Editor's opinion
Lorienz Galarpe
I am a website designer and developer for over 7 years now, and I worked with several hosting companies in the past for each website project I handle.
First impression
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now one of the leading managed WordPress hosting companies in the market. WP Engine is Headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices in San Antonio (Texas), London (England), Limerick (Ireland), Brisbane (Australia), and Kraków (Poland).
The company has won multiple awards for Best Place to Work in Austin and consistently contributes to the WordPress core and community.
WP Engine specializes in VIP managed WordPress hosting. As pioneers in the managed WordPress hosting industry, they boast an impressive customer list including Yelp, Asana, National Geographic, PBS, and MyFitnessPal. WP Engine is an ideal choice for those looking for hassle-free premium WordPress hosting.
Read our expert WP Engine review to see if it’s the right choice for you.
Trial period
WPEngine does not offer a free trial though they do offer 60-Day Money-back guaranteed.
They are so confident that everyone will love their products and services that they’re offering a 60 day money-back guarantee. If you’re unsatisfied for any reason, you can request a refund anytime within the first 60 days and they will refund your plan fees paid.
Billing cycle
While WP Engine only offers one type of service – its managed WordPress hosting – it also provides a number of tiered plans to choose from.
And they offer 2 billing cycle options, the Monthly and Annual plans.
Control panel
WPEngine hosting services don’t offer cPanel features. WP Engine is more advanced than regular shared hosting options. For this reason, some of the tasks are not done automatically, but the explanations are placed everywhere you go. So while more advanced, WP Engine still delivers in terms of ease of use. Plus, the control panel is looking really good.
The first thing you see after you’re done with the signup process is this:
To install WordPress, you need to find Sites on your dashboard. Once you click on that, you have 2 options: Accept transfer if a developer or agency has built the site for you or Add site if you’re building the site yourself.
A form to enter details such as your new site’s name and naming the environment appears. You can also select which environment you want to create. Production is the live version, while the Staging and Development environment can be used as sandboxes.
Limits
The limits vary on each hosting package, ranging from 1 to 30+ hosted websites, 25k to 400k monthly website visits per month, 10GB to 50+ GB SSD Storage, 50 to 500+ GB Bandwidth per month etc.
Security
WP Engine also offers a number of premium security features. The WordPress core is automatically updated to the latest version for you.
WP Engine thoroughly tests any major core updates before upgrading their customers. They have a proprietary intrusion detection and prevention system to block any DDoS attacks, brute force attacks, malware, JavaScript/SQL-injection attacks, and more.
They also partner with third-party security firms to conduct regular code reviews and security audits.
Your security is guaranteed, so if you get hacked WP Engine will fix it for free.
OS
They mainly focused on Wordpress platform and the operating system they are using is unknown or haven’t been mentioned yet on their system though their engineers add resiliency and speed to their platform to deliver the best performance for their customers and their businesses.
Their developers use both tried and true and up and coming programming languages.
Examples: PHP, Python, Ruby.
Support
WP Engine has a dedicated support team of WordPress experts. They boast over 97% customer satisfaction with thousands of customer interactions per day.
Support is available 24/7 via live chat support for all customers. Phone support is available 24/7 with all plans except for the Startup plan. If an issue can’t be immediately resolved via chat or phone, the support staff will create an internal support ticket for you.
We took a test drive of the live chat to get a feel for the support staff:
WP Engine also has a dedicated Customer Experience Operations team. They work to continually improve the WP Engine customer experience.
Apart from that, they have an extensive library of knowledge base articles, how-to guides, and tutorials for users who want to fix things on their own.
Conclusion
Pros |
Cons |
- Fast Loading Time;
- Expert WordPress support;
- Advanced Security Tools;
- 1-click WordPress install;
- Free SSL, CDN, and Website Backups;
- Easy Staging Tools;
- 10+ Premium Themes.
|
|
All in all, this WPEngine review showed that the provider has certainly earned its rights to boast – far more than many others. After all, the host impressed with its amazing performance, incredible extra features, comprehensive security measures, and excellent customer support.
FAQ:
❔Is WP Engine a shared hosting company?
No, WP Engine is not a shared hosting company and they do not offer services similar to shared hosting plans. WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting company offering WordPress specific hosting solutions.
✔️How WP Engine Compares to Other Hosts?
When it comes to managed WordPress hosting, WP Engine has a slight edge over competitors like Kinsta, Flywheel, and other options. Mainly due to better technology, user experience, and customer support.
WP Engine pricing is more expensive than shared hosting providers like Bluehost, HostGator, GoDaddy, InMotion Hosting, DreamHost, and even SiteGround.
✴️Does WP Engine support WordPress multisite?
WP Engine supports WordPress multisite as a paid addon for Growth and Scale plans. It does not support WordPress multisite for the Startup plan. It is also included in ‘Custom’ plans for agencies and enterprise clients.