At MrBloggen we’re constantly trying new hosting servers. because, for one reason, we like our websites to be speedy. So when we came across the opportunity to write a WPEngine review – we jumped on it. Wpengine Ecommerce
For who doesn’t know about WPEngine? The company has earned its name on WordPress hosting. It’s built right into its name: “WP Engine” – so they’ve set themselves the bar to live up to, they are the engine that powers WordPress.
As professionals who have worked with a variety of hosting options, far too many to mention, we can evaluate a hosting service and tell it as it is for us. And that’s what we will write about in this article. We will provide you with all the essential details to host your site with WP Engine.
Since we host sites on WP Engine ourselves, we’ve been re-reading this article back in the month of November and updated it with the latest details that are needed. Wpengine Ecommerce
Who is WP Engine?
WPEngine is among the most well-known names in managed WordPress hosting.
Founded in 2010, WPEngine was not among the first players to enter the market, however they’ve certainly carved themselves an outstanding position in this niche industry.
Unlike other hosting companies, WPEngine focuses on one single thing:
WordPress.
In essence, they concentrate all their resources and energy on WP. WP framework, which is why they have their name.
The WPEngine company is powered by a team of award-winning WordPress experts. At present the company employs more than 250 people, headquartered out of Austin Texas, but with offices in San Francisco, San Antonio, London and Limerick (Ireland).
One method by which we gauge the strength of a business is based on the amount of it receives in terms of funding, when it receives any funding. Wpengine Ecommerce
With more than $290 million collected over the years and the most recent round being a whopping $250 million in January of 2018 from venture capitalists Silver Lake, you can be sure that the company is on the rise.
The motivations for wanting capable of raising that large amounts of money are many:
WPEngine is among the largest WordPress hosts.
it has an extremely popular productized platform called WPEngine Digital Experience Platform. WPEngine Digital Experience Platform
It’s estimated that the company has 100 million in annual recurring revenue and 70,000+ 120,000plus customers (up 30 percent from prior one) and a value of around $500 million or more.
WPEngine is responsible for about 5% of internet visits – a hugely significant portion of the web.
Trusted by large brands that have mega-sites like Under Armour, Trend Micro, Thomson Reuters, Hello Fresh etc.
That’s right, the numbers definitely are capable of doing this business justice.
Although there’s an increased amount of competition for managed hosting business than in any other niche, it’s clear that WPEngine is the market leader , boasting excellent branding, top-of-the-line features, and an enviable platform for all kinds of companies, including the enterprise sector.
Check out current prices and plans (20% OFF until November 2021) (or receive 4 months off annual plans) We’re not basing this review on our personal experiences but rather specifically on our own technical expertise in hosting companies. We analyze tens of hosting packages every month, which means we know what to look for when you’re looking for hosting.
Having sites that get thousands of hits every day, we need to be aware of the ins and aspects of hosting websites and what matters most. We’ve listed the various aspects that are it is necessary.
Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of hosting on WPEngine.
WP Engine Platform
With regards to the actual service, this firm provides a platform, an experience , the Digital Experience Platform. What exactly is it? Does it meet the expectations?
Let’s dig deep to find out. Wpengine Ecommerce
Dashboard
When you log in to your administration panel, you begin by hitting the Dashboard which is where you’ll find a number of current important announcements as well as a brief summary of what’s going on with your account.
At the very top, we saw a few messages that we discarded before taking the picture below. Let’s take an overview of the Dashboard as well as some of the features it has that provide a significant advantage when it comes to comparing to other hosts.
As you’ll see, WPEngine is not a CPanel powered hosting. Instead, WPEngine created their own customized platform. Essentially, WP Engine has got ridden of the extra clutter and left only the important stuff.
Summary of your installations and key data: the dashboard opens with a quick summary of all of the installations of WordPress that you have installed and some information regarding them, such as the total number of visits and the 10-day average, as well as bandwidth and storage use. This quick glance at these vital details will tell you if there are any issues, such as the frequency of traffic or bandwidth fluctuations.
Live Chat + delay time: The availability of connecting with support for Live Chat support right through the Dashboard is sweet. However, what’s even more impressive is that when you hover over the chat feature, you can instantly see the anticipated waiting time until you can get an answer from a support rep.
Knowledge Center + System Status is also accessible in the sidebar are links to the most important pieces of information to assist you in creating your site efficiently. The System Status of WP Engine is also available right there on the sidebar too. This is an amazing transparency. Instead of hiding any problems which are currently affecting the service who knows what you can look up to know what’s happening regarding the how things are going and the resolutions to any recent incidents.
It’s more than you need as soon as you sign in to your site’s Dashboard.
Moving forward, let’s examine how to install the Dashboard of WP Engine and a vital component of your WordPress hosting.
Take a look at the WP Engine Dashboard Wpengine Ecommerce
Installs Dashboard
This is the place to begin by looking over the real details of each specific WordPress installation that you’ve hosted.
Again, we can observe that a lot of thought has gone into organizing this information in a manner that presents all the information needed immediately, with everything else accessible through menus as necessary.
Evidently, a lot thinking has gone to the user Experience to make the experience as seamless and as simple as it can be.
At a glance, we can view the majority of important details about our WordPress installation, with things like what is the CNAME of the website (something you’ll require if you want to do DNS changes for your website) and your IP address, location that it’s hosted in and the PHP version, your direct technical contact and the latest version of WordPress your site is running.
You’ve also got a set of data on the present trends of visitors to your website.
The left-hand menu is where you’ll find various other options related to the setup of your WordPress.
Domains: the Domains function is the one you can use to connect your domain that you have already registered to your hosting service on WP Engine.
It will provide you with all the details you need to transfer your DNS settings to WPEngine. There’s your CNAME and A record which will be required to make the necessary modifications and an easy link to the Knowledge Base article of what you’ll need to accomplish to allow the above settings with Your Domain Registrar.
CDN If you’ve been around our site for a while, you know we think CDN’s are a fantastic idea for speeding up your website , especially when they come for no cost!
If you’re not familiar with what a CDN does, in a nutshell the definition of it is a CDN is a geographically-distributed network of servers that will provide your website’s heavy resources from a location that is physically close to your visitors – making your WordPress significantly faster to load.
When we came upon this site we were truly shocked.
As you might know (or not) that a CDN service plan typically starts at not less than $10 per month for the most basic plans, and you’re usually expecting to pay more than $20 per month for a decent plan.
This service is integrated into the hosting plan, means you’re getting the speed benefits of a CDN and not having to fork out extra cost to get it.
“Thumbs up” WP Engine offers the built-in CDN for WordPress hosting, through an alliance with MaxCDN – now acquired by StackPath . It’s also our CDN that we prefer to use. Wpengine Ecommerce
Redirect rules: require your website to forward visitors to a specific website to a different (different) address for the page, or to another site you would prefer to send the visitors to.
This is especially useful after you’ve performed a site overhaul and you want to be sure that you don’t lose visitors to broken sites. Particularly, redirects will make sure you don’t devalue the importance of any links you may have accumulated.
Typically, redirects are accomplished using a WordPress plugin, however having them accessible at the server level is preferable since doing this at the server level removes the burden on your WordPress site and make it all more efficient.
Modifications like these make WP Engine faster than traditional hosting.
Access Logs: while this isn’t something that everyone will be attracted to, it’s great to have it available. They are full logs directly from the web servers hosting your site i.e. both Apache Nginx as well as . In essence server access logs record all requests that are processed by the server. They can be useful for knowing how the caching of your site affects its performance. (For example, your SEO might ask for these logs for a technical SEO review) Apache access logs contain the requests to your WordPress that are uncached and require processing through the servers.
Nginx access logs record all hits from your WordPress including requests for cached, static, and uncached content.
Error logs are, again, a fairly common feature, this is to ensure that if WordPress is throwing any errors you will be able to swiftly resolve any issues by looking directly at the errors coming out of the website server.
SFTP Users If you don’t have direct access to the files on your server, the next ideal option is to connect the file directory via Secure File Transfer Protocol or SFTP. In this section, you will be able to establish credentials to use the Secure FTP functionality.
GIT Push: Another feature that sets WP Engine apart from WP Engine and most other hosts. If you’ve got a lot of customizations going on with your WordPress then you’ll have to store them safely in a cloud-hosted source control service. GIT is the standard protocol used to communicate to a source control system. As you can see GIT Push, the GIT Push function lets you push source code by your developers to the secured and hosted environment of WPEngine.
Again, the fact this source control system is directly integrated with the hosting makes it that little factor that is the most important factor in a live environment. Instead of having to utilize a separate repository for source control like GitHub, then having to connect to your hosting, this is all accomplished in-place, as part of your strategy. Wpengine Ecommerce
Back-up Points
This is a fantastic feature offered from WP Engine, that we need to dedicate a page all to it.
You’ve probably heard that backups are essential and lifesavers when stuff goes wrong, particularly in the case of catastrophes.
Like we always say, if you’re not taking any backups , you’re living on the edge.
Yet, doing excellent backups can be a challenge. Many people who are not tech-savvy will discover the process of creating backups quite a an issue. So yes, most people choose to take the easy route to go about it (and do not bother with them at all) … or just hope nothing goes wrong.
But when something does go wrong…the results aren’t pretty. You don’t want to be in that situation We can tell that. We’ve had clients lose many dollars because they didn’t have adequate backups in place.
So yeah, you need to keep backups.
The service that you receive from WP Engine means that backups are handled completely – you really have to do absolutely nothing.
Backup points are exactly what they sound like they are points where you can take a complete copy of the WordPress setup has been taken.
By default, you’ll get what’s known as an Daily Checkpoint, essentially this means you’ve got at the very least an hourly backup of your site.
You can then choose to perform additional backups manually by clicking Now backup If you’re planning to make a significant (risky) change – and need to ensure that you have a backup version of the software to restore to.
You can also download a ZIP file of the backup, so it can be restored at another location.
It is also the easiest option to take if things get a bit shaky, is to Restore your WordPress to an earlier version.
In all seriousness, this aspect alone is what sets this business above the rest.
SSL Certificates
In the past few months, and even more recently, setting your website to be deployed on secured certificates is more important than ever before.
The latest versions of Chrome have been labeling websites that aren’t HTTPS:// as NOT SECURE.
Besides the security implications related to non-HTTPS websites this can result in a poor user experience which impacts on the credibility and trustworthiness of your site.
Simply put, in these days, HTTPS is a must.
Have a look at the following Enhanced Security Certificate on Medium.com:
This implies, of course that your hosting provider should make the implementation of secure certificates for your WordPress as easy and as full-featured as you can.
Once again, the WP Engine service delivers on this 100%, with all the options you might require to deploy HTTPS. Wpengine Ecommerce
1. Free Let’s Secure Certificates
Enabling HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt is the simplest, most affordable and the most efficient method of today.
These are free certificates deployed directly through your hosting provider which are still fully secured as their paid counterparts. As can be seen from the image below it is all you need to do is follow the simple steps in order to “Request SSL Certificate” and your WordPress will be good to go with a secure certificate.
2. RapidSSL Wildcard Certificates
The 2nd option when it comes to SSL is a lower-cost option from RapidSSL. A wildcard certificate implies that HTTPS can be installed to any sub-domain of your website(s) will be hosted on. The price for the RapidSSL wildcard certification is $199/year that is the typical price for this type of certificate.
3. Import a new certificate
The 3rd option you have is if you are about to buy the new certificate or have it created somewhere else. In order to accomplish this, you must create the Certificate Signing Request ( CSR ). It is basically an unofficial form that shows that the Certificate Signing Authority who will issue the certificate in the event that you are granted access to the domain where the certificate will be installed.
The process is fairly straightforward it is a matter of complete a form and provide details which will be eventually displayed on the certificate you will purchase.
After you have completed the form After you have completed the form, once you’ve completed the form, a .CSR document will then be created that you be required to submit to the company where you’ll buy the certificate from.
After this once you have completed the process, you can collect the details and turn the information to the authorities.
A new SSL certificate will be generated and you can use the next form to upload this to your domain. This is done via the following form. The certificate will then be installed by the support team which is why this form informs support that your certificate is prepared to be installed and linked to the proper information.
4. Bring in an old certificate
The last method to install the certificate is if you’ve already acquired and have the details of the certificate, and you wish to integrate it into your domain.
In this instance this scenario, this option will help you contact support staff so that they can use this information to set up the certificate for you. Wpengine Ecommerce
Production vs Staging
Another feature we consider to be a significant differentiator in WP Engine and other WordPress hosting services. Although a number of these services claim that they can set up an testing or staging environment, it’s only WPEngine who have done it in a proper method.
Let’s talk about the creation of a staging area. An environment for staging is replica of your current environment. It can be used to evaluate the effects of any changes made to your WordPress prior to actually implementing those changes on an actual environment (production).
This is a web development concept, which is typically deployed in the Enterprise space, where releases to production have to be thoroughly tested before they are made available for release. Therefore, a staging environment is constructed, so that when the “change” is able to pass the tests on the staging or testing environment, then the changes can be rolled out to the live (or the production) instance.
This staging vs production environment is built right into WPEngine’s platform. WPEngine.
What this means, is that by default, as soon as you create an WordPress setup, it will ALREADY have these two environments set up for you.
Rather than having to actually make this setup by yourself, this is part and of the overall service. You will be provided with a staging and a production environment as per the definition.
The process of setting up a staging space is an extremely technical task and you must do it done right. It is essential that your staging has exactly like the production environment, or else it’s an unnecessary waste of time.
With WPEngine it’s all done for you, out right out of the gate.
WordPress loading speed
One of the main problems for webmasters is the event that their WordPress is slow to load. This can be a major problem for people who do not have a technical background. So there are two aspects that affect WordPress speed:
- Having a website which is fast by default
- Troubleshooting WordPress loading speed problems
Let’s run a few tests and then see how an installation of WP Engine performs. Let’s start with the brand-new WordPress installation, and check how it performs.
Wow! That’s amazing – and this is running a test at the peak times. Blazing fast! Be aware it is that TTFB (Time to First Byte) or the algorithm that search engines use to judge the speed of your website, comes in at 191ms. That’s amazing.
You can see the full report here: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/dattard.wpengine.com/jb8ZrzbI (unfortunately, these are no longer available online) We’ll run another WP Engine speed test on Pingdom tools: Wpengine Ecommerce
The load time is 392ms. That’s under 400ms! It’s safe to say that a blank WordPress configuration is as quick it can be – there are no complaints there.
We’ll then run a few tests on a fully-set up site.
But before we do that, we’re actually going to attempt to carry out an WordPress migration from another host in order to WP Engine. To accomplish this, we’ll first need to test using the Migration tool that is available in the toolset that comes with this managed WordPress hosting service.
We first set up the plugin on the site we’d like to migrate to and then activated it.
Then, we entered the data needed from our own Dashboard:
This is actually a product powered by BlogVault which is an WordPress Backup and Security Service . While the migration was in progress we could observe the tables and information being migrated from one website to the next.
After we had installed the plugin, and then provided it with the information of the new host and click on migrate, no intervention was needed by us.
As soon as the wizard had finished, our website was moved, and we were able to lock stock and barrel. We logged on to the new URL and found exactly the same site as our website on the previous host – the smoothest, fastest, cleanest transfer of WordPress we ever did.
This is truly an amazing service offered by both BlogVault as well as WP Engine.
The site is now an online portfolio for a fictional agency, which is based on the popular Themeforest theme. Let’s conduct another set of tests on the site. It’s now being hosted by our WP Engine Live server.
Again, an amazing result. You can observe that a website that is more than 7MB is loaded fully in 2.2 seconds. That’s more than the suggested 3 second loading time.
Let’s see if this is a coincidence or not. Run tests on Pingdom tools.
The results are much faster with Pingdom devices, 1.7 seconds, an increase of more than 0.5 seconds compared to GTMetrix.
We believe we can confidently affirm that there is no issue with WordPress loading speed using WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting.
It’s evident that the technology behind WordPress at WP Engine has been highly customized using extremely efficient caching and a very sophisticated “stack” (software required to host sites) that is more advanced than the typical web hosting service.
The trained support staff are able to zone into your WordPress installation and pinpoint the exact performance bottlenecks to get your site up and running.
This site has become so aggressive with its speed setup that they don’t even allow caching plugins to be installed on their sites because they could disrupt the configuration, that, as you can see, is functioning flawlessly.
The best part is that even unoptimized WordPress installs (like most users would have) are still very efficient due to it is the WP Engine platform does all the heavy lifting.
This is a significant advantage over other businesses.
Since the service has an built-in CDN and CDN, you can be at ease knowing that your website is always going to be fast – very fast.
Test your WordPress hosting today with WP Engine service today
Customer Service
Another differentiator when evaluating the best location to establish your site is the support offered by customer.
This has always been the core of WP Engine’s mantra, from their early days. Because this is a company that offers an managed WordPress service, instead of hosting products, it is understandable that there is a strong emphasis on support.
Here’s a screenshot of getting contact with WP Engine – this was in peak times. Wpengine Ecommerce
Since WP Engine has been growing rapidly over the years, and given that there were periods of time when there was plenty of criticism, we were a bit hesitant about the kind of response we’d expect.
The problem with support stories is that most users will recount their own experiences and it is unlikely that everyone will feel that they have been excellently served – this will depend on the overall experience the user has, and yes, even the mood that they are in when they communicate with the business.
The issue is usually the percentage of good reviews compared to the criticism a company receives.
So instead of reading individual reviews, we like to view an entire company.
- Does the business have the knowledge required to offer the appropriate assistance?
- Are there good processes in place that allow customers to know the support they are receiving?
How good is the accessibility to support staff when necessary?
All of them require a significant investment in terms of time, money and know-how.
Our experience working with WP Engine has shown us that the company is proficient in all three areas.
Knowledge – as we were doing our installations, we were constantly referring to informational articles and knowledgebase articles that provided the information we needed to know from every angle. Articles have been written in a style that is simple to follow , but also highly actionable. It is quite simple to address issues you encounter by finding solutions within the knowledge base that is regularly up to date and updated.
Systems – there are several support channels available from WP Engine, including Live Chat assistance, telephone support, and a ticketing system – in addition to the knowledge base.
Access – we were always amazed by the speed of response from the support team. It was whether via Live Chat, email or calling to the WP Engine team, we believe the support you get from this company is truly top-of-the-line. All problems and requests that we made were met by a quick solution or response even the simplest issues like resetting passwords to more complicated issues such as what to do with a complicated migration.
Security
Websites powered by WordPress are today a major part of the web, with the latest statistics that show more than 30% of all websites which makes it one of the lucrative targets for hackers and malware smugglers.
Like any applications, WordPress is not insecure as a software, but it has to be kept up to date, and if vulnerabilities are found and fixed, the vulnerabilities are immediately closed, especially being an open-source community, where there are a lot of users, testers and contributors.
The biggest issue is with plugins and themes.
If these aren’t supported You’ll notice that they could cause serious issues for the website they are located on, as the vulnerabilities remain.
We’ve covered how to protect your WordPress from hackers in other pages on this site Let’s go over the top elements, the basic:
- Always keep your core install, all plugins, and themes, updated to the most recent versions.
- Only install the files from reliable sources and trusted vendors (stay away from pirated or cracked sources)
- Be sure to have a security plugin installed to secure your installation from the most common attacks
- Always have backups ready in case something goes wrong
Even if the basics of security are simple the responsibility of protecting WordPress rests with the website’s owner. This means that those who are not too technical or just simply don’t have time to look after their site are at a general disadvantage since they don’t understand the security basics.
Naturally, again, this service helps. Because it is designed exactly for this purpose – WP Engine’s managed hosting premise is to accomplish what WordPress owners don’t know or don’t want to undertake, or do not know how to do. No matter the cause, the principle of the service is WP Engine will do all of the security required for your website to function well, and without the chance of suffering losses when fighting hackers.
As we’ve mentioned a few paragraphs up, not only does WP Engine secure WordPress, but you’ve also got daily restore points so that even if something happens it’s possible to restore your website and running in minutes.
WP Engine works with the concept of installs, instead of an instance. This means from a technical standpoint is that most of the security concerns are addressed at the server level and the result being a more secure environment for all users.
As a company with a reputation which needs to be maintained, WP Engine have partnered with top security firms to conduct code reviews on their platform, in addition to having an internal security team.
With the promise that if you’re hacked the hackers will handle it at no cost. You can rest easy knowing your WordPress is as secure as it can be.
This is the best thing you can get. Recovering a hacked site is an expensive and time-consuming task and the fact that you don’t have to worry about this is a huge plus to WP Engine. WP Engine service. Wpengine Ecommerce
Pricing
Let’s make one thing clear.
This is not your typical hosting service. WP Engine is a managed service, which means you shouldn’t expect it to be competitive with the lower priced packages offered by most popular companies.
Plans start at $24/month (this is a custom offer available to MrBloggen only), but let’s break this down a little in order to appreciate the value that this price brings with it.
- The typical cost of a separate CDN generally starts at $10 per month.
- A backup service, such as BlogVault costs around $8 per month.
- A security service such as Sucuri starts from $16/month.
- A powerful caching plugin (such as WP Rocket) costs about $40 per year.
Can you imagine how fast it all adds up? The price above includes all of the previously mentioned. Also, you should be aware that as your site grows in terms of traffic, all the prices mentioned above will rise – in conjunction with the complexity of managing the site.
The truth is that the above prices give you the security of having an WordPress setup that is running smoothly without the need for any intervention on your part.
In an environment where an email subscription is priced at tens to hundreds of dollars per month, would you fret about paying $25 per month to ensure the security of your WordPress installation, which is probably bringing an important portion of your income?
We think not. Since this is the way it all boils down to.
What is the cost of your time? What’s the cost of your WordPress being down for a few hours? If it will cost you more than $25 if your site goes down then you have already earned an ROI on the expense of hosting your site using WP Engine.
For the sake of comparability, the VPS offered by InMotion costs about the same , but you don’t get the same level of service as this. In fact, you’ll need to go it alone for the majority of what’s that we’ve mentioned in this article. Shared hosting plans start with a few bucks a month, but If you’re concerned about your website, you’d benefit yourself by choosing to stay clear of these services that are cheap.
If you had to compare feature by feature, you might discover a few areas where this service does not come out on top – however, given because it’s an all-hands-off, hands-off service, the price is a fantastic deal.
Your own, your designer or developer’s time, even if it’s just one or two minutes per month will be much more than the above-quoted pricing – seeing as your time will probably be worth more than $50 per hour, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find designers or developers working for less than $50.
You’ll find that other similar services, like Kinsta are similar in price however, after working with both services, we are able to confidently say we believe that WP Engine is much more mature as a service.
Even the cost of losing a few milliseconds on the loading speed of your website could cost your company an enormous amount over a period of time. It’s been proven repeatedly that pages that load in more than 3 seconds have a significant impact on conversion – negatively. This speed and efficiency of the service tools are well worth the money you spend let alone the rest of the add-ons available.
Simply put – for the service you’re getting – this is excellent value and will surely give you a decent return on investment. Wpengine Ecommerce
$2000 Genesis Framework + Premium WordPress themes free
In June of 2018, WPEngine acquired one of the most reputable WordPress theme providers, StudioPress. StudioPress is part of the StudioPress team is the one behind the very popular and profitable Genesis framework and themes.
A side effect to this deal is that every customer of WPEngine have access to both the Genesis theme as a framework and all premium themes with it. This meansthat all WP Engine customers WP Engine have free access to more than $2000 worth of themes.
There are more than 60 themes to choose from across all niches such as blogs, eCommerce, authority sites, portfolio, magazine, recipe blogger lifestyle, membership or course websites, business or corporate, gallery sites and many more.
It’s important to know this theme is aimed at premium, high-end customers and the cost of each theme beginning at $129.95.
The argument we’re trying to make is that these themes are expensive itemsthat are normally sold at a premium The fact that you can get them for free will ensure that the theme for your WordPress website is already in place.
Go to the Plans page (get four months of free time on plans for the year until November 2021)
Which is your ideal client for WP Engine?
If you’re only beginning to get started with WordPress and you’re not making a lot of revenue-generating – this service is probably not for you. There are however certain niches that WP Engine serves very nicely thanks to its tools and features.
Like I said at the beginning, WP Engine isn’t for everyone. There are three kinds of clients that WP Engine seems to be suitable for. For these three types of clients, WP Engine has a focused and strong focus, with plenty of tools & focus for each.
1. WordPress Designers and Developers
Given the sheer amount of features that are geared toward developers, one could easily see that this focus is ideal for developers, designers and other agencies that work with WP, who need a solid reliable service which they can rely on during their work and can later transfer to their customers.
Some of the features that we discussed above like Git Push, staging environments and easily transferable configurations save a lot of time (and cash) for this particular group of users.
These customers usually have clients who are able to pay the maintenance cost, which the developer can mark up to their client and not have to do any work whatsoever, as the entire process is taken care of by the service – the hosting, the security, the speed is all done. Wpengine Ecommerce
2. Webmasters and business owners who are not technical.
If you’re a company owner with a site that is generating a bunch of money, dealing with technical issues or even maintaining your site is simply a unnecessary time. It’s not even mentioning the fact that running your company should be your expertise instead of focusing on your website.
They are customers whose sites are already successful, beyond the capabilities of shared WordPress hosting and need an improved, more robust service.
Budget isn’t really an issue here, because the site makes money. In reality, downtime is more important than the cost of reliability and uptime.
If you’re an entrepreneur, you know that you can trust WP Engine. If you have any issues, excellent customer support is just a call away.
3. Budding Companies looking for a long-term platform
The third type of customer who this service is a perfect fit for are those companies seeking an ongoing, reliable partner for their website / platform that they are creating. They understand that moving from one hosting provider to another is a headache, whilst WP Engine’s WP Engine backend and platform is much more reliable rather than having to look elsewhere after the website is up and growing.
WP Engine has the scalability the customers need to put their businesses on track – with plenty of time and cost savings for them.
Start today (60-day money-back guarantee + 20% discount)
Potential problems in the operation
Like any other service, there’s bound to be issues that could arise with any system or environment. These are not issues we’ve faced personally yet however, it would be unprofessional if we did not point out the potential disadvantages using this service.
Many reviews you see are not true. There is always a truth in between all of the amazingness that the sales pitch comes with, and the full of complaints reviews you might find.
As soon as somebody decides that this service is not to their liking, you’re likely to begin to hate it. So, always view bad critiques with a handful of salt.
A service is not always the right fit for everyone – especially if you’ve already been accustomed to another different service.
Custom Backend
To push the envelope in terms of security, performance and scaling, a custom-built environment had to be built from scratch – and the way it is built differs from most services.
Most hosts give access to basic functions like access to CPanel or WHM and all the other standard functions they come with If you’re specifically looking for these features – they won’t be found.
If you’re used to these features and would like them, they’re not available to you. While that may be done for the very good reasons mentioned above and the custom backend has a lot of advantages – it is not the kind of environment you’d be familiar with.
While we had absolutely no trouble setting up our environment, we wouldn’t be surprised if other people had problems with the process of registering this service.
The best part it is incredible assistance that you will receive. You’ll find that you will never be able to endure this experience on your own.
In fact, we strongly recommend that you don’t go by yourself. It’s best to discuss your experience onboarding with your technical representative or support representative so that you can be sure to get everything functioning as fast as you can – shortening your learning curve as much as you can.
Impose Limitations
A customized environment and platform, as well as the way that servers are set up means it is WP Engine cannot afford to clients who are able to move all over the place, testing and breaking things down according to their requirements. One bad plugin or set-up could, in theory, affect the whole server – this is why WP Engine takes a drastic approach to this.
It limits what is allowed for the service.
Certain plugins are banned specific plugins are banned on their platform . You’ll notice that caching plugins backup plugins, certain security plugins, heavy plugins, such as Related Posts and a few others are banned.
Again we are of the opinion that most of these features have been handled by the service. It is also a good option for plugins that will impede performance to be completely banned – after all, an uninformed user can create major bottlenecks, which could cause performance problems for the entire system.
We do believe that the result is beneficial for ALL WP Engine’s customers. WP Engine.
Yet, if your website is dependent on one of the plugins, you’ll need to find methods and ways to work around this or find a different resolution.
Other limitations that take the form of the following:
Limited bulk mailing – A fair limit considering that you don’t want just one person getting the server’s IP on a spam list.
Only available for hosting WordPress – given that the title of this service is WordPress, we believe this is an acceptable limitation
Number of visits – As your traffic grows you’ll have change plans from one to the other. It’s true that for the majority of users, increasing traffic is a sign of increasing revenue, so this shouldn’t be any problem for the majority of customers. Wpengine Ecommerce
No Email Hosting
Based on the way WP Engine works, and the infrastructure they use the way they work, they don’t provide mail servers to your site. This means you’ll need for your accounts to be hosted elsewhere. The good news is that the majority of domain service providers typically put accounts for email as part of their service at a fairly cheap price.
Furthermore, most companies who host their emails with WP Engine already have a business email hosting service such for Google Business Apps or Office 365.
The reason you should pick managed WordPress Hosting?
With the development of the internet and the internet in particular, came the massive expansion of WordPress as a framework but powering websites.
And success, of course will bring with it plenty of people eager to join the bandwagon and piggy-back on the success of other people.
Since as the CMS option expanded, host companies evolved from providing a general environment giving you the components that power a website, such as a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), to hosting services that are WordPress hosting that is specifically designed for WordPress.
In general the sense is that the environment is tuned specifically to cater for the CMS. Therefore, instead of having a one-size-fits all system, businesses have begun to offer specific server environments that are specially tuned and optimized to cater for WordPress.
In addition, there are also companies who have expertise in WordPress in general, such which you as an webmaster will manage the content per se however you do not have to worry about the underlying platform or any other technical issues which are beyond your knowledge.
Speed and support, tuning, optimizations, caching, updates and upgrades are managed by the organization where the website is hosted.
This removes a significant amount of the work for the owner, and with a price slightly higher than regular hosting services.
But there’s plenty of confusion in the marketplace too.
All hosts are now actually offering hosting specifically for WP, making it very difficult to choose between reliable hosts and those who are seeking the opportunity. The smaller hosts as well as larger ones like GoDaddy, HostGator, SiteGround, InMotion, and other big companies are now offering their own versions in “WordPress hosting”.
WP Engine is one of the few companies who is dedicated WordPress-only. This, by definition is why they are more skilled than other companies competing in this particular niche.
All hosts offer different services provided by them. Some will just provide training in the framework to their technical support. Some will go deeply technical and offer stuff like server-side functions and testing environments for your web sites and applications.
However, the true managed WordPress Hosting is where you do not just purchase the server space required to host your website – instead you are getting the necessary services to keep the site up and running at its best.
Basically an managed hosting service is when a company provides specific services that are specifically tailored to WP, but at a more expensive cost so that the owner can concentrate on the website’s content / functionality, instead of details of technical issues on the website.
This is clear for a very simple reason : you can’t evaluate a standard hosting plan with one such as the one provided by managed hosts.
Instead of collating the user-generated WP Engine reviews based on personal negative and positive one-off experiences, we adopt the opposite method. We examine the positive things and not so good things about WPEngine . We then determine which areas and who this hosting is suitable. Wpengine Ecommerce
Frequently Asked Questions
What is WP Engine?
WPEngine is an managed hosting service that is available for WordPress.
This means that with WPEngine, there is no need to worry about maintenance as well as performance of the site since it is completely handled by the hosting company.
They are among the most trusted hosts, renowned for the outstanding performance of websites hosted by them
What does WP Engine do?
WP Engine handles most stuff that is typically managed by the webmaster such as, website backups, WordPress updates, theme updates, plugin updates etc.
There is also security built in to make sure your site is safe from hacker attacks.
They also have a finely tuned server stack that translates into extremely fast loading speeds.
WP Engine costs more than shared hosting since WP Engine needs to guarantee the speed of your site. This means that they host fewer sites on the same servers, and this, in turn, drives up the cost of managing their infrastructure. Managing the website on behalf of the website’s owner means that the website owner does not have to deal with technical issues. In reality, WP Engine plans are very well priced for high-performance commercial websites that are mission-critical.
What CDN is used by WPEngine?
WPEngine has an agreement in partnership with MaxCDN (now owned by StackPath) which provides an absolutely free CDN service to all websites hosted on WPEngine. If you host your site on WPEngine, you don’t need to purchase an Content Delivery Network service separately.
WP Engine costs more than shared hosting since WP Engine needs to guarantee the speed and performance of your site.
This means they host less websites on the same server, and this, in turn, drives up the costs of managing their infrastructure. The management of the website for the owner of the site means that the website owner doesn’t have to spend any time handling technical issues.
In reality it is true that the WP Engine plans are very affordable for business websites that are mission-critical.
Last thoughts
If you’ve been around MrBloggen for long, you’ll be aware that we are fascinated by speed. Simply put, you do not think about the speed of a website, because excellent websites are quick – full stop. It’s just one of the factors (besides design) which makes a website feel safe, and enjoyable to browse around and visit repeatedly.
And that is the price and appeal of performance – your quick website will generate more money in the long run. In this WP Engine review, we’ve shown you how this service can make your website blazingly fast, with no technical fees and the time required to do this. Although we believe that the service may have some drawbacks contrasted apples to apples to other hosts, doing this kind of comparison is really and truly an error.
If you are looking for a quick, reliable, hosting service that you want to control only the “content” of your website, not the technical nitty-gritty of operating the engine, then you will be in good hands by WP Engine. You have a 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee, which means that if you don’t like them You’ll have nothing to lose and, most likely you’ll have a lot to gain from the platform! Wpengine Ecommerce