This is my honest and unbiased WP Engine review.
They are my current host of choice after moving from HostGator in 2015 who I had no end of problems with.
Wp-Engine call themselves the “hassle-free WordPress host” and claims to offer “the best fully managed WordPress Hosting Platform”.
Unlike many other hosts, WP-Engine specializes in hosting WordPress sites only for a more reliable, faster, and secure environment.
This means that in theory, your WordPress site will be much faster and more secure on WP-Engine than on other shared hosts who deal with websites in any format and aren’t specifically optimized for WordPress.
TLDR Summary:
I’m reviewing WP Engine the specialized WordPress hosts who I moved to from HostGator in 2015 after they proved to be unreliable.
My experience with WP Engine hasn’t been completely hassle-free but on the whole, is positive and I’ve had no major issues.
My website has NEVER been down unlike with HostGator where it was frequently.
They claim to be “WordPress experts” and whilst many of their staff are some of the support staff are clearly NOT at the level of expertise they need to be yet.
However on the whole my time with them has been overall positive and there have been no major problems with my site – it’s constantly up and runs at a decent speed.
What Is Wp Engine?
- Dedicated WordPress hosting for your WordPress website.
- Faster, reliable, and more secure hosting for WordPress users.
Features
- Built for WordPress only so your sites will run faster.
- One-click restore points with a single click so should your site run into any problems you can easily restore it.
- Staging area where you can make changes to your site without affecting the live site then once finished update the live site instantly – makes theme changes and other issues less risky.
- Unlimited data transfer.
- Lightning-fast load times for your website which will please your visitors.
- Dedicated environment giving your site room to breathe.
- International data servers so wherever your site is you’ll get fast load times.
- No caching plugins needed as WP-Engine has built-in caching.
- Strong firewall to repel attacks and hacking attempts.
- Malware scanning to find and fix viruses and they will fix them for free.
- Automatic daily backups of your site so you don’t have to worry about it.
- Live support for your burning questions.
Who’s It For?
- Anyone who’s running a WordPress website and looking for faster and more reliable hosting.
- Anyone who’s fed up of their shared host constantly being down or causing problems for their website.
- Anyone who’s looking for a host for the first time and wants to avoid any potential problems with the cheaper hosts before they even happen.
Pros & Cons
- As dedicated to WordPress it makes for a faster and more reliable host than most cheap shared hosts.
- Automatic backups means no need for back up plugins or manual time consuming backups.
- One click restore points means it’s easy to restore your site should their be an issue with your theme or a plugin that causes the site to crash.
- Virus scanning and malware attempts allow you to put your mind at rest and worry about running your website.
- Staging area means you’ll never have to risk affecting your live site when making changes.
- Different price options for your needs.
- Limited to a certain amount of visitors per month and they count any traffic including bots as a visitor so it’s very easy to go over your monthly visitor allowance and be charged for it
- Live support rarely available and support team whilst usually quick often lack in knowledge or use lots of tech-talk and jargon whilst not explaining anything they tell you.
- Support don’t always take responsibility for issues and like to claim it’s your issue or someone elses and not them only for them later to agree it is an issue with themselves.
- Not always as fast as WP-Engine would lead you to believe it should be.
- For so called WordPress Experts many of their support staff seem to be far from it.
- Support staff tried to get me to upgrade my package as I was going over my visitor limit only for me to realize by upgrading I’d pay more than if I just paid my current plan + the overcharge fee.
- Transferring a website from your old host to WP-Engine is NOT easy unless you’re very technically minded but support staff will help if you’re really struggling and cannot do it.
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Price & Guarantees
Prices range from $29 to $249 per month.
For one website with under 25,000 visitors per month (remember that included bots and all non real people and can amount to over 10,000 per month) the personal plan will be fine.
If you have more than 1 website (max 10) or need up to 100,000 visitors per month then the pro plan is for you.
If you need up to 25 sites and 400,000 visits then the business plan is what you require.
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They have a 60 day, risk-free, refund guarantee in place so if you’re not happy you can cancel, go back to your old host, and get a full refund.
When I purchased I used the following discount code to get 6 months for just $4 a month, click to try it: ARTOFBLOG
Members Opinions
I’ve scoured around the net looking for unbiased WP Engine reviews…..
They claim “our customers love us”.
Some might but certainly not all.
As fellow blogger Matt Woodward points out in his post “How WP Engine Hijacked My Business”
“When I first moved my hosting over to WP Engine I was highly impressed. They were very helpful, support took ownership of problems and site speed was incredible.
As someone that has been in the game as long as I have it is rare to find a hosting company that provided the level of support they did.
But over the past 8 months things have really started to go downhill with WPEngine in a serious way. I have gone from singing their praises to everyone I meet to telling everyone to avoid them”
However I found more glowing reviews than I did bad ones…
WPBeginner.com
“WPEngine is VIP WordPress hosting. Their hassle-free hosting offers fast and robust servers that can handle anything. Your website is practically hacker proof, and their mind-blowing customer service makes you feel like king. ”
WPExplorer.com
“Being highly customized for WordPress is the intention and for that WP Engine is in a league of their own. Yes, I’m a convert – not ashamed of it at all.”
mmomeltingpot.com
“Basically, I’ve decided to stay with WPEngine not because they provide very expensive hosting – although it’s excellent – but because they provide a very cheap, very good, very agreeable full-time dedicated sysadmin for my blog.
Which means I can concentrate on, you know, writing it.”
Wpmudev.org
“While their services don’t come cheap, you have to weigh up how much time you spend managing your websites compared to how much money you are willing to spend to reclaim that time. Despite my dissatisfaction with support, WP Engine is a fantastic hosting option for WordPress sites.”
Alternatives
The main alternatives to WP Engine are SiteGround and Traffic Planet Hosting.
I have used neither however SiteGround was recommended to me by Dave Schneider at SelfMadeBusinessMan.com and I trust his recommendations.
I actually tried to move from HostGator to SiteGround but due to a problem with my theme, they were unable to load my site on their servers, and believe me they tried.
They even went ahead and did a full analysis of my theme to see if they could figure out what the problem was but could draw no conclusions.
Not bad for someone who hadn’t even become a customer yet. So if nothing else their support is top-notch.
Traffic Planet Hosting is owned by Terry Kyle. One of the best SEO’s in the business and well respected and trusted.
I’d have no problem using his hosting if WP Engine was no longer an option and I know that Matthew Woodward has moved over there and from what I’ve read so far so good.
Final Opinion of Product
Wp Engine is certainly better than the most well known shared hosts like HostGator and Bluehost because they specialize in WordPress.
This makes for a much faster, reliable, and more secure experience for WordPress sites.
Whilst my time with them hasn’t been hassle-free and there’s been a lot of frustrations mostly with the support staff and the answers they give (which usually make no sense as they are tech-talk) overall I haven’t had too many problems with them.
My site was down frequently with HostGator and very slow. It’s never down with WP Engine and it’s faster.
However, reading about Matt Woodward’s experience with them scares me. Whilst I think it was probably more of a one off incident the fact that it happened is worrying.
Do I Recommend WP Engine?
Yes. I do.
However…
But keep in mind that they aren’t as incredible as they want you to think and there may be problems with them just like there can be with any other company.
My experience hasn’t been hassle-free and they aren’t as good as they like to claim but overall I’ve had no major problems.
The charging for all visitors to the site even bots, of which over 10,000 a month apparently visit my site that I can’t verify, annoys me but other companies do this too not just WP Engine.
The support staff frustrates me as they aren’t all very knowledgeable, talk in tech-jargon, and don’t always take the responsibility they should.
However my website is fast and constantly live, the staging area environment and backup points are a god send and overall the experience has been positive compared to my previous host.
Moving hosts is a real hassle and at the moment I have no good reason to move away from WP-Engine so for now I’m staying here.
Still at the back of my mind is Matt Woodward’s horrible experience and he’s the reason I moved to WP Engine in the first place.
So whilst I do recommend WP Engine for anyone who’s having problems with their cheap shared hosting make sure you’ve done your own research and came to your own conclusions.
Of course there’s no guarantee that you’ll have a hassle free experience with them but nothing in life is guaranteed, is it?
I hope you find my WP Engine reviews useful and can make a decision based on my experience with them.
Let me know if you use them yourself and what your experiences are below…
