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.
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.
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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.
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
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…
“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. ”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
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.
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.
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…