Wp engine Manged Hosting

WP Engine Managed Hosting Review 2017

In this review, we’ll dig into the real-world performance and features of WP Engine managed WordPress hosting. Unlike many other hosts, WP Engine focuses exclusively on WordPress. So if you’re using the world’s most popular CMS, join us as we look closer at WP Engine.

Founded in 2010, WP Engine is one of the oldest managed WordPress hosts. Rather than trying to compete against the whole hosting industry, WP Engine decided to just do one thing really well. And that thing is managed WordPress hosting.

Since its 2010 founding, WP Engine has grown into a successful company with over 400 employees and offices around the globe.

Keep reading to learn more about the features you get with WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting as well as the results of our real-world performance tests.

Overview of WP Engine Hosting Features

As we’ve mentioned, WP Engine is managed WordPress hosting, which means you get a bunch of helpful tools and features that make your life easier when compared with generic shared hosting. Here are all the goodies you can expect when you host with WP Engine:

• Built-in caching – WP Engine’s Evercache system speeds up your site without requiring you to mess around with caching plugins.
• Firewalls and malware scans – WP Engine secures your site with firewalls and regular malware scans.
• Staging areas – test changes to your site on a development environment and only push them live when you’re happy with how things function.
• One-click restore points – if anything ever breaks, you can quickly restore from an older version with a single click.
• One-click SSL – you can get started with an SSL certificate with just a single click.
• Speed recommendations – WP Engine can give you recommendations to speed up your site.
• 24/7/365 support – if you ever need help, WP Engine always has WordPress hosting experts available.

As you can see, there are a lot of features which actively save you time and keep your site and data more secure. But how about performance? Is WP Engine hosting quick loading reliable? Let’s find out.

WP Engine Performance – Real Testing Data

To find out how WP Engine performed in the wild, we set up a test site on their Texas data center and collected some data. We tested three things: Time to First Byte, average page load speed, and uptime percentage. Here’s how WP Engine stacked up:

For Time to First Byte, a good general measure of server responsiveness, WP Engine clocked in at an impressive 0.07 seconds. This is both blazing fast in its own right as well as the second fastest time of any host we measured. So far, so good!

Next, we looked at average page load speed for our test site. This is how long it took our site to completely load. Again, WP Engine was impressive, with our test site loading in an average 1.35 seconds, which was the third fastest time of any host that we measured. The only two hosts which loaded faster (Liquid Web and Kinsta) are significantly more expensive than WP Engine.

Finally, WP Engine’s uptime for our test site was 99.985%, which is right up at the top of the hosts we measured. While we could quibble and say we’d like this number to be more like 99.99%+, we don’t think there’s much to complain about here.

Overall, WP Engine knocked our tests out of the park. They were, without a doubt, one of the fastest loading and most reliable hosts that we tested.

WP Engine Data Center Locations

The actual physical location of your site’s data center is an important consideration because it can affect performance for your target readers. You always want your data center to be located as near as possible to your potential readers.

WP Engine currently offers data centers in five different countries on three different continents. They are:

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Belgium
• Ireland
• Taiwan

The variety of data center locations offered by WP Engine is definitely a major plus for anyone targeting Europe or Asia.

WP Engine Support and Documentation

WP Engine offers 24/7/365 live chat support for all of their customers. They also offer similar phone support, but only for customers on Professional plans and above. If you’re planning to go with the cheapest pricing tier, you may want to consider this distinction.

WP Engine also offers a self-service knowledge base with a variety of guides and troubleshooting articles.

WP Engine Plugin Restrictions

Because WP Engine is managed WordPress hosting, they do have some restrictions on which plugins you can use on your WordPress site. These include some caching and backup plugins (which are redundant on WP Engine), as well as some other popular plugins like Broken Link Checker and Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. You can find the full list of restricted plugins here.

If you absolutely need to use one of the plugins on WP Engine’s disallowed plugins list, you may want to reconsider your hosting choice. Overall, you’re only prohibited from adding ~40 plugins out of the tens of thousands of WordPress plugins out there, though.

WP Engine Plans and Pricing

Don’t expect “unlimited everything” with WP Engine, but do expect very transparent pricing. You’ll know exactly what you’re getting with each plan.

Their Personal plan supports one WordPress install, unlimited data transfer, 10GB storage, and up to 25k visits per month. It starts at $29 per month.

Their Professional plan supports 10 installs, unlimited data transfer, 20GB storage, and up to 100k visits per month. It starts at $99 per month.

Their Business plan supports 25 installs, unlimited data transfer, 30GB storage and up to 400k visits per month. It starts at $249 per month.

They also offer custom plans for users who need even more power.

So, definitely not as cheap as shared hosting. But you get far superior features and performance for the price. The only thing to watch out for is the traffic limits – make sure your traffic fits within the limits of your plan.

Should You Choose WP Engine Managed WordPress Hosting?

We feel confident recommending WP Engine hosting because of its impressive performance, bevy of features, and variety of data center locations.

Their pricing is competitive for the features and performance offered. And when you consider the time-saving features included with WP Engine, it’s not really that much more expensive than shared hosting.

The only thing to double check is whether or not you absolutely need to use a plugin on WP Engine’s disallowed list.

Get started with WP Engine today and rest easy knowing that they have a 60-day money back guarantee.