WP Engine is a very special web host company that focuses only on one niche: WordPress Hosting. Its entire hosting system runs literally on a WordPress platform. My new study shows that WP Engine is back to the peak of its game, read on to learn more.
I first learned about WP Engine long time ago. Back when the company first started in 2010, I did an online interview with its cofounder Jason Cohen.
Not many have heard about the name “WP Engine” back then, but the company was growing exponentially. Many well known bloggers and businesses (including HTC, FourSquare, Balsamiq, Sound Cloud) were switching over.
A year after the interview, I got a free account and moved WHSR over. The migration process was very smooth and my site load time was halved instantly. Needless to say – I was very happy and stayed for more than 2 years.
Shortly after Google Penguin (which WHSR took a big hit), I decided to change and started rebuilding everything from ground zero. The idea was to grow WHSR into a web service provider, build a community around ourselves, and rely less on Google traffic. That was the time when WHSR Uptime Monitor was made and we switched back to conventional VPS hosting environment.
The year was 2013.
Today's WP Engine
Over time, WP Engine has grown into an extremely popular WordPress hosting.
Many things have changed since WHSR shifted out. Various new features were added as technology advances, the company is funded by a large group of investors including Automattic (the folks behind WordPress.com), and many bloggers and WP experts regard them as one of the best managed WordPress hosting (there were also some who go against them, more about that later).
Is WP Engine as good as the words from streets? Let's find out.
Review Summary
Pros
Solid server performance – Hosting uptime above 99.99%
Fast server speed – Time-to-first-byte (TTFB) below 250ms
Try out with no risk – 60-day money back guarantee
Good billing practice – Users can refund or cancel account easily
Reseller-friendly – Transfer billing to your clients
Agile developer environment – Development and staging sites ready
Genesis Framework and StudioPress themes included
Cons
Expensive addon features
No email hosting – Users will need to pay extra to third party (such as Google Suite or Rackspace) to host their emails
No direct access to .htaccess file
Self-help site migration service only
Major SEO issue with “Redirect Bot” default setting
Slightly expensive – Price increased in March 2018
Test site at WP Engine has not gone down for the last 1038 hours.
Older Server Uptime Records
* Click to enlarge image.
Jun 2017: 100%
Feb 2016: 99.97%
Nov 2015: 100%
Sep 2015: 100%
Sep 2014: 99.99%
Personal Experience (2012 – 2013)
As I mentioned earlier, I shifted WHSR to WP Engine in 2012/13. My personal experience with WP Engine at that time was nothing but WOW.
Site's response time improved 100% according to Pingdom right after the site migration. Note that no other fine-tuning was made when this was measured.
Site response time halved as soon as it's moved to WP Engine.
WP Engine Bitcatcha Speed Test Results (Mar 2018): A+
Good results in recent speed test at Bitcatcha.
WP Engine Bitcatcha Speed Test Results (Jun 2017): B+
Excellent speed test results test from most locations. Except for Japan, response time from other locations are well below Google's recommended 200ms.
WP Engine Speed Test at WebpageTest.org
Time to first byte (TTFB), according to WebpageTest.org, at 224ms.
WP Engine Customer Care
Our Experience & Thoughts:
Clear service terms and guarantees
60-day money back guarantee
Helpful 24×7 live chat and telephone support
No lock in contract – cancel anytime
Good billing practice – users can refund or cancel account easily
Customer complaints on after-sales services
Pro-active live chat support
A WP Engine sales staff is there to greet you as soon as a user land on their website.
My recent live chat experience with WP Engine support was good. WP Engine's live chat support is one of the best five according to my studies in 2017.
My chat record with WP Engine staff, Maurice Onayemi.
Huge knowledge base at WP Engine support section.
As WordPress is WP Engine core business, the host provides comprehensive WordPress optimization guide in their support section (which you don't get with other non-WP managed hosts).
User Complaints on WP Engine Support (Mainly in 2014/2015)
WP Engine supports was top class during my stay (2012 – 2013). Every support single staff that I spoke to was a WordPress wizard. And they were so passionate with their job – that you can tell from how quick they reply your emails – their ticketing support system was like a live chat where I got almost instant responses every time.
But things obviously has changed later if you search around and you’ll noticed that here were quite some complaints on WP Engine customer support in 2014, including this lengthy review by Matthew Woodward. The complains, generally speaking, focus on two things –
Uninformed / inexperienced support staffs,
Slow responses (some even said their requests were ignored), and
WP Engine's Response
Mounting criticism of the company has prompted the response by WP Engine founder Jason Cohen in this blog post in May 2014 – Growth is Hard.
To address the issue, seven immediate actions were taken, including hiring new support staffs (they have increased the support team by 50% since then) and allow customers to reach out the company’s engineer directly (read quotes below).
1- Hiring
We closed our Series C financing in January and immediately put it to work in hiring in the Support Team. We’ve increase the team by 50% since then. It’s very hard to hire quickly and yet maintain our standards of both attitude (culture) and aptitude (ability). We’ve even hired additional internal recruiters to help us accelerate this process.
2- Direct-to-Engineer
Some of our customers are highly technical, so whenever they contact us, it’s with difficult, interesting problems—not ones that can be solved with a knowledge base article or a simple, obvious response. Therefore, we started creating pathways for those customers to get to engineers faster—people who can work on the mind-bending stuff. Of course we don’t have that 24/7 yet, like we do with regular support. Fortunately, those problems are usually OK to be solved during normal business hours, so overall this approach has been effective.
Updates: User feedback after Jason's message
Recent user feedback (after Jason's message) indicates that the quality of WP Engine customer support is coming back.
Feedback from BRet Wegner, Drive Social Now
Extremely likely, between the simple setup, automated migrations and great support when you need just a little more control, WP Engine has not failed me yet. There seems to be times when the admin side of a site seems a bit sluggish. This is usually during peak hours, but if your site is on a server with other sites that have heavy loads, you can become affected. But you can usually ask them to move your site to another server and they’ll take care of getting you to a more reliable environment. – Bret Wegner, Drive Social Now / quoted from Fit Small Business.
Feedback fromDave Warfel, WP Smack Down
Live chat wait times [with WP Engine] will depend on a few factors; mainly, time of day and if they are experiencing any server issues. I think the longest I’ve had to wait is 15 minutes. A majority of the time, I get a response in less than 5 minutes. Compared to other hosts, I’d rate this as very good (8.5/10) – Dave Warfel's WP Engine Review.
WP Engine's Visit Counts
A few years ago, one complaint you often hear about WP Engine is how they charge their customers. WP Engine users are charged based on visit. WP Engine entry plan, for example, allows up to 25,000 visits per month. If your blog attracts more than 25,000 visits in a month, you’ll need to pay more.
So, more visits = more CPU resources usage = higher host fees. Fair?
Nope. Because WP Engine is also charging on bots visits and has not implemented any measures to block bad bots (unlike conventional hosting, users can’t setup their robots.txt to block bad bots at WP Engine). Users were forced to pay overages due to bots visits.
Agile developer environment – development and staging sites ready
Reseller-friendly: Transfer billing to your clients
StudioPress and Genesis framework included
Expensive addon features
No email hosting
No direct access to .htaccess file
“Redirect Bots” causing major SEO issue
Important to know: WP Engine is for WordPress Sites Only
Keep in mind that WP Engine is a WordPress-only hosting.
This means if your site is not WordPress base, then you can’t host your site at WP Engine.
Billing transfer
Developer can create a site within WP Engine and transfer the hosting account / site to their clients easily.
Self-help site migration
Does WP Engine provider site migration service? No.
However, WP Engine has developed a hassle-free automated migration plugin. All you need to do is provide some account details and the migration process (ie. searching/replacing values in database, updating link structure, and multiple sites migration, etc) can be done automatically with the plugin.
For detail instruction, read this post. To download the migration tool, here. Screen shot of the WP Engine migration plugin – this is where you add your migration info into the tool.
Accessing .htaccess file at WP Engine
At WP Engine, .htaccess rules are set at user portal (see image).
You'll need to go through their tech support to access your .htaccess file (for example, to copy and past a big chunk of .htaccess redirects).
There are a lot of great features with WP Engine but they don't come free for Startup and Growth plan users.
Host an extra site at WP Engine Startup Plan (with no additional visit capacity), add $20/mo. GeoTarget (great feature that let you show different page to users from different location), add $15/mo. Enhance site security (DDoS protection, WAF, Cloudflare CDN), add $30/mo.
Sending and receiving emails
WP Engine does not provide email or webmail features.
This means if you want an email address ending with your domain name (something like [email protected]), you will need to host your own email accounts.
Yes, I know you can always go with Gmail as Google provides free email hosting services (as recommended by WPEngine); but not all website owners want their data to be hosted with the big G (me included!).
However, stay no fear. I have tried a few different solutions when I switched my host to WP Engine and wrote this email hosting guide.
Studio Press Themes and Genesis framework
The acquisition of StudioPress Themes and Genesis Framework from Rainmaker Digital LLC in June 2018 further strengthen WP Engine’s platform, allowing faster time-to-market with greater ease and agility.
Genesis is a massive ecosystem of parts for WordPress and is in essence, what it takes to assemble a best WordPress site in building blocks. From speed to security and even aesthetics, there is something in the Genesis Framework that simply screams ‘professional WordPress’ – and that’s what you pay for.
StudioPress Themes, on the other hand, is a collection of more than 35 professionally designed, Gutenberg optimized, WordPress themes built with Genesis that support a number of vertical use cases.
By default, sites hosted at WP Engine with page that ends in a number, (e.g. example.com/page/1) or in a query arg, (e.g. example.com/mypage/?myproduct=name), will be redirected to the page before the number or query arg sequence begins (site.com/page, site.com/category, site.com/mypage/).* This setting, known as “Redirect Bots”, is a major SEO issue as it will limit Google bots to discover content on your site and impact website PageRank flow through your site.
Luckily – this setting can be turned off by contacting WP Engine support.
* Note: This is quoting WP Engine's exact words from this blogpost. WP Engine is selling this feature as a “benefit” as it saves up server load (and money) for the users.
Price: Is WP Engine value for money?
Our Experience & Thoughts:
Currently on sale – get 2 months free and 10% discount
No hidden fees or surge in renewal fees
No lock in contract – cancel anytime
Good billing practice – users can refund or cancel account easily
Costly for owners running multiple WP sites
Slightly expensive – Price increased in March 2018 (for existing users, September 2018)
WP Engine Promo Code: WPE3Free
First time users who sign up with WP Engine will get 2 months free hosting and 10% off first payment when the promo code “wpe3free” is applied.
Startup plan after discount is priced at $22.50/mo (with annual plan).
Get 2 months free and 10% off when you signup to WP Engine annual plan.
WP Engine 2018 Price Changes: Before & After
WP Engine announced its new plans on February 28th, 2018. The original plans – Personal, Professional, and Business, are replaced by slightly pricier plans named StartUp, Growth, and Scale.
The new price ($30.00, $115.00, $290.00/mo) is slightly higher than the old ones ($27.55, $94.05, $236.55/mo).
Screenshots of WP Engine's emails to all affiliates.
WP Engine Entry Plan Pricing (Before & After)
Personal Plan (Before)
Startup Plan (After)
Plans
Personal
Startup
Number of sites
1
1
Visits / month
25,000
25,000
WP Multisites
–
+$20/mo
CDN
$19/mo
Free
Price (monthly-basis)
$29/mo
$30/mo
Price (12-mo contract)
$27.55/mo
$25.00/mo
* Note: On January 22nd 2020, all current customers on Startup Plans will be converted to the new price (reduce from $35 to $30) on their monthly or annual billing renewal date. For updated pricing and plan details, visit: https://wpengine.com/plans/
Costly to users with multiple sites
While the speedy server and WP expert supports are good to have; WP Engine is not exactly what you need for your low traffic, less important websites.
The Startup plan allows only one installation per account and charge $20/mo per additional site. Your hosting cost would easily racks up to hundreds of dollars per month.
* Note: I am comparing WP Engine normal price in this table. WP Engine is currently doing special promotion – you'll get 2-months free if you signup for their annual plan (that averages to $22.50/mo).
Verdict: Should you host with WP Engine?
To recap – here's the pros and cons of hosting with WP Engine:
Pros
Solid server performance – Hosting uptime above 99.99%
Fast server speed – Time-to-first-byte (TTFB) below 250ms
Try out with no risk – 60-day money back guarantee
Good billing practice – Users can refund or cancel account easily
Reseller-friendly – Transfer billing to your clients
Agile developer environment – Development and staging sites ready
Genesis Framework and StudioPress themes included
Cons
Expensive addon features
No email hosting – Users will need to pay extra to third party (such as Google Suite or Rackspace) to host their emails
No direct access to .htaccess file
Self-help site migration service only
Major SEO issue with “Redirect Bot” default setting
Slightly expensive – Price increased in March 2018
Costly for owners running multiple WP sites
I have no doubt that WP Engine is one of the top WordPress hosting services in market.
However, I do not recommend WP Engine to everyone.
For example – if you do not intend to run your site in WordPress, then there’s no point for you to be here.
Or, if you are new and just started, I would suggest you to go with conventional shared hosting services like InMotion Hosting, A2 Hosting, or Interserver. I believe you’ll thank me for the much cheaper option.
Or, if you need to host multiple low traffic sites, which do not need so much server resources; then WP Engine is definitely an overkill.
That said, however, WP Engine can be a gem for developers or WordPress sites with heavy traffic.
If you want a bit of everything, go with WPEngine. This option is for you if want to scale without compromising the quality of support and loosing developer friendly tools. And at the same time, not want to spend a fortune. I have been using WPEngine for a long time and never had any problems with them.
WP Engine is recommended for:
Users who are running a single WordPress site with medium to high level traffic,
There is a possibility of your site go viral and hit Reddit front page,
Your WordPress site is your main income source,
You are always worrying about hackers and malware,
You don’t like handling the tedious WordPress maintenance job – such as site back up and file cache tuning;
Make the move as I did with WHSR and quit worrying about your site being hacked or down due to traffic surge.
WP Engine Alternatives
If WP Engine is not for you, there are several good managed WordPress hosting to consider. Kinsta, WP Web Host, SiteGround and Pressidium are a few solutions that I have tried and recommend.
(P/S: The links pointing to WP Engine in this page are affiliate links. If you purchase via this link, it will credit me as your referrer. This is how I keep this site alive for almost 8 years and able to add more free, helpful hosting reviews. Buying via my link doesn’t cost you more – in fact, you will discount from the given promo code WPE3Free. Your support is highly appreciated, thank you! )
About Jerry Low
Founder of WebHostingSecretRevealed.net (WHSR) - a hosting review trusted and used by 100,000's users. More than 15 years experience in web hosting, affiliate marketing, and SEO. Contributor to ProBlogger.net, Business.com, SocialMediaToday.com, and more.
WHSR receives referral fees from hosting companies listed on this website. Our opinions are
based on real experience and actual server data. Please read
our review policy page to understand how our host rating system works.
Services
Shared Hosting
No
VPS Hosting
No
Dedicated Hosting
No
Cloud Hosting
No
Managed WordPress Hosting
Yes
Managed Cloud Hosting
No
Domain Registration
No
Basic Features
Data Transfer
50 GB
Storage Capacity
10 GB
Control Panel
Wordpress
Extra Domain Reg.
No
Private Domain Reg.
No
Auto Script Installer
WordPress is pre-configured at WP Engine.
Custom Cron Jobs
No
Site Backups
Yes
Dedicated IP
No
Free SSL
Yes
Built-in Site Builder
WordPress
Server Locations
North America
Yes
South America
No
Asia
No
Europe
No
Oceania
No
Africa
No
Middle East
No
Speed Features
NGINX
Yes
HTTP/2
Yes
WP Optimized
Yes
Joomla Optimized
No
Drupal optimized
No
Email Features
Email Hosting
No
No. of Email Accounts
No
Webmail Support
No
Email Forwarder
No
e-Commerce Features
Cube Cart
No
Zen Shopping Cart
No
PrestaShop
No
Magento
No
Customer Care Policy
Server Usage Limitation
Website will be never be suspended. Additional charges if visits exceed 25,000/month.