WP Engine - Website Builders

Our Verdict

WP engine has been in operation for over a decade. During that time, it has amassed well over a million customers. This is due to multiple factors such as strong infrastructure, reliability, and ease of use. It doesn’t have a wide range of features because it’s designed to support WordPress websites but the features it has are useful for the people who use them. Things like caching, a CDN, detailed user permissions, the ability to group websites, etc. help websites make the most of their hosting. While WP Engine does have solid features, it’s much more expensive than shared hosting.

Pros

Built-in CDN to speed up websites
24/7/365 customer support
Simple to create staging websites before going live
Proprietary caching service for further speed gains

Cons

It’s more expensive than shared hosting
Doesn’t offer email hosting or domain registration

Products & Pricing

WP Engine has multiple pricing plans which are divided based on usage limits and the available features. They’re further divided into categories with each category having multiple pricing plans. All of the plans come with a core set of functionality with the higher plans being designed to give users more control. This review looks at the managed hosting plans and features.

Lite

The Lite plan is designed for new site creators, offering essential resources to get started online. Priced at $13 per month, this plan supports one website with up to 5,000 visits per month. It includes 5GB of storage and 20GB of bandwidth, ensuring reliable performance for smaller sites. The plan also provides 24/7 chat support, auto-renewing SSL, SSH access, and advanced security features like DDoS protection and a managed Web Application Firewall (WAF). Additionally, users can choose from 10 themes to build their site, making it a solid option for those new to website creation.

Startup

This plans starts at $20 per month. It is ideal for small websites and blogsand builds on the features of the Lite plan. It supports up to 25,000 visits per month, with 10GB of storage and 50GB of bandwidth, providing the capacity needed for growing sites. This plan includes all the essentials—24/7 chat support, auto-renewing SSL, SSH access, advanced DDoS protection, and a managed Web Application Firewall (WAF)—along with the option to choose from 10 themes to design your site.

Professional

This package is $40 per month. It provides a staging site, supports three websites, 125GB of bandwidth, and 15GB of storage. In addition to chat support, you can also reach out via phone. It includes threat blocking and WordPress security, flexible site copy tools, daily backups, and free SSL and SSH certificates.

Growth

The Growth plan is $77 per month. It has similar features to the previous plans but increases usage limits. You can have up to ten websites, 20GB of storage, and 200GB of bandwidth.

Scale

This package costs $234 per month. It supports up to thirty websites, provides 50GB of storage, and 500GB of bandwidth. It includes all the features from previous plans.

Lite

$13 /mo

4 months FREE

Startup

$20 /mo

4 months FREE

Professional

$40 /mo

4 months FREE

Growth

$77 /mo

4 months FREE

Scale

$194 /mo

4 months FREE

In-depth review

Features & Functionality

WP Engine is a mature managed hosting service and has had time to develop many useful features that benefit its customers. This includes free migrations from one host to another, daily backups, staging websites, transferable sites, and much more.

CDN

WP Engine has a built-in content delivery network with multiple data centers spread around the world. When you opt to use the CDN, it delivers site resources from the data center closest to the user and cuts down on latency.

Evercache

Evercache is a proprietary caching system from WP Engine that all customers can take advantage of. It stores static resources and makes it easier for users to download them, which significantly reduces the loading time of websites on the platforms.

User permissions

With WP Engine, there’s no need to share the same login details or give everyone administrator permissions to affect the whole account. Instead, you can add multiple users to a single account and set granular permissions, which protect your interests and allow them to be productive.

Developer tools

The platform provides multiple tools for developers, including a local instance to create a website, an API that allows you to automate many tasks, SSH gateway, and much more. Taken together, it gives you much more flexibility to design the site in a way that best suits you.

Reliability

WP Engine has been around since 2010 and has had many growing pains. You may see some reviews mention that the service is unreliable or has major outages. That was true at one point, but most of those issues have been rectified, and it now has an average of 99.9% uptime. There’s even an SLA that guarantees the uptime on the enterprise plans, but unfortunately, it’s not available on the lower tiers.

Control Panel

The hosting company has moved away from cPanel because it doesn’t properly serve the needs of its customers. Instead, the focus is on making it easy to navigate through all the options related to your hosting account and optimizing your WordPress sites. The custom cPanel allows you to add more websites, group sites together, add users, view account level statistics, and more.

Ease of Use

WP Engine has a custom-designed interface so it’s unique in the hosting world. There may not be as many options as cPanel, but it allows users to quickly navigate through the platform and perform necessary aspects. When it comes to ease of use, WP Engine does a good job of nailing it. That doesn’t mean there’s no learning curve, the learning curve is manageable for most users – especially beginners.

Customer Service

WP Engine offers support in various ways. These support methods include phone, email, and live chat though not all plans have access to all the support channels. Live chat and email are available to everyone but you can also use the knowledgebase which has many video tutorials. People have expressed mixed opinions related to support. Some say it’s responsive while others say they’ve experienced long wait times but the majority of people reported positive experiences.