WP Engine is one of the best managed WordPress hosting providers. Founded in 2010, WP Engine has grown because it provides high-performance and secure hosting services specifically for WordPress. This makes it a little more pricey. But IsItWP users can enjoy a great deal — 20% off your first-month payment or get 4 months free if paid annually.
5.0 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0
4.0 / 5.0 5.0 / 5.0
Unlike many traditional web hosts, WP Engine offers its services entirely to WordPress users.
Its servers and framework are optimized for WordPress websites‘ unique needs, resulting in faster loading times and better overall performance.
On top of this, it offers a robust set of features, including infrastructure optimization, a global content delivery network (CDN), automated updates, proactive security measures, and expert WordPress support.
WP Engine also comes with automatic updates, daily backups, and staging environments to test changes before pushing them live.
Now that you understand WP Engine hosting better, let’s see how we tested it to see if it is right for your business.
To thoroughly assess WP Engine’s capabilities and features, we used the following approach:
4.7 / 5.0
Despite being a managed WordPress hosting solution, WP Engine offers shared hosting plans for small and medium-sized businesses.
You can find 3 different shared hosting plans that are structured based on the amount of traffic and number of sites. It’s expensive than a traditional shared hosting provider because it gives you a wide variety of WordPress specific suites to deliver enterprise level experience to your visitors.
Below are a few UNIQUE features you get from WP Engine’s shared hosting plan:
5.0 / 5.0
WPEngine offers dedicated server hosting for those users who attract millions of monthly visitors. With a dedicated server from WPEngine, you can host about 25 websites and add additional sites for $20 per month per site.
WPEngine offers 2 dedicated hosting plans, Premium and Enterprise. You’ll need to get in touch with the sales team to get a custom quote for your dedicated server hosting.
5.0 / 5.0
WP Engine is one of the first hosting companies to provide WordPress centric managed hosting solutions. As a pioneer in the managed WordPress hosting industry, they boast an impressive customer list including Yelp, Asana, National Geographic, PBS, and MyFitnessPal.
The best thing is that they offer blazing fast website experience and cutting edge WordPress specific technologies.
Using WP Engine is like having an army of WordPress experts on your side when you need help. They have partnered with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud platform to offer your sites the highest availability, speed, scalability, and security around the clock irrespective of where your visitors are located in the world.
Their one-click staging tool enables you to test new plugins and updates before pushing the changes to your live site. Overall, they offer a truly superior WordPress hosting experience.
4.5 / 5.0
Even though you can create and run any type of website on WP Engine, online stores often need specific features to be more effective. Below is a list of WP Engine eCommerce features that can help you run a more successful online shop.
WooCommerce Performance Features
As mentioned, WP Engine allows you to integrate WooCommerce quickly.
But on top of this, WP Engine’s eCommerce solution offers performance features specifically designed to improve the site speed and scalability of WooCommerce. This ensures a smooth shopping experience for your customers.
As you have seen so far, WP Engine goes beyond just hosting your WordPress site. It also comes with a suite of features designed to enhance security, performance, and overall user experience.
Here are some key features you can also expect from WP Engine.
As mentioned, 1-click Staging is a feature that allows you to easily create a staging environment for your WordPress site with just one click. It allows you to create a copy of your site online of the live website where you can test changes, updates, or new features before implementing them on your actual live site.
Since it is a live copy of the site, it mimics the live website, allowing you to test changes, updates, plugins, or new features more accurately before implementing them on the live site. And because it is online, a staging site allows for better collaboration between teammates.
While staging and Local may seem to serve the same purpose on the surface, this is not the case.
WP Engine Local allows you to build, customize, and test your WordPress site locally on your computer before deploying it to a live server. It allows you to work offline without an internet connection, providing flexibility and convenience.
To add to this, using Local reduces the risk of accidentally affecting the live site during development or testing.
The good news is that you can use either or both of the staging and Local features with WP Engine.
Environments in WordPress are different setups or configurations used for developing, testing, and deploying WordPress websites or applications. This means that staging sites are part of environments.
With that said, WP Engine’s Copy Environment feature simplifies the process of duplicating WordPress environments. It enables you to quickly transfer changes made in one environment to another within the same account. This ensures consistency across your various WordPress setups, enhancing workflow and productivity.
On top of this, copying environments creates a new restore checkpoint for both the source and destination environments, ensuring data consistency.
You also have the option to include or exclude the database, providing customization according to your needs. This allows you to preserve specific data or avoid overwriting certain tables.
Most importantly, it allows you to share the copy environment with teammates or clients. This allows you to gather feedback on design and functionality while upholding your security.
EverCache is a front-end cache tool developed by WP Engine to improve website performance and scalability. It does this by optimizing server resources by automatically caching static content on your site, reducing strain on servers.
Whether your site experiences a sudden surge in traffic or a steady increase in pageviews over time, EverCache ensures that your site remains responsive and delivers a smooth browsing experience to every visitor.
Beyond speed and scalability, EverCache also helps with WordPress website security. It analyzes browser requests in real time and automatically identifies and blocks potentially harmful requests.
A CDN is a network of servers placed at different locations around the world, like mini storage units for your website’s files. When someone visits your site, their computer grabs the files from the closest server instead of your main server. This cuts down on loading times, especially for visitors far away.
This ensures that your website pages load faster for users, regardless of where they are in the world, reducing the number of requests to the WP Engine origin server.
WP Engine integrates Cloudflare as its Content Delivery Network (CDN). Cloudflare also compresses images without quality loss, improving loading times.
Plus, activating WP Engine’s CDN is super easy. Once you point your DNS to Advanced Network or GES, the CDN becomes active automatically. You do not need to add customized URLs or compress images yourself.
This translates to a smoother user experience for both you and your users.
Keeping your WordPress core files, plugins, and themes updated is crucial for security and functionality. WP Engine automates this process, ensuring your website stays patched against vulnerabilities and runs on the latest software versions.
The best part is that the WP Engine handles the testing and deployment process, so you can rest easy knowing your site is secure and up-to-date without your involvement.
Major releases, which introduce new features and functionality, undergo thorough testing before being deployed to your site. Minor releases containing important security and maintenance updates are deployed automatically to all sites without delay.
To add to this, WP Engine performs smoke testing before updates, which are simple tests done early to identify major problems. This ensures that updates are applied smoothly and without site disturbance.
But, updating WordPress core files is time-consuming and risky. As a result, WP Engine lets you postpone major updates for 30 days, allowing you to test them in your staging environment first.
Apart from these, here are additional features you can expect from WP Engine.
As a managed WordPress hosting provider, WP Engine delivers enterprise-level WordPress performance for your site.
To test the site performance for our WP Engine review, we’ve created a test WordPress site using the default Twenty Seventeen theme and uploaded some dummy content, including images. This way our test site looked and behaved like an actual average WordPress site.
After setting up our test site, we first ran the speed test using Pingdom.
According to Pingdom’s website speed test, our test site loads less than a second in New York. That’s faster than 96% of all tested sites.
Apart from Pingdom, we also used a testing tool called Load Impact to figure out how WP Engine handles visitors during a traffic surge. Load Impact sent some virtual users (VUs) to our site and gradually built up to 100 visitors at a time to test how the server handles it.
In the chart, you can find a blue line (VUs active) which shows the number of virtual users sent to our WP Engine site and a green line (VU load time) which represents how much time it took to load a web page for a user.
WP Engine performed consistently throughout the test. The number of live visitors on the site doesn’t have an impact on performance.
The content of your site can have an impact on your page loading time. For instance, if your site contains too many images, it will take more time to load. In fact, images account for most of the downloadable bytes in a typical site.
To get accurate results, instead of solely analyzing page load time, we decided to test the actual server response time as well by ignoring the content of our page entirely.
Bitcatcha works differently than Pingdom.
Bitcatcha ignores the content of your page and records the page loading time from eight different global locations: New York, LA, London, Brazil, India, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. The speed for each location is measured three separate times, and then the results are averaged.
From the result, you can see that WP Engine server response time remained under less than half a second for all geographic locations. It was particularly great in the United States. Best of all, WP Engine allows you to choose a data center when you subscribe to a plan.
Be sure to choose the nearest data center where your target audience is mostly located, which can improve your server response time.
When you encounter issues with your WP Engine WordPress site, their support team is available 24/7/365 to assist you. They are recipients of the Stevie Award, which recognizes their commitment to customer satisfaction.
WP Engine support teams are based in Austin, San Antonio, and Limerick. Plus, their experts are also accessible via live chat support, phone support, or ticket from your User Portal.
If you have any urgent issues, the best way to contact them is through live chat for immediate assistance.
To add to this, they offer plenty of documentation covering a wide range of topics to help you troubleshoot and resolve issues independently.
The Support Center offers step-by-step tutorials and articles for setting up a site, managing accounts and features, and troubleshooting technical issues.
They also provide support for WP Engine platform features, WordPress configuration, plugins, and themes.
One of the reasons WP Engine is one of the best web hosting services is its user-friendly interface and streamlined processes. These make it ideal for both beginners and experienced users.
First of all, WP Engine simplifies the process of creating a new WordPress site.
With just a few clicks in the User Portal or Dashboard, you can set up your site and hosting environments effortlessly. Plus, this hosting provider also offers step-by-step instructions to guide you through selecting site usage, choosing templates, and configuring site details with ease.
Now, WP Engine makes sure navigating through your User Portal is straightforward, thanks to its intuitive layout and clear labeling of all features and functions.
This helps you quickly find the tools and features you need without getting lost in complex menus or confusing interfaces. Plus, you have the option to group sites to help you organize your workflow better and improve user experience.
Setting up your WordPress site with WP Engine is also easy and user-friendly.
After logging in, select “Add Site” and choose your site type and setup method, which includes a blank site, migration, and so on. Then, add the name of your site and environment type.
WP Engine will create your site and provide a temporary domain for access. Here, you can choose a theme, install plugins, and add content using the familiar WordPress editor. This ensures you do not experience a learning curve.
Launching your site once you are happy with it is just as simple.
All you have to do is purchase a domain name, update WordPress URL settings, and point your DNS to the WP Engine servers.
They even offer extras like free SSL certificates and performance optimization tools to get you started with site security and customization.
Once you create a site, WP Engine offers one-click Staging.
This allows you to test changes before making them live with minimal effort. As a result, you can streamline your site development process and reduce the risk of errors, broken WordPress websites, or downtime.
To add to this, the dashboard provides easy access to all site management tools, ensuring you can quickly handle tasks like adding content, installing themes and plugins, and managing backups.
Another feature that makes WP Engine easy to use is its many integration capabilities.
It seamlessly connects with plenty of apps, tools, and services, allowing you to improve your website’s functionality without hassle.
From SSL certificate installation to plugin management, WP Engine connections simplify security measures and ensure your WordPress site remains protected against threats at all times.
Its quick connections also include domain management, making it easy for users to connect their custom domains and take their sites live without a developer’s assistance.
With so many managed hosting options available, you need to offer a personalized journey for your visitors. This is why WP Engine provides customization options that prioritize performance, uptime, and ease of use.
One way WP Engine capitalizes on this is through User Cache Segmentation.
It is challenging to show different content to different visitors on your WordPress website. To do this you will need to sacrifice caching, a key factor for fast-loading websites.
To help you with this, WP Engine’s User Cache Segmentation creates multiple versions of a page in the cache. This is based on visitor segments like marketers, developers, or any other segment you create.
Think of it like having different-colored folders in your file cabinet—specific content goes in the specific folder for quick retrieval.
This way, you can deliver targeted content without compromising performance. As a result, you can also carry out A/B testing to determine the best-performing content for the page and SEO.
You can also customize site monitoring with WP Engine.
You can customize the issue alerts so that you are notified either through Slack or email, making it more convenient for you.
On top of that, the site monitoring system allows you to personalize the alerts so that you are only notified for specific issues.
You can customize the alerts to include those from third-party tools and plugins or new code. This allows you as a website owner, to quickly address and resolve these problems before they escalate.
This proactive approach not only enhances user experience but also minimizes potential downtimes that could impact small businesses.
Now, WP Engine allows you to customize your site to reflect your unique brand.
First up, it offers a library of stunning, pre-built themes that are Gutenberg-ready. This means you can easily tweak layouts, add content, and personalize the design to match your vision without coding experience.
But what if you have a unique idea that you cannot execute with default Gutenberg blocks?
Instead, WP Engine lets you build custom Gutenberg blocks. You can group and edit the default blocks, snapping them together to create a new block for a specific function.
There is also the possibility that a new code, plugin, or custom Gutenberg blocks may cause problems on your site.
For this, WP Engine offers Local.
WP Engine Local is a free tool that lets you build and test your WordPress site offline on your computer. This allows you to experiment freely without the risk of breaking something on your live WordPress site.
WP Engine Local takes minutes to get started because of a user-friendly interface that makes building and managing your local site easy. Plus, it comes with plenty of developer tools like WP-CLI and access to logs, letting you customize and fine-tune your site better before it is live.
Once the changes are ready to go live, adding them to your live site only takes a few clicks, without complicated uploads and transfers.
WP Engine is not cheap. Their managed hosting service emphasizes on performance it delivers and the pricing is based on the amount of traffic you attract to your site. The pricing is structured for less versatility as well.
To make it even better, they’re offering our users an exclusive discount if you use our WPEngine coupon code.
Having helped thousands of users choose a web hosting plan and start their website, we have answered just about every question you can think of. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about WP Engine.
How do I know if WP Engine is a good fit for me?
WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosting solution. While it gives you a peace of mind by handling all technicalities of optimizing your server for improved performance, the reality is that it might not be the right solution for everyone. The platform is primarily targeted at a few customer segments, like SMBs, agencies, developers, enterprises and marketers.
WP Engine is a good fit for you in the following cases.
How WP Engine differs from other WordPress hosting options?
As WordPress is the most popular website builder platform, a lot of hosting providers offer WordPress hosting that emphasizes on the convenience of building a WordPress site. With such hosting options, you don’t have to go through an additional step of installing WordPress because they come pre-installed with WordPress.
WP Engine goes beyond a managed WordPress hosting solution and provides a lot of different set of tools to help you succeed in your business, like one-click staging tool, WordPress content analytics and more. Rather than convenience, it emphasizes primarily on performance it delivers. Aside from choosing a hosting plan, you don’t have to do anything else for improving your site’s performance. In fact, WP Engine restricts you from install caching, CDN and security plugins on your site because they’re handled by themselves. This way you can focus on what matters to your business without managing system administration tasks.
Why should I choose WP Engine when I can handle the same amount of traffic and get more storage space for a comparatively lower price from other providers?
While other hosting providers handle the same amount of traffic for a cheaper plan, the benefit of WP Engine is that it delivers blazing fast website speed for all your visitors while giving you a peace of mind. You’re not required to spend your resources on optimizing your server’s performance. Best of all, you also get many enhanced features to provide breakthrough WordPress experience.
With WP Engine, you are paying for performance and the tools they give you to succeed in your business– not for storage. If you need a hosting server for media storage, you might want to choose another hosting service instead.
What plugins are restricted on the WP Engine platform?
WP Engine doesn’t allow you to use certain plugins that have been shown to clash with their hosting solution.
The banned plugins fall into a few different categories.
Which WP Engine plan should I get?
Choosing a WP Engine plan is easy. You can choose a plan based on the amount of traffic you’re expecting.
When you’re just starting out, you can choose the Startup plan. As you grow, you can upgrade to a higher plan based on your needs.
Where are WP Engine servers located?
When you sign up for a hosting plan on WP Engine, you’ll be allowed to choose a data center location.
Can I upgrade my WP Engine plan later?
Of course! When you’re starting out, you can choose the most basic plan. As you grow, you can always upgrade to a higher plan per your needs.
Does WP Engine offer a month-to-month payment option?
Yes! But keep in mind that the annual plan provides the best value. You get 4 months free on an annual plan.
WP Engine Vs. FlyWheel
WP Engine and Flywheel are two of the best managed WordPress hosting services. While their startup plans are similar, Flywheel‘s Tiny plan is more suitable for beginners because of the lower price point.
Despite this, WP Engine offers a broader range of plans, allowing you to pick one that better suits your needs. But even though WP Engine plans offer better performance they come with a higher price tag.
Both provide 24/7 customer support, but WP Engine’s knowledge base offers more information with more in-depth resources.
WP Engine and FlyWheel also offer similar features, such as pre-installed WordPress, website staging, and a partnership with the Google Cloud platform.
Overall, both these Managed WordPress hosting services serve the same clientele. So it is up to you to decide which better meets your needs.
Siteground Vs WP Engine
When we compared SiteGround vs WP Engine for WordPress hosting, we found that SiteGround is a more budget-friendly option.
SiteGround WordPress hosting starts at $2.99/month, while WP Engine offers premium services from $13.00/month.
To add to this, SiteGround supports multiple Content Management Systems (CMSs), while WP Engine focuses solely on WordPress. Both platforms provide user-friendly interfaces and essential features like SSL certificates and backups.
SiteGround offers real-time monitoring and an AI anti-bot system, while WP Engine provides server monitoring and plugin management.
Overall, SiteGround suits small to medium-sized businesses, while WP Engine is ideal for larger projects that you want more help managing.
Check out the latest SiteGround review here for more details on this hosting solution.
WP Engine Vs Bluehost
Bluehost offers more affordable hosting plans suitable for beginners, while WP Engine specializes in managed WordPress hosting for advanced users.
Because of a dedicated WordPress infrastructure and premium tools, WP Engine edges Bluehost in terms of performance and speed.
Bluehost‘s setup process is easy and straightforward because it offers a free WordPress plugin that integrates with your cPanel, allowing for better collaboration with WordPress.
While WP Engine excels in support because of its dedicated team of WordPress experts spread in different locations.
If you want a more budget-friendly solution, choose Bluehost. For premium performance and tailored WordPress hosting solutions, choose WP Engine.
Wondering how WPEngine stacks up against other web hosting companies? See our side-by-side comparison to see for yourself.
WP Engine is targeted at specific customer segments, like developers, marketers, SMBs, agencies, and enterprise and delivers the right set of features to help those segments expand markets quickly and effortlessly.
For example, for developers, they make it easy to focus on development & design without dealing with hosting maintenance. Marketers can build and personalize their website using their built-in tools without having to focus on maintenance.
WPEngine invests a lot of resources on training, hiring, and managing a great support team, so you can count on them when in need.
If you want a managed WordPress hosting solution that also makes it easy to build, publish and personalize your site, WPEngine is the best choice for you.
All WPEngine plans include a money-back guarantee. 
I just stumbled across this review I gave for WPE back in 2012.
I can’t remember posting it here but have to say, 5 years on and still feel the same way about WPE – Great speed, service and support across all my sites.
As a developer and manager of my company’s custom wordpress site, I can’t say enough good things about WP Engine’s chat support. I’ve needed help with technical questions and troubleshooting several times since taking over the site and the chat tech support specialists are always excellent. I get really clear answers in a very timely manner and they often think of things I haven’t even thought of yet. All of my experiences at WP Engine have been great! I often recommend them to others as a fantastic service with superior customer support.
I have had used almost all the major hosting, hostgator, 1 and 1, green geeks, dream host ….many of the hosting sites are all one big conglomerate…
But I have found 1 that is smaller, US based, and their technical people are on top of everything, immediately….We use vps and most of our clients eventually transfer to them. MD Hosting…truly their support is in a class of their own. Privately owned and very competetive pricing. We have been on their hosting for over 2 years…its what hosting should be.
Easily the best host I’ve ever used!
Its worth it just for access to their support team. They’re all WP experts – and not just with regards to WP Engine. I’ve had support team members help me fix issues with my theme, plugins etc. They’ve probably saved me thousands in outsourced developers!
I can’t recommend them highly enough (and I’m not the kind of person who normally says this!)
“some plugins not allowed” That’s something that wouldn’t have occurred to me; do you know which plug-ins? is there a list somewhere to find out what they currently are?
WP Engine is great. It’s one of the best Managed WordPress out there. It is pricey but you get what you pay for. They offer the best support, WP features like staging and caching, and easy backup/restore.
The only downside is that they don’t offer IonCube on their new PHP 7. This should be the basics and something they should have considered when they installed PHP 7 on their site.
I have been working for our client and for the last one and half years also being a part of WP engine. WP engine sounds really awesome for me. 24/7 support, Daily Backups, Best Restore points, Free SSL Certificate, Inbuilt Security Checkups and etc etc etc. In all the way, i will suggest WP Engine to anyone who prefer to host WP sites.
I’ve had a wonderful relationship with them so far and find no reason to complain yet. I have actually recommended it to several people.
Interesting. I have never had an issues like that with them. Out of curiosity, which hosting would you recommend?