Wp Engine Review [Updated 2023]

In this WP Engine review, I’m going to cover everything you need to know about this WordPress-focused provider. Read on to find out more about its pricing and plans, performance, features, customer support, and more.

There are plenty of cheap hosts available that can provide a decent service. However, what if you’re looking for more of a performance-oriented concierge service? In that case, you’ll want to check out our WP Engine review for WordPress.

WP Engine is a WordPress-specific web host, offering managed plans that are fully optimized for the platform. Of course, when compared with many other WordPress hosts, WP Engine’s plans aren’t exactly cheap. Therefore, you’ll want to know whether this hosting service is worth the cost before making a purchase.

 WP Engine has high-quality, managed hosting that offers excellent uptime, WordPress-oriented security, cloud-based platform flexibility, daily backups, and other terrific features. It has a few minor downsides, as well; for example, you need to go elsewhere for email accounts and domain names. Still, WP Engine has fantastic plans that make the web host an Editors’ Choice pick for WordPress hosting. 

Also Read: Interserver Hosting Reviews

What is WP Engine

Founded in 2010, WP Engine is now one of the leading managed WordPress hosting companies in the market. Serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen started WP Engine when he saw a need for specialized WordPress hosting due to the rising popularity of WordPress.

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 Hosting Plans

WP Engine only offers managed WordPress hosting. Their managed WordPress plans have following hosting options.

• Managed hosting – Managed hosting environment suitable for small business and blogs
• Managed Hosting Plus – Includes automated plugin updates tested with AI including 3rd party plugins.
• Secure Hosting – Additional security layers with website firewall and DDoS protection
• Ecommerce Hosting – WooCommerce hosting with powerful store search, eCommerce templates, and more

Each of these hosting options has five different levels available: Startup, Professional, Growth plan, Scale, and Custom. The Custom plan also includes dedicated servers dev. environments, customer success, and priority support.

All plans include unlimited data transfer. The plans differ based on:

• number of WordPress installs
• traffic volume (Monthly visitors or number of visits per month)
• disk storage amount
• Bandwidth requirement

Each WP Engine plan has set limits on the number of visits your hosting account can get. If your account exceeds those limits, then you may be charged overage pricing for extra visits.

WP Engine includes some unique features for WordPress users that most hosts don’t offer, or charge extra for. These special features include:

• Git version control
• Staging environment: instantly staging sites for testing
• Easy transferable WordPress installation from free to paid accounts
• Free SSL certificates and SSH access
• Cutting edge technologies including latest PHP version

In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine offers the most advanced and comprehensive managed WordPress hosting features.

How to add a WordPress website?

Let’s cut to the chase: it’s extremely easy to install WordPress with WP Engine. All you need is a click, and the provider will automatically install the CMS for you.

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.

It takes a couple of minutes, but once the site is created, you’ll see a new area. This is where you can manage each environment separately.

The menu on the left has Domain, SSL, backups, CDN, and other management options.

Also, if you’d look at the top bar, you’d see a convenient WP-Admin button that leads you to the WordPress admin panel.

But it wouldn’t do us much good now. At this point, you don’t have a domain name assigned to your website. It functions on the environment name subdomain that you chose (e.g. cyberturtle.mywpengine.com in my case).

So adding domain is the obvious next step in setting up WP Engine account.

Advanced Security Features

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.

Wp Engine Pros and Cons

Pros

• Terrific uptime in testing
• Outstanding customer service
• Daily backups
• Real-time threat detection
• Useful staging area
• Choice of either Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform cloud hosting
• Custom plans available

Cons

• Email isn’t included with hosting plans
• Doesn’t sell domains

Customer Support and Service

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.

Enterprise customers get access to 24/7 ticket support via email. Premium and Enterprise customers receive a consultative one-on-one onboarding experience as well.

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.

CDN for Even Faster Loading

WP Engine offers a CDN (content delivery network) in partnership with MaxCDN, making their hosting even faster.

CDN is included for free with all WP Engine hosting plans which is a huge benefit and cost-saving.

Alternatives to WP Engine hosting

WP Engine is a solid hosting choice if you have a decent budget. However, it’s fairly expensive (especially on the higher tiers).

If you like WP Engine in theory, but it just isn’t in your price range, there are some alternatives you can check out. SiteGround is a great WordPress-specific provider, for example, and DreamHost offers managed hosting that’s pretty affordable. For more information, you can take a look at our full article on alternatives to WP Engine.

Conclusion

WP Engine plans don’t come cheap – there’s no sugar-coating that fact. However, you’ll get a quality managed hosting service in exchange for your investment. This provider offers lots of vital WordPress-specific features, solid performance, and reliable support. If WP Engine does fit your budget, it’s worth serious consideration.