WPEngine Review

Overall

We absolutely adore WPEngine as a hosting company, but there's one huge reason we can't recommend it to everyone: it's for WordPress users only. If you are a WordPress user, then read on! If not, you'll want to try one of our other recommendations.

If you care enough about your WordPress site — its security, scalability, load time, and uptime — to spend $29 per month on it, then WPEngine should be your web host from here forward. It's really that simple.

While WPEngine's price tag may scare off newbies, those who know WordPress will tell you just how impressive (and necessary) WPEngine's proprietary platform is. Always updated with the latest hardware to maximize server performance, WPEngine boasts a market-leading software layer built exclusively for WordPress users. This includes their own caching system to ensure your site is super-quick for visitors, a 1-click staging area, and constant security monitoring to ward off hackers.

For newbies, installing a WordPress theme and getting a site up and running couldn't be easier. For more advanced folks like myself, things like 1-click development staging areas, integration with Git, multiple server locations, CDN compatibility, and a ton of other niceties can't be beat. These features make that $29 monthly price worthwhile, compared to what the "cheap" hosts give you.

• WordPress-exclusive hosting

• Proprietary caching technology

• 1-click WordPress install

• FREE SSL and CDN ready

• 20% off your first payment (was $24.20/month, now $19.33)

Wordpress

Do you care enough about your WordPress site — its security, scalability, load time, and uptime — to spend upward of $24 per month on it? If you answered "yes," then WPEngine should be your web host from here forward. It's really that simple.

While WPEngine's price tag will scare off many, those who know WordPress will tell you just how impressive (and necessary) WPEngine's proprietary platform is. Always updated with the latest hardware to maximize server performance, WPEngine boasts a market-leading software layer built exclusively for WordPress users. This includes their own caching system to ensure your site is super-quick for visitors, a 1-click staging area, and constant security monitoring to ward off hackers.

For newbies, installing a WordPress theme and getting a site up and running couldn't be easier. For more advanced folks like myself, things like 1-click development staging areas, integration with Git, multiple server locations, CDN compatibility, and a ton of other niceties can't be beat. These features make that $29 monthly price well worth it compared to what the "cheap" hosts give you.

Plus, there's my personal favorite feature: the built-in caching system. This allows WPEngine sites to outperform almost all other WordPress sites without the use of plugins. This means you can focus more on your content and design and let the experts at WPEngine focus on ridiculously great performance

Features

The Fastest WordPress Hosting

• WPEngine has three datacenters (US, UK, and Japan), so your server can be close to your customers. This dramatically speeds up the delivery of your dynamic content.

• Their EverCache technology handles page, database, and object caching automatically, so you don't have to fuss with any caching plugins.

• They utilize in-RAM caching and have a CDN to make sure your static content is delivered as quickly as possible.

Ultimate Scalability

• Unlike most other hosts, WPEngine does not limit your data transfer. That means serving up large images, videos, and files is of no concern to you.

• Their hardware is top-of-the-line and is constantly being improved to bring you the best service possible.

• In addition to great hardware, they provide hardware quotas to make sure that sites can handle large traffic spikes with ease. Where most hosts would struggle to keep up, WPEngine can handle the traffic

Security, Security, Security

• If you have ever owned a website, you understand the vital importance of security, especially coming from your web host.

• WPEngine's experts, being WordPress experts as well, not only block the typical attacks on websites, but they ensure WPEngine sites are more resilient to WordPress-specific attacks.

• The WPEngine team automatically scans for malware, and they even guarantee that if your site is hacked, they will fix it for free.

Amazing Development Tools

• WPEngine really sets the bar high with their development tools. Our favorite is their 1-click staging area.

• WordPress has long been hampered by the lack of a "try it before it goes live" development area and WPEngine has solved this issue. We can't speak highly enough about this feature.

• In addition, single-click restore points and Git version control round out their amazing development tools.

Ease of Use

Based on our experience with WPEngine, we found the interface to be incredibly straightforward and the team was a pleasure. Their customer dashboard is incredibly responsive, fast, and simple to navigate. It is obvious that WPEngine has focussed on having a modern site and showing off their ease-of-use in every aspect of their business. Once our site was launched, we were in the typical wp-admin area of WordPress and were able to get a wait time of only 42 milliseconds for our first byte. I probably don't have to tell you this, but that is extremely fast!

Pricing

While at first glance WPEngine seems expensive, it turns out that they are extremely competitively priced for the amazing hosting. Not to mention, you can usually find a WPEngine coupon at DealCrunch or another site at checkout to save on whatever hosting plan you're purchasing. For most sites, the "Personal" plan is more than enough and all of their plans include all of their technology. The main difference between their plans is the amount of visitors you can have coming to your site (ranging from 25K to millions per month), the amount of WordPress installs (ranging from 1-25+), and the amount of local storage (10GB - 30+GB). Their WordPress expertise really puts them at the top of the food chain if you want to run a WordPress site.

Reliability & Support

With a 99.95% Service Availability guarantee, WPEngine has above-average reliability. Their support portal provides nice access to a knowledge base for the most commonly asked questions about their service, migration, and typical WordPress problems. In addition, they are available via online chat, phone, and a ticketing system. What is really nice is that the folks that are helping you are WordPress experts and can almost always help point you in the right direction. They're also really friendly!

WPEngine Includes

24/7 Phone, Chat, Knowledge Base, and Ticket System

Recap

If you are looking to run a WordPress site and performance is a big deal to you, look no further then WPEngine. Their state-of-the-art technology, including hardware and software, is second to none. In addition, their support includes WordPress experts that can provide guidance and expertise instead of just creating support tickets. We found our experience with WPEngine to be outstanding, and their service was both snappy and simple to use.

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