Liquid Web vs. WordPress VIP vs. WP Engine

Liquid Web is suitable for serious users who have high end web applications or critical business oriented websites. cPanel and WHM comes out of the box with almost every server you buy. And if you don't have time to manage your own server, Liquid Web will suit you well. Their support is awesome. They help beyond the scope of the support. I had to migrate almost 25 big sites to another Liquid Web server, the support guys made it so easy for me.

Incentivized

WordPress VIP really changed the game when it comes to WordPress CMS and Content Management. A one-stop shop for all our client's business needs. We are focusing on Content Management instead of technicalities. The big advantage is the security features covering all recent vulnerabilities that any WordPress developer/user wastes lots of precious time fixing/updating. Performance-wise, WordPress VIP is definitely up there. We’ve been doing lots of optimization work over the last few years. Every client wants to score 100. With WordPress VIP we decreased the time spent on optimization significantly and now feel confident with taking more performance optimisation work than we did before. Lastly, maybe the most important for every business is the support quality. WordPress VIP runs a superb support team with phenomenal knowledge and expertise. Quick to respond and solves issues here and now. It is definitely recommended.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Customer Service — Amazing support, if needed.
• Site Speed — Our website sped up by 50% just by moving our hosting to Liquid-Web.
• Knowledge — We've learned a lot as an organization by following the Liquid Web blog.

Incentivized

• Keeps us informed of upcoming releases/patches associated with the Wordpress Platform.
• Introduces us to products/companies/Wordpress plugins as necessary when new business needs arise.
• Amy and Allie are excellent at managing the relationship; speaking with them on our monthly calls is a pleasure.

Incentivized

• 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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• The tutorial area is excellent, but perhaps they could add video tutorial.
• Chat conversations should be added automatically to the client portal.

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• Too many different dashboard formats
• Everything should have the same look and feel.
• The admin portal looks different than the user content portal

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

It's true enterprise ready hosting framework providing unparalleled hosting infrastructure for WordPress. Where an organisation has high load needs, but with stability and scale VIP delivers. It provides complete peace of mind that the hosting, security and scalability are taken care of and organisations can focus on developing out their website strategies

Incentivized

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.

There is documentation for everything you might need.

Incentivized

From the onboarding and in the days afterward, it was very easy to get into the platform and begin creating important websites and configuring user options. The interface is easy to navigate, and the platform pages load quickly. Since the platform is built for Word plus press, it has features including backup, staging, maintenance mode, and direct WP-Admin login to make configuration and site management faster. We have never had any issues on the billing side of the account.

Incentivized

The people who work for WordPress VIP clearly are passionate about representing the organisation. Therefore when support is required, they do go above and beyond what you may expect in terms of overall support. They take security very seriously, and due to the nature of VIP, it's rarely a concern for the end-user, if at all.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We evaluated Kinsta and WPEngine. Both offer great platforms but the lack of solid phone support and the substantial difference in server resource allocation made Liquid Web a clear winner.

Incentivized

Our team manages 4 different brands' websites and before WordPress VIP we were using multiple different hosts including DreamHost and AWS. These were convoluted and didn't offer the enterprise features for our organization that WP VIP was capable of. We also considered Pantheon, but they were not Wordpress-centric enough for the direction we were going.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Liquid-Web has made it easier for me to take my focus away from handling constant server issues to being able to focus on my actual job in managing our websites. While there may not be a concrete number for this scenario, being able to perform my tasks more efficiently definitely helps company growth in the long run.

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• Working as a WordPress VIP gold partner has helped our business grow from 12 staff to 28 staff in 2 years. They have brought many projects to the table that are always the right ones for us and they really understand our goals as a business.

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• 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.

Incentivized