WordPress is the spine that supports many websites, and it makes total sense that a variety of web hosting platforms tailor their Webhosting services to fit WordPress sites. There are many WordPress hosting options to choose from in the market. One such hosting platform that we will cover today is WP Engine.
WP Engine is a WordPress hosting platform that gives businesses, companies, or organizations the performance, integration, and intelligence to grow and push businesses forward. WP Engine’s combination of an award-winning team of WordPress professionals and technological advancements is WP Engines’ secret to success.
It has managed to garner over 500,000 customers in 150 different countries. The company was founded in 2010 with its headquarters situated in Austin, Texas, and other offices in London, Tokyo, and Australia. Compared to other hosting platforms, WP is a big player in the hosting game. It managed to raise $250 million in funding by 2018, and right now, it’s most likely to have passed a billion mark by valuation.
With all that popularity and size, does that mean that WP Engine is the best-managed hosting platform? Not necessarily. It’s among the best hosting space, but it might not be the absolute king. This post will get a complete review of WP to understand what makes it gain all its praise
- WP Engine features and tools
- WP Engine’s Power Tools.
- Automated Migration
- Step by step process on how to migrate using WP migration Plugin
- Staging sites
- Disaster Recovery
- Offsite Backup
- Managed security
- Copy site
- Transfer billing
- Customer support
- GeoIP
- WP engine pros and cons
- Lacks email hosting
- High Visitor Overage Fees
- Expensive
- WP engine pricing plans
- Wrapping up
WP Engine features and tools
WP Engine has extensive digital experience features and tools. Whether you want to use an enterprise or personal plan, it doesn’t matter. WP’s many features can help you grow your online market. In a webinar, Tony Gilharry (WP’s Operations Manager) explained all the tools and features to expect from WP Engine. If you missed the webinar or just want a detailed recall of what was said, here are the features you can access on WP Engine.
WP Engine’s Power Tools.
Once you start an account with WP, your WordPress website will immediately be ready to use WP Engine’s power tool with no configurations necessary. Upon installation, you get a set of WordPress files customized database for the WP environment. You can log in and tweak your website to adjust the look and feel to suit you.
Automated Migration
The automated migration feature allows you to seamlessly migrate your WordPress Website to WP Engine from other hosting platforms. It’s completely hassle-free since you require only minimal tech knowledge. To make migration easier, WP partnered up with BlogVault to make an automated Migration Plugin. The plugin does everything for you, including searching, replacing domain values, and importing the database. This will give you time to work on another project you see fit.
Step by step process on how to migrate using WP migration Plugin
- First of all, you need to download and activate the plugin.
- Once you activate the plugin, you will be automatically redirected to the migration page containing a form to fill in details.
- Navigate to Site Migration to generate the SFTP Credentials.
4. Go back to the migration plugin within the WP-admin of the website you want to migrate from.
5. Type in an email address to receive updates on the status of the migration
6. Select the required boxes to agree to the terms of services.
7. Select get started. There you go; everything will run perfectly if you follow the steps correctly.
Staging Site
If you already have a website that you want to tweak or adjust some details. A staging site is a perfect solution, and it’s a clone of your live website where you can make changes and see the result before you go live.
Staging sites allow you to make changes or add new features in a protected and private environment. With this feature, you can catch and fix bugs and errors without affecting your live website. You can also use it as an opportunity to test out different themes, plugins, and codes. As a bonus, you can choose a specific section to clone from your live site into the staging platform and vice versa without altering your live website.
Disaster Recovery
Immediate disaster recovery is a feature that reassures users hard work is not lost no matter the situation. Disaster recovery simply is the procedure of conveying quick recovery to data systems in an emergency or disaster.
WP continuously fine-tunes the front-end users’ experience with deep investments in R&D. Through interconnected networks; WP Engine has figured out a way to reduce external and internal interruptions. Disaster recovery limits the extent of destruction and data loss.
The support personnel is trained to enact emergency procedures to aid the rapid restoration. WP aims to establish alternative means to counter the interruption of data, thus minimizing users’ financial and global risks.
Offsite Backup
Back-ups act as an insurance policy if you lose your content; we always hope that we won’t need backups, but it’s nice to know they are available if you do. WP Engine has a daily automatic backup stored in different geographical locations from users’ websites.
Back up consist of media library, file system content, a snapshot of the database, and media library. WP makes sure that users have everything in store to get you going in case your primary data is corrupted or lost.
Managed security
Security is a defining quality for any good hosting platform. After all, if they can’t assure you that your content is safe, why even bother using their services. Although security isn’t a feature and it’s based on your mindset WP Engine offers several security measures to strengthen the security of your website. They protect against hacking, data theft, and data corruption of the engine using Global Edge Security (GES).
The GES protects against has an enterprise-grade firewall to protect against:
- Cross-site scripting: This is when a hacker puts malicious code into an application to be used as a vehicle to trigger vulnerable websites or applications.
- Cross-site request Forgery refers to impersonating a user’s online session by hacking in the session cookie.
- SQL injection: These are attacks that happen when hackers try to put meta characters into a vulnerable website affecting database-driven websites.
Copy site
This feature primarily benefits users who mean to create more sites with a similar design. Using WP, you can replicate a site you have already completed with the copy site tool instead of starting a fresh one. Later you can swap the content to target the audience you want.
Transfer billing
This feature allows creators to build sites within the WP Engine users portal. Now you don’t have to manage clients’ hosting accounts; instead, you can create websites for your clients and transfer them to their platforms.
The clients will then receive a temporary URL to gain access to the site, and if they love the website, they can purchase an account. The website will be transferred to your client so that they can deal with the billing.
This feature makes it easier for website developers to build websites without the need to handle the bills. It can be pretty painful if you take your time, effort, and money to create a website and the client doesn’t pay you for the task.
Customer support
One of the aspects WP engine prides itself on is its support team’s contribution to handle users’ needs and queries. Through their support team, users are enabled to ask and receive answers about technical issues. WP engine support team even won a Stevie Award for delivering the best Customer Service Department each year.
GeoIP
Geo IP enables users to utilize a site visitor’s location to offer targeted services or products relevant to their location. This enables Wp Engine users to reflect websites in their client’s currency, languages, and content relevant to their geographic location.
Business owners who leverage this tool gain an edge over others since they get a broader market to sell products.
Since we understand its features, let’s talk about what you might like and dislike in the Wp engine.
A Complete WP-Engine Review pros and cons
Let us start on a good note by stating all the shortcomings that come with the WP engine.
Lacks email hosting.
This disadvantage is not only found in WP Engine. Most hosting-managed WordPress platforms experience the same shortcoming. This means you don’t have access to create your email address, i.e., (user@yoursite.com.)
However, you can use a third-party email hosting platform and incorporate it into the domain name. Here are a few options you can try:
- Google Workspace
- MxRoute
- Fastmail.
High visitor overage fees
WP Engine’s pricing plan has a monthly visit limit. When your website passes the set mark limit of visitors, you won’t be cut off, but you will incur extra overage charges.
For every 1000+ visitors past your limit mark, you incur a $2 bill, which is quite annoying, although most hosting services have the same rules but with different charges. If you can maintain your plan’s limit, you don’t have to worry, but if you constantly pass your limit, the fees can add up and become bothersome.
Expensive
WP Engine’s plan is more expensive as compared to other web hosting services. To be fair, it has a variety of features compared to the cheaper hosting services, but it would be nice if their prices were a bit more flexible.
Those are the major shortcomings you will face when using WP Engine. Now let’s have a look at what’s in store on the other side of the coin. Here are a few pros of the WP engine:
- A proven top-notch support team.
- Incur no charges to fix a hacked website hosted by WP Engine
- Free and automatic data and restore Backup.
- Although it’s a bit pricey, you get a 60-day free trial.
- Ever catch tech making faster page loading.
- The staging area helps to test out new elements or catch bugs.
- Introduction of transfer features, i.e., Billings, installs, and more.
It’s time to deal with the elephant in the room, pricing plan. WP engine has three different pricing plans they can offer clients.
WP engine pricing plans.
WP engine offers a basic plan, starting at ($35 in a month); this offer supports only a single WordPress install,50 GB of data transfer in a month, a minimum of 25,000 monthly visitors, and up to 10 GB of space.
Their second offer, known as the growth plan, starts at ($115in a month). This offer supports five WordPress installs, with a 100,000-visitor limit,200 GB of data transfer in a month, with 20GB of space.
Their premium plan starts at (\$290 in a month) which allows the usage of up to 15 WordPress installs, with 400,000 website visitor limits,400GB of data transfer in a month, and 30GB of space.
Their final offer is for high-end clients like companies or large businesses. With a high-end custom plan, you get a million-plus number of visitors in a month, with 400Gb of data transfer in a month and 1 TB of space. For a better understanding of their pricing plans, visit WP engine’s official webpage.
WP Engines plans all come with fantastic features that we have listed above.
A Complete WP-Engine Review - Wrapping up
WP Engine has the power to improve your business and speed up your business development. The fantastic features of WP can improve your website speed by 40 %, which will be better for your visitors and wallet. If you take advantage of all the automated managed upgrades, backups, and updates, you can save time to deal with other projects.
The other good thing about WP is that it’s accessible across all devices. Your visitors will be able to enjoy all the advantages your website can offer even on their mobile phones. Enjoy consistent peak performance with highly scalable solutions from robust in-built features optimized for WordPress sites.
It feels good to know that the WP support team has a rapid response. This ensures that you can get help in case you experience any bugs without facing delays. With all these robust features that WP Engine managed hosting platform offers, it seems fair that they have a bit pricier plan than other hosting platforms.
