SiteGround vs. WP Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SiteGround
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
SiteGround offers website hosting, as well as managed WordPress, managed Woo Commerce, fully managed cloud services available to support a variety of services, as well as reselling.N/A
WP Engine
Score 9.2 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
SiteGroundWP Engine
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Startup
$25.00
*Per Month
Growth
$95.00
*Per Month
Scale
$241.00
*Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SiteGroundWP 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
SiteGroundWP Engine
Considered Both Products
SiteGround
Chose SiteGround
Sadly, most web hosting companies are either not user-friendly or lack necessary features. No other web hosting company I've used has provided the level of reliability, features, and affordability that I've found with SiteGround with the exception of WP Engine which is a …
Chose SiteGround
None of the other hosting companies come anywhere close to SiteGround. It's the gold standard.
Chose SiteGround
The tech side of SiteGround Web Hosting is excellent and among the best, but I think the area where they shine the most is their customer support.
Chose SiteGround
GoDaddy and Bluehost offer grossly sub-par performance in 2017 for a price point that doesn't make sense. At least GoDaddy has great tech support - but I shouldn't have to rely on it as often as I do if all was working as it should.

inMotion was overly complex on the backend, …
WP Engine
Chose WP Engine
We were originally on GoDaddy until we got a malware attack on their shared server. Cleaning up an infected server is almost impossible, so we decided to jump ship and set up our sites on Site Ground. We needed faster hosting anyway. Site Ground was decent, but their customer …
Chose WP Engine
We've evaluated many hosting providers over the years and in fairness, we've now been with WP Engine for 5 years so I'd imagine each of them has improved over that time also. However, WP Engine's support team, product development, and user experience is better than any other …
Chose WP Engine
I selected Kinsta to replace WP Engine because their performance statistics, security configuration, and technical support prowess reminded me of WP Engine circa 2012 - top-notch.
Chose WP Engine
We used to use HostGator in the past. We feel they've gone downhill in the past few years. When other hosting companies offer free SSL certificates through the trusted "Lets Encrypt", HostGator still down't offer it (last I checked). Support takes a long time. Ability to use a …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
SiteGroundWP Engine
Small Businesses
Cloudways
Cloudways
Score 9.5 out of 10
Cloudways
Cloudways
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
WP Engine
WP Engine
Score 9.2 out of 10
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
Pantheon
Pantheon
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SiteGroundWP Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
9.3
(15 ratings)
9.2
(29 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.9
(4 ratings)
7.7
(6 ratings)
User Testimonials
SiteGroundWP Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
SiteGround
If you've got a WordPress site and are unhappy with the performance, support or price of your current hosting service, SiteGround is well worth checking out as it excels in all those areas. From a single one-off blog, to more robust hosting packages, they offer a range of options that are well-suited to any budget or service need. Everybody, from noobs to experienced developers needs support from time to time, and SiteGround's team is the best I've seen. Not only are they easy to communicate with and highly proficient to solve any issue I've thrown their way, they're also easy to reach with multiple access options with minimal wait times.
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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
SiteGround
  • You get a number of page views as a guide to your bandwidth, and a fixed amount of disk space on the server. So you know what you have to work with. No hazy promises of “unlimited” resources.
  • If you pay more, you’re allocated a server with fewer accounts, so there’s less chance you’ll be slowed down by your neighbors.
  • Its self-help material is pretty good — close to InMotion Hosting for knowledgebase quality.
  • SiteGround tackles slow speeds from all angles, using SSD storage, Nginx, SuperCacher, CloudFlare CDN, and HHVM.
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
SiteGround
  • Business model and clarity about prices after the second year
  • Server Performance when it's stressed or under a big volume of traffic
  • Upgrading model. Sometimes I felt like it was mandatory to update and pay more for basic needs, even with low traffic volumes
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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
SiteGround
No answers on this topic
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
SiteGround
No answers on this topic
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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Support Rating
SiteGround
I don't feel stress about the website and emails hosted with SiteGround. I like the customer/tech support, the agents are always polite and ready to find a solution. My websites are secure and has a free SSL certificate - I can get on with my business. The boost in speed to the webpage loads is a big bonus especially when designing and developing websites online. They also provide tips and how to videos on various topics which is valuable learning tool.
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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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Alternatives Considered
SiteGround
I used Namescheap in the past. I believe Namescheap is a big company compared to SiteGround, as big as godaddy. I think because of that, you get what you expect. Good services, but maybe more costly and you have to pay for everything as extra. Email $5, SSL $10, CDN $10 etc In my opinion, SiteGround actually has packages that make sense for wordpress hosting. If my website gets a lot of traction in the future, I will need to upgrade from the current plan and maybe move away from SiteGround.
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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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Return on Investment
SiteGround
  • All the sites I've set up at SiteGround are performing faster than they did at their previous hosting provider. This yields a superior customer experience and higher Google/SEO rankings.
  • Their service has been rock solid, necessitating little support (which is admittedly less than ideal for my support business, but a boon for my clients bottom line) and zero downtime.
  • Easy to get new sites up and running, which speeds creation of new businesses and rapid deployment of conceptual campaigns.
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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