re not aware, plugin constitutes the highest source of WordPress vulnerability which stands at 55.9% of known entry points. The Smart Plugin Manager helps to keep these entry points secure from any outside attacks.
By using the Smart Plugin Manager, you will be able to save time that would have been used in updating plugins manually. Also, this tool helps to make sure that you never miss a plugin update on your WordPress site.
III – High Performance
In terms of performance (uptime and page load speed), WP Engine outperforms 97% of WordPress hosting providers. Users enjoy up to 100% uptime and load speed that range from 566ms to 2.3 seconds.
Though this feature doesn’t come cheap, you are sure of the value that WP Engine offers to your business. The WordPress caching and CDN included in your package help to ensure that you enjoy high performance always.
IV – Free StudioPress Themes
For any hosting plan that you sign up for on WP Engine, you will receive free StudioPress themes. These themes offer premium, easy-to-use WordPress themes that you can customize with ease.
They are built on Genesis Framework which is a search engine optimized WordPress platform for creating secure websites. There are over 35 responsive themes plus 35 other themes for users of WP Engine hosting.
You will be able to create great-looking themes for your site on WP Engine. Also, you will have different themes that you can choose from depending on your business needs.
V –Easy to Transfer Your Sites
Do you have an existing website that you would like to transfer to WP Engine? Then you’ve got it covered because WP Engine provides the tools to migrate your WordPress site for free.
Plus you have access to the best WordPress technical support team should you run into any troubles.
VI – WP Engine Security Environment
The WP Engine security environment offers high-level site protection when your site functions at its peak performance. The security measures that WP Engine puts in place include Disk Write Protection, Disk Writes Limitations, and Disallowed Plugins.
The Disk Write Protection prevents any malicious codes from attaching itself to your site. Newly installed themes or plugins may open up doors for these harmful codes to come in. This protection feature limits the processes that can write to disk making it hard for the codes to get in.
Any attempt to write to the disk is logged to enable WP Engine to identify the malicious codes. You can use the Disk Write Limitations to allow or block disk write rights.
The Disallowed plugin feature scans a website for plugins that may be sources of vulnerabilities. If any plugins are found to be harmful, the Disallowed Plugins will disable such plugins. There are times when a plugin is also disabled for performance issues.
Pricing Plans
There is only one hosting service offered by WP Engine which is WordPress Managed hosting.
However, the pricing plans are organized based on the number of monthly visits, storage, bandwidths, and sites. You can upgrade your current hosting plan on WP Engine as your traffic and storage needs increase.
Also, there are two payment plans that users can opt for, which are the monthly or the annual payment plan. By choosing the annual payment plan you will be entitled to 2 months free from WP Engine.
The available WordPress hosting plans on WP Engine are Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom.
I – The Startup Plan goes for $24 per month if you’re on a monthly plan and $20 per month for those on the annual payment plan. It’s the most basic plan best suited for individuals and businesses that are just starting a small blog or site.
The Startup Plan includes features like 5,000 monthly visits, 10GB local storage, 50GB monthly bandwidth, and support for one site.
Available Add-ons for this plan are GeoTarget, Global Edge Security, Additional Sites, and the WP Engine Smart Plugin Manager.
Other features are PHP 7.3, SSH Gateway, Automated SSL certificates, 24/7 chat support, Genesis Framework, and over 35 StudioPress themes.
II – The Growth Plan goes for $115 per month if you’re on a monthly plan and $95 per month for those on the annual payment plan. It has all the features that a business needs to set up and manage a growing website.
The features found on The Growth Plan are 100,000 visits/month, 200GB monthly bandwidth, and also 10 supported sites on the plan. This plan includes all the features and available add-ons on the Startup Plan plus WordPress Multisite.
III – The Scale Plan goes for $290 per month for those on a monthly payment plan and $241 per month for those who are on the annual payment plan.
The main features of the Scale Plan include 400,000 monthly visits, 50GB storage, 500GB monthly bandwidth, and 30 sites. This plan also contains all the other features and available add-ons that are on the Growth Plan.
IV – Custom Plan – This plan is designed for large enterprises with mission-critical sites and with high-level requirements.
To get the pricing for the Custom Plan, you would have to reach out to any of the WP Engine sales specialists.
The features on the Custom Plan include millions of monthly visits, 100GB to 1TB storage, 400GB monthly bandwidth, and support for 30 sites.
Pros and Cons of WP Engine
Pros
- WP Engine offers one of the best services that businesses require in terms of WordPress Managed hosting
- As a new user of WP Engine, you are entitled to a 60-day money-back guarantee in case you are not satisfied with the service.
Cons
- WP Engine hosting plans are expensive when compared to what other WordPress managed hosts are charging.
Conclusion
A WordPress managed hosting service is a great way to have your site managed by experienced hands. This will enable you to reduce the time spent on the website admin of your WordPress site.
WP Engine is one of the best WordPress Managed hosting platforms that ensure your site is highly secure and performing at its peak. This review has given you an insider view of its features, benefits, and pricing plans.
Are you willing to try out a much better managed hosting platform for your WordPress site? Then give Wealthy Affiliate a try. Learn more about WA via this route.