Overall Satisfaction with WP Engine
WP Engine is my go-to host when clients want to host WordPress or improve their site. While there are cheaper solutions, WP Engine provides really good tools out-of-the-box, like database backups, built-in CDN and caching. The ability to easily create and staging sites and move the data to production makes this a great fit for small companies and large enterprises.
- I love the database backups and how quickly & easy it is to restore from an old backup point. This gives me & my clients confidence that any change can be rolled back.
- The built in caching & CDN mean that I have to spend less time worrying about the speed of the server & site. The caching has some side-effects that take getting used to (on-page dynamic PHP code sometimes needs to be moved to API endpoints), but this is true for most caching systems.
- They have really good support for multiple environments. It's very easy to have separate production & staging environments. It's also very simple to deploy from staging to production, making product launches and large scale website copy changes much easier to coordinate.
- In the past, setting up the DNS could be confusing when switching domains from an already live site. 2 years ago, during a launch, we had slight downtime because me & a devops engineer couldn't quite understand how to properly setup the DNS.
- I wish Wpengine provided and/or supported a tool to make local development easier to setup and get running. This is one thing I really love about Flywheel, and I often use Flywheel's tool for developing local sites that will eventually end up on WP Engine.
- It has saved me & my clients countless development and operational hours by utilizing the backup feature alone. There have been many instances where we saved a lot of time and headache by being able to rollback mistakes.
- The built-in tools like caching & CDN that speed up the page load are very valuable for getting production-ready websites up quickly. On other hosts, manually setting up the cache & CDN can take many hours if configuration issues arise.
- Being able to easily create seperate environments (like staging & dev) reduces the logistics & communication required when multiple end users are editing the site for a launch. All changes can go on the staging server, and then get "pushed" to production once everything has been tested.
I have used WP Engine for several years and love the service. Their technology, security, speed & support are unparralleled. I've had to file several support tickets & the experience was really good every time. Being a consultant & tech integrator, I often have to deal with B2B tool support services, and WP Engines is easily my favorite to deal with.
I would say that a great second choice is Flywheel. They have done an excellent job at creating a local development tool & their pricing is fair. I tend to still stay with WP Engine because of my previous experience & their quality support.
I would say that a great second choice is Flywheel. They have done an excellent job at creating a local development tool & their pricing is fair. I tend to still stay with WP Engine because of my previous experience & their quality support.