Cloudflare vs. WP Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud is a unified platform of cloud-native services designed to help enterprises regain control over their IT environments. Powered by an intelligent, programmable global cloud network, it is built to offer security, performance, visibility, and reliability.
$20
per month
WP Engine
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
WP Engine is a website hosting service built to host WordPress for companies of any size, with features such as daily backups, firewall,SSL, and proprietary caching technology.
$29
per month
Pricing
CloudflareWP Engine
Editions & Modules
Pro
$20
per month
Business
$200
per month
Free
Free
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Startup
$25.00
*Per Month
Growth
$95.00
*Per Month
Scale
$241.00
*Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CloudflareWP Engine
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details*Pricing for annual contract.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CloudflareWP Engine
Considered Both Products
Cloudflare
Chose Cloudflare
  • It doesn't work precisely as Cloudflare (which is focused on that part between user requests and data traffic). Still, we've been using DreamHost as a nameserver for a few websites, and it works but doesn't offer the same capabilities in that regard. It's just a hosting provider.
WP Engine
Chose WP Engine
For Acquia and AEM the major differentiator was the cost for WPEngine was significantly lower and we could use the more common WordPress CMS. AEM is better for large marketing sites that integrate with the Abobe Marketing Cloud and we didn't feel we could support Drupal on …
Chose WP Engine
I used a solution from Rackspace years ago which was just their dedicated server product (not available for selection above so had to choose managed hosting). They pretty much give you shell access to a box and then it's up to you to manage everything yourself. This is …
Best Alternatives
CloudflareWP Engine
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

SiteGround
SiteGround
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloud Internet Services
IBM Cloud Internet Services
Score 8.8 out of 10
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Akamai App & API Protector
Akamai App & API Protector
Score 8.1 out of 10
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CloudflareWP Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(175 ratings)
9.8
(29 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(4 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(8 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.9
(142 ratings)
7.7
(6 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
CloudflareWP Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
Cloudflare
Zero Trust Security: Cloudflare One, a SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) platform, helps organizations implement Zero Trust security models. This secures how users connect to applications and the internet, with identity-based security controls delivered close to the user. Protecting Internal Infrastructure: Cloudflare offers solutions like Cloudflare One to secure internal networks and devices, providing capabilities like secure web gateways, cloud access security brokers, and data loss prevention.
Read full review
WP Engine
I am an enterprise user of WordPress and host over 7000 sites with WPEngine. Areas that I think they are well suited for include customers that need enterprise-level support and uptime and have more complex needs than a simple blog. They also manage scale well with a variety of isolated install options that you can scale up or down depending on your contract needs. They also provide premier support for enterprises and have highly knowledgable Technical Account Managers that provide a significant value add. If I were to look at where it isn't as appropriate for usage I would focus on the low-end needs and say while they do support small sites, there are options out there for cheaper hosting that lack the support a WPEngine gives you.
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Pros
Cloudflare
  • The best part is the content delivery network. Cloudflare has a large network of data centres around the world that helps cache and delivers content quickly to our customers.
  • Cloudflare offers us with a fast and reliable DNS service and with the world class features such as Cloudflare workers, SSL verification, certificate management and web application firewall. When all of these are combined together, it provides very strict security for our organization.
  • One of the most important feature that we use is the analytics and threat detection. It provides us with the real time insights of all the threats originating from multiple locations and landing on our websites.
Read full review
WP Engine
  • 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.
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Cons
Cloudflare
  • In some cases, using Cloudflare can actually lead to slower website speeds if the network is congested or if the website's traffic is particularly heavy.
  • Some website owners may find that the level of customization offered by Cloudflare is limited, especially in comparison to other solutions.
  • While Cloudflare is easy to set up and manage, it may be too complex for users who are not familiar with web technologies.
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WP Engine
  • I'd like to see WP Engine offer their own monitoring solution. When I say monitoring, I mean specific use cases that may end up being something you could script. This would keep customers from having to pay for additional services like Pingdom, New Relic, etc.
  • I would like to see some proactive analysis done by WP Engine on their customer sites - at least on their home pages, and offer up suggestions. This kind of goes along with the other example.
  • Finally, it would be nice to see a "lighter" offering, perhaps a plan that costs $49 for those who want to host only a few sites, or even 1 site.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cloudflare
lower cost
Read full review
WP Engine
I was in a situation where I had to bolt Wordpress on to an existing infrastructure that could not support it. If I ever end up in that situation again, please kill me. Other than that reasonably common use case, I don't think it offers a lot of value over robust shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated servers.
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Usability
Cloudflare
Everything is extremely concise and all settings apply immediately and take effect globally. There is no reason to explicitly plan/think in terms of individual regions as one would have to traditional cloud offerings (AWS, OCI, Azure). All Cloudflare products integrate seamless as part of a single pipeline that executes from request to response.
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WP Engine
It took very little time to learn their dashboard for managing WordPress sites. Their built-in tools are really well done, and the addition of security and CDN tools is great.
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Reliability and Availability
Cloudflare
In 6+ years of relying on Cloudflare, I think we experienced one or two brief outages that were Cloudflare's fault.
Read full review
WP Engine
No answers on this topic
Performance
Cloudflare
Their Argo for the global network is the core feature we love.
Read full review
WP Engine
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cloudflare
I have only used their support a few times, and most times, they are responsive and able to resolve my issue with a minimal amount of time and effort. However, there was one instance where I simply asked about how to purchase some more resources (redirect rules), and I received some type of automated/AI response that was very unhelpful and gave me no opportunity to escalate to a person.
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WP Engine
Support is generally great. Enterprise support is fantastic, with little to no wait times. I find that chat support can almost always take care of the problem without escalating to a ticket for a higher level of troubleshooting. The chat support for many other hosting providers can only handle basic issues. This is a big bonus for us to get quick and helpful answers.
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Implementation Rating
Cloudflare
Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
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WP Engine
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cloudflare
They have the most generous free offering, and after the free offering limit is reached - you're still getting plenty of value for the buck.
They have very good reputation.
They have an ever expanding list of tools that can support multiple scenarios under one roof.
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WP Engine
While we still use GoDaddy for some services, WP Engine definitely has been a major upgrade for our WordPress hosting. In addition to faster load speeds, WP Engine has been more adept at allowing us to manage a high number of websites without straining the system. We have never used Network Solutions for our own hosting needs, but when we do interact with them on behalf of our clients, their systems always seem to be clunky and hard to use, and they often overcharge customers by selling them products they do not need.
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Scalability
Cloudflare
They are built for scale and have the capacity to handle all the traffic we could ever expect to get.
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WP Engine
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cloudflare
  • Immediate ROI on Registrar and DNS hosting while giving a single plane of glass to managing both with domain registrations at cost, and no cost DNS hosting
  • WAF helped us move at risk servers/applications into a protected state allowing us to perform remediations at a measured pace and get them done right instead of band aide solutions.
  • CDN proxying increase the speed of our website while simultaneously reducing server load.
  • DMARC management and report interpretation allow use to identify weak points in our email systems, remediate and move to stricter policies without significantly increasing staff time spent managing it.
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WP Engine
  • WP Engine reduces our time investment and upkeep costs which increases our margins.
  • WP Engine simplifies site management with a built-in development server, which saves us headaches.
  • WP Engine itself is positioned as a premium service, which allows us to use their branding as a tool to close sales.
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ScreenShots