WP Engine Review 2024: Is It The Right WordPress Hosting? [Get 3 Months of Free Hosting]

WP Engine
wpengine review

Product Name: WP Engine

4.5

Summary

WPEngine is the best managed hosting service for WordPress sites. Choose WP Engine if you want to choose a hosting which is trusted by top bloggers in every industry and want a fast loading website. Here’s the full WPEngine tutorial along with features, pricing, pros and cons.

I am sharing my unbiased WP Engine Review in this blog post.

WP Engine is one of the most popular WordPress web hosting services available in the blogosphere right now. It not only offers incredible features but also has great customer support that solves your hosting issues in minutes.

More than 1.5M+ websites hosted on WP Engine hosting in more than 150 countries.

Although there are many reliable hosting services like Bluehost, HostGator, and Dreamhost, the WP engine stands out from the crowd by offering some unique and amazing features.

Looking for more details! Let’s dive into the WP Engine review for 2024 so you can find all the details.

WP Engine Review 2024: Why Choose WP Engine Host for WordPress Sites?

wp engine review 2024

WP Engine Features

  • Free access to Genesis framework
  • Gives you access to 35+ StudioPress themes for free
  • 24/7 chat support
  • Dev, Stage, Prod Environments (extremely useful for website developers)
  • Transferable Sites (free site migration)
  • PHP 7.3 ready
  • SSH Gateway for better security
  • LargeFS
  • Access to Global CDN for faster speeds
  • 24/7 phone support (except startup plan)
  • Automated SSL certificates
  • 60 days money back guarantee

About WP Engine

WP Engine is a reputable and leading managed WordPress hosting provider founded in 2010. WP Engine aims to deliver a secure, high-performance, and reliable hosting environment for WordPress websites.

To ensure the fastest hosting service, WP Engine uses Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft data centers to host its services. This provides you the flexibility to opt for the data center that aligns with the location of your target audience, thereby enhancing your website’s loading speed.

WP Engine data centers are located in:

  • North America – Iowa, South Carolina, Oregon, Montreal, Virginia, Ohio, and Washington (US)
  • Europe – Belgium, London, Frankfurt, Netherlands, Finland, and Ireland
  • Asia/Pacific – Taiwan, Tokyo, Sydney, and Singapore
  • Middle East – Tel Aviv

Let’s check out the top reason to use WP Engine hosting to host your website in 2024.

7 Reasons to Use WP Engine in 2024

Here are 7 incredible benefits of picking WP Engine over other WordPress hosting services out there.

1. Achieve ultimate speed with WP Engine hosting

Website speed is one of the most critical factors for both SEO and user experience.

Google considers page speed as a ranking factor, and websites with faster loading speeds tend to have higher positions in search results.

Furthermore, fast-loading pages also improve the user experience. Visitors are more likely to engage with your content, reducing bounce rates and spend more time on your website.

WP Engine recognizes the criticality of website speed. With its EverCache technology and Content Delivery Network (CDN), you get an instantaneous speed boost.

EverCache is a caching system that enhances your site’s speed by effectively managing server resources and reducing page loading times.

CDN – Cloudflare CDN is a free inherent feature in all WP Engine plans. CDN significantly enhanced website speed by distributing your website content to visitors based on their geographic location through a network of global data centers.

The websites hosted on WP Engine run 4 to 6 times faster than the sites hosted on other hosting services.

2. Bulletproof security

A secure hosting provider offers peace of mind, ensuring that your website and data are protected from potential threats. It safeguards against cyber threats and data breaches, which can lead to reputational damage and loss of trust among visitors.

WP Engine hosting uses multiple safety measures to secure your sites. As per their data, WP Engine blocks 26billions+ hacking attacks every year.

WP Engine security

WP Engine Security Features include

  1. Proactive Security with Threat Blocking: WP Engine employs proactive security measures to identify and block potential threats before they can harm your website. This includes real-time monitoring and firewall protection to mitigate any malicious activity.
  2. Auto-renewing SSL: SSL certificates are vital for encrypting data and establishing trust with your visitors. WP Engine provides auto-renewing SSL certificates, ensuring that your website remains secure and trusted by users.
  3. Automated WordPress & PHP Updates: Keeping your WordPress and PHP versions up to date is essential for security. WP Engine takes care of this by automating updates and reducing the risk of vulnerabilities associated with outdated software. This automated approach keeps your website secure without manual intervention.

Even after all these security features, if your site gets hacked, WP Engine will fix it completely for FREE. Normally, if your site gets hacked, it could easily cost you hundreds to several thousands of dollars, depending upon your site requirements. But with WP Engine, you can save all that money.

3. Regular backups

Regular backups act as a safety net in case of unexpected events such as data loss, hacking, or website errors. In such an event, you can restore your website to a previous working state, preventing data loss and minimizing downtime.

WP Engine offers free regular backups as a core feature of their hosting service, providing you with peace of mind and protection for your website.

Automated Daily Backups: WP Engine’s hosting provides automated daily backups of your website content and configurations. It ensures that you have access to the most recent version of your site in case of any issues.

Manual Backups: you can create manual backups whenever you wish by clicking on the Backup Now button from your WP Engine dashboard. This feature is useful, especially when you take a backup before making any major changes to your WordPress sites.

One-click Restore: You can roll back to a previous version of your site with one click.

On their support garage, when you click on the Backup Points option, you will see all the restore points which you can use to restore all your data if needed. Have a look at the screenshot below for better understanding.

backup

With regular backups provided by WP Engine, you can be confident that your website’s data is secure and retrievable, giving you the flexibility to manage and protect your online presence effectively.

4. Free migration plugin

WP Engine provides a free “WP Engine Automated Migration” plugin that you can use to migrate any number of websites on WP Engine free of cost.

The whole migration process is so simple that you don’t need any technical knowledge.

You can migrate your websites with just 3 steps.

Step 1 – Add the site on WP Engine that you want to migrate and generate the SFTP credentials

Add site to migration site in WP engine

Step 2 – Install and activate the “WP Engine automated migration” plugin into your current website

Install wp engine automated migration plugin

Step 3 – Enter the SFTP credentials and click on the migration button to initiate the migration process.

Enter SFTP credentials

That’s it. Once the migration process is completed, you will see a successful migration message.

migration complete message

At any point in time, if you face any issue while migrating your site on WP Engine, you can contact their 24×7 support staff.

5. Advanced Site Building Features

WP Engine acquired StudioPress WordPress solutions in 2018. After that, WP Engine started offering both Genesis Framework and StudioPress themes for free to all its customers, which otherwise cost $50 to $200 for a single theme.

WP Engine’s “Site Building” feature empowers you to create, design, and refine your websites with ease. You get free access to premium themes, Genesis Blocks, and staging environments.

  1. 10 Premium Themes Included: You get a collection of 10 premium themes with its hosting plan for free. These themes are designed to give your website an attractive and professional look. Users can choose from various styles and layouts to match their brand or content.
  2. Genesis Blocks for Easy Site Creation: WP Engine incorporates Genesis Blocks, a WordPress block editor plugin that offers a wide range of pre-designed blocks and templates. You can easily customize your websites by dragging and dropping these blocks, allowing for quick and hassle-free site creation.
  3. 1-Click Staging and Development Environments: You can duplicate your existing website with just one click. These staging environments are isolated from the live site, enabling you to experiment, test updates, or make changes without affecting the main site. Once satisfied, you can deploy the changes to the live website.

6. 24×7 Support

WP Engine’s 24×7 support ensures you receive assistance and technical guidance any time of the day or night. Even if you encounter any issues related to your sites, they will get fixed quickly by their support team.

They provide assistance in all available formats 24 x 7 x 365 via live chat, tickets, and phone. You get a chat and ticket option in the startup plan (basic plan) and an additional phone support option in all other plans.

WP engine customer support options

7. 60-day money-back guarantee

WP Engine gives you a 60-day money-back guarantee offer. If you are unsatisfied with their pricing, features, or hosting, you can simply request a refund, and you will get the full refund with NO questions asked.

60 days refund policy

WP Engine Hosting Customer Review & Ratings

While researching other customers’ WP Engine experience and reviews, I analyzed various major product review platforms. WP Engine consistently receives outstanding ratings and reviews from real users on these platforms.

Here is a selection of WP Engine ratings across these major review platforms:

WP Engine Customer Rating on Trustpilot;

WP Engine Hosting got an impressive 4.8-star rating on Trustpilot. About 86% of customers give a full 5-star rating.

WP Engine Customer rating on Trustpilot

WP Engine Customer ratings on G2;

WP Engine gets a 4.6-star rating on G2, with 81% of customers giving a full 5-star rating.

WP Engine Customer Rating on g2

It’s worth mentioning that many other professional bloggers also recommend WPEngine in their testimonials.

WPEngine testimonials

If you’re curious to find out who else is recommending WP Engine, have a look.

who recommends wp engine

WP Beginner, run by Syed Balkhi, recommends WP Engine to all readers and subscribers. Top agencies like Pragmatic and WebDev studios also use WP Engine hosting.

SoundCloud (the #1 music and podcast streaming platform) also recommends WP Engine.


WP Engine Hosting Speed Test

Website speed impacts your search rankings as Google takes speed as a ranking factor.

Your website speed depends heavily upon your web host. That’s why you need to invest in better hosting like WP Engine, as it’s a dedicated managed hosting for WordPress, which gives you superior performance and speed.

You can use GTMetrix and Pingdom Tools to check your website speed. You can also use WP Engine’s speed testing tool to quickly determine your website speed and performance.

If your website takes more than 2 or 3 seconds to load, you need to work on bringing it down to 2 seconds by using image optimization, moving to a faster web host like WP Engine, and installing a cache plugin.

So, let’s return to the main question – how fast is WP Engine?

wp engine speed

According to WebHostingSecretRevealed.com, the Time to first byte (TTFB) of WP Engine hosting is 224ms. That’s extremely fast.

The reason why WP Engine host provides you faster website speeds because of its features, including;

  • Uses global CDN to provide a faster loading experience to all your website users no matter where they are visiting from
  • Uses NGINX extension, which allows them to prioritize human traffic over robots (or spam traffic)
  • Offers you a Performance Intelligence solution where you can get real-time data about your website’s performance along with recommendations to make your site loading times really faster

WP Engine Pricing

WP Engine offers 2 hosting services: Managed WordPress Hosting and an E-commerce solution for Woo. You also get a 3rd custom plan option to get customizable hosting based on your resource requirements.

Let’s take a look at all WP Engine hosting options.

1. Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is the most popular WP Engine, designed specifically for WordPress websites. It provides a fully managed hosting environment optimized for WordPress, offering premium features and top-notch performance.

WP Engine-managed WordPress hosting offers you the following pricing plans.

  • Startup
  • Professional
  • Growth
  • Scale
  • Custom

1. Startup plan: This is the primary and cheapest hosting plan from WP Engine hosting, which costs you $20 per month, and you can install only 1 website. You will get superior performance and managed WordPress hosting from WP Engine.

Here’s what you get with the startup plan from WP Engine.

  • Up to 25,000 visits
  • Up to 10 GB of local storage
  • Up to 50 GB of bandwidth
  • Manage 1 site

2. Professional plan: If you want to install multiple websites, this plan is an excellent choice for you. This plan costs you $40 per month. You can install up to 3 websites with this plan, which can handle up to 75,000 visits per month.

Here’s what you get with the Professional plan from WP Engine.

  • Up to 75,000 visits
  • Up to 15 GB of local storage
  • Up to 125 GB of bandwidth
  • Manage up to 3 sites

3. Growth plan: This is suitable for small businesses and eCommerce stores. This plan costs you $77 per month. You can install 10 sites with this top-rated plan, which can handle up to 100,000 visits per month.

Here’s what all you get with the growth plan from WP Engine.

  • Up to 100,000 visits
  • Up to 20 GB of local storage
  • Up to 200 GB of bandwidth
  • Manage 10 sites

4. Scale plan: If you have a high-traffic website, this plan is just for you. This plan costs $194/month. With this plan, you’ll also get access to their 24/7 phone support (along with 24/7 live chat).

Here’s what else you’ll get with the scale plan from WP Engine.

  • Up to 400,000 visits per month
  • Up to 50 GB of local storage
  • Up to 500 GB of bandwidth
  • Manage 30 sites

5. Custom Plan: WP Engine also offers custom hosting plans that deliver high performance with managed onboarding and the fastest support response for large-scale businesses. You need to contact their sales specialist to get your custom quote details for hosting. This plan costs start from $600/month.

Here’s what else you’ll get with the custom plan from WP Engine.

  • 4 lakh+ visits per month
  • 500GB+ bandwidth per month 
  • 50GB+ storage
  • 30+ sites included

2. E-commerce Solution for WooCommerce

WP Engine E-commerce hosting is tailored for e-commerce websites using WooCommerce, the popular WordPress plugin for online stores. You get specialized features like 2x page speed, Stripe payments integration, and Auto-plugin updates to enhance the performance of WooCommerce sites.

WP Engine offers 5 E-commerce hosting plans;

1. Startup plan: This is the basic E-commerce plan that costs you $24 per month, and you can install 1 store.

Here’s what you get with the startup plan from WP Engine.

  • Up to 25,000 visits
  • Up to 10 GB of local storage
  • Up to 50 GB of bandwidth
  • Manage 1 store

2. Professional plan: If you want to install multiple stores, this plan is an excellent choice for you. This plan costs you $50 per month. You can install up to 3 stores with this plan, which can handle up to 75,000 visits per month.

Here’s what you get with the Professional plan from WP Engine.

  • Up to 75,000 visits
  • Up to 15 GB of local storage
  • Up to 125 GB of bandwidth
  • Manage up to 3 stores.

3. Growth plan: This suits small businesses and eCommerce stores. This plan costs you $94 per month. You can install 10 stores that can handle up to 100,000 monthly visits.

Here’s what all you get with the growth plan from WP Engine.

  • Up to 100,000 visits
  • Up to 20 GB of local storage
  • Up to 200 GB of bandwidth
  • Manage 10 stores

4. Scale plan: If you have a really high-traffic store, this plan is for you. This plan costs $234/month. You can install up to 30 stores that can handle up to 400,000 monthly visits.

Here’s what else you’ll get with the scale plan from WP Engine.

  • Up to 400,000 visits per month
  • Up to 50 GB of local storage
  • Up to 500 GB of bandwidth
  • Manage 30 stores

5. Dedicated Custom Plan: WP Engine also offers custom E-commerce hosting plans for large-scale businesses. You need to contact their sales specialist to get your custom quote details for hosting. This plan costs start from $800/month.

Here’s what else you’ll get with the custom plan from WP Engine.

  • 4 lakh+ visits per month
  • 500GB+ bandwidth per month 
  • 50GB+ storage
  • 30+ sites included

3. WP Engine Custom Solutions

WP Engine offers custom hosting solutions for clients with unique hosting needs. These plans are tailored to specific requirements, offering flexibility and scalability.

This plan costs $600/month and provides the following features.

  • Scalable for dynamic traffic
  • 99.99% uptime SLA
  • Isolated resources
  • White glove migration & launch support
  • Priority support

How to Launch A WordPress Website On WP Engine Hosting?

If you’re looking for a simple tutorial on starting a WordPress website using WP Engine hosting, Here’s a step-by-step guide to create your website within a few minutes.

Step 1: Here’s the exclusive link to get started with WP Engine hosting. Once you click on the link, you’ll be taken to their pricing page, which looks like this;

wp-engine pricing

As you can see above, there are 4 pricing plans offered by WP Engine. Pick any of their intent to continue.

Step 2: you’ll be taken to their sign-up page, where you’ll find your hosting plan details and the billing info. Fill in all those details and click the “Create my site” button to continue.

Step 3: Once the payment is made, you’ll receive a welcome email from WP Engine with all your login details. Once you log into your account. You can access their dashboard, which looks like this;

wp engine dashboard

As you can see above, WP Engine offers a clean interface where you can find almost everything in one place (it doesn’t offer the traditional cPanel that most web hosts like Bluehost use). You can find everything, including:

  • CDN
  • Website stats (visitors, bandwidth, storage)
  • SSL
  • Site migration
  • Backup points
  • And so on

Why Is WP Engine Hosting Expensive?

WP Engine hosting offers you managed WordPress hosting that makes it expensive compared to other web hosts such as Bluehost and HostGator.

You’ll find cheaper plans from web hosts like Bluehost because they offer shared hosting. In shared hosting, your hosting resources, such as bandwidth and storage, are shared with others.

In managed WordPress hosting, fewer people share the resources, which means an increase in performance and speed and literally no downtime issues.

Here are a few more solid benefits of using managed WordPress hosting.

  • Optimized hosting exclusively for WordPress
  • Top-notch customer support assistance
  • Automatic backups
  • Staging feature
  • Superior website performance and faster loading times
  • Bulletproof security

The above are the reasons why managed WordPress hosting platforms like WP Engine hosting cost you more than other web hosts.


WP Engine Pros and Cons

Here are some noticeable WP Engine pros and cons to run your WordPress sites at an affordable price.

Pros of WP Engine Hosting:

  • 24×7 experienced customer support via phone, live chat and email.
  • Daily backups
  • In-built CDN to make your sites load blazing faster
  • Widely used by industry leaders and top brands such as Unbounce, Asana, and SoundCloud
  • 10 premium WordPress themes
  • Free SSL and SSH certificates
  • Free automated migration plugin
  • Site speed boost with EverCache

Cons of WP Engine Hosting:

  • Their website server environment is shared.
  • Limited allocation of monthly visits.

Possible WP Engine Hosting Alternatives

Here are the top 2 alternatives to WP Engine hosting

  1. Kinsta
  2. WPX

1. Kinsta Hosting

If you want a fast-managed hosting plan, you can go with Kinsta Hosting. Kinsta has 35 data centers worldwide that ensure fast speed across the world.

Kinsta offers 5 hosting plans.

1. Starter: This is the cheapest plan from Kinsta, which costs $30 and offers the following features. 

  • 1 WordPress install
  • 25,000 visits
  • 10 GB disk space
  • Free SSL, CDN, and Staging
  • Free Migrations

2. Pro: You can install 2 websites with the pro plan, which costs $58/ month, and you’ll get the following features.

  • 2 WordPress installs
  • 50,000 visits
  • 20 GB disk space
  • Free SSL, CDN, and Staging
  • Free Migrations

3. Business: If you’re running an agency or looking to manage many websites under a single hosting account, go with the Business plan from Kinsta. 

You’ll get access to four different pricing options in the Business plan, and the pricing starts at $115 per month and goes up to $450 per month. You’ll get the following list of features.

  • Up to 40 WordPress installs
  • Up to 600,000 visits
  • Up to 60 GB of disk space
  • Free SSL, CDN, and Staging
  • Free Migrations

4. Enterprise: This plan is perfect for large agencies. It also offers four different pricing packages in the Enterprise plan, which starts at $675 per month and goes up to $1650 per month.

  • Up to 150 WordPress installs
  • Up to 2,500,000 visits
  • Up to 250 GB disk space
  • Free SSL, CDN, and Staging
  • Free Migrations

2. WPX Hosting

WPX Hosting is known for its high-performance WordPress hosting services. You get features like speed, reliability, exceptional customer support, and top-notch security.

WPX offers 3 hosting plans under Managed hosting.

1. Business: If you are running a small website and want to make it run blazing fast, this plan is for you. This plan costs you $20.83 per month, and you’ll get the following features.

  • Install up to 5 websites.
  • 200 GB bandwidth
  • 15 GB disk space

2. Professional: If you want a slightly more advanced version of the above hosting plan, then the Professional plan is for you. This plan costs you $41.58 per month, and you’ll get the following features.

  • Install up to 15 websites.
  • 400 GB bandwidth
  • 30 GB disk space

3. Elite: This is the most advanced plan which is most useful for high-traffic websites. If you are getting a lot of search traffic to your sites and looking for managed WordPress hosting, which is super fast, this plan is just for you.

This plan costs you $83.25 per month, and you’ll get the following features.

  • Install up to 35 websites.
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • 60 GB disk space

Other Web Hosting Reviews:
Scala Hosting Review: Is it the best hosting for your site?
Kinsta Review 2024: Is it worth The Money?
HostArmada Review: Is it a Game-Changing Web Host?
Namecheap Hosting Review: Is It The Cheapest Hosting For WordPress?
Hostinger Web Hosting Review 2024: Should We Give a Try to This Host?


FAQ’s

Here are a few questions you might have before grabbing the WP Engine coupon. So make sure to refer them if you want to buy hosting from them.

What’s the basic cost of WP Engine hosting?

The basic WP Engine hosting plan costs you $20/ per month. You can host 1 WordPress site on the WP Engine basic plan.

What if I face any issues migrating my site to the WP Engine platform?

WP Engine provides a free WordPress plugin that makes it easy to migrate your WordPress site to its hosting platform. If you are unsure how to do that, you can seek their support team’s help, and they will do it free of cost.

What if I’m not satisfied with their services?

You can ask for a refund. You will get your full refund within 60 days of your hosting purchase from them.

Are there any other hosting services that are better alternatives to WP Engine?

Yes, there are so many out there that provide you with hosting services at a cheaper price range. Hosting companies such as HostGator, Bluehost, and ChemiCloud offer hosting plans ranging from $4 to $20. Then again, WP Engine is unbeatable when compared to these hosting providers, although it is expensive.

Recommended: WP Engine vs WPX Hosting: Which host to pick in 2024?

Recommended Web Hosting Resources:


Final Thoughts

When choosing the hosting for WordPress, the WP engine beats the competition in almost every aspect, from site security to speed.

If you want to install 1 website and looking for superior website speeds and excellent security, you can simply choose the WP Engine startup plan, as it costs you just $20 per month.

If you manage multiple blogs or operate agencies, WP Engine’s higher-tier plans are an ideal choice. One thing is guaranteed: WP Engine delivers exceptional hosting performance.

I tried to give my honest opinion on WP engine hosting in this post. If you have any questions about buying WP Engine web hosting, please let me know in the comments.

About Author
Anil Agarwal is the Founder of Bloggerspassion. He is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable blogs for over a decade Now. He has been featured in Over 100 Publications including Forbes, The HuffPost, HubSpot, Shopify, Semrush, Kinsta, Bluehost, Hostinger and G2.com etc. Know more about Anil Agarwal from here.

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