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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    WordPress

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AWordpress is an open-source publishing platform popular with bloggers, and a content management system, known for its simplicity and modifiability. Websites may host their own blogging communities, controlling and moderating content from a single dashboard.

    $3

    per month 6 GB storage

    WP Engine

    Score7.4 out of 10
    N/AWP 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.

    $35

    per month

    Pricing
    WordPressWP Engine
    Editions & Modules
    Personal
    $4
    per month 6 GB storage
    Premium
    $8
    per month 13 GB storage
    Business
    $25
    per month 50 GB storage
    Commerce
    $45
    per month 50 GB storage
    Enterprise
    Contact for pricing
    Startup
    $35
    per month
    Core
    $400
    per month (annual contract)
    Enterprise
    Custom
    *Per Month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    WordPressWP Engine
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsPricing for Business and Commerce plans vary on number of GB.Discount available for annual billing on the Startup plan.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    WordPressWP Engine
    Considered Both Products
    Automattic
    Chose WordPress
    I've just been using WordPress forever so it is my go to recommendation for non technical people
    Incentivized
    Chose WordPress
    I have only used Shopify as an alternative website/e-commerce builder. Whilst Shopify has better functionality, particularly for an online store, WordPress has more capability to build a comprehensive website with large volumes of content and integrations with other platforms.
    Incentivized
    WP Engine
    Chose WP Engine
    WP Engine provides premium WordPress hosting. I haven't dealt with other dedicated WordPress hosts, except for WordPress.com by Automattic, which is good, but WP Engine is professional-grade, dedicated WP hosting. I have found that generally, non-dedicated WordPress hosting …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    WP Engine blows all these hosting companies out of the water when it comes to WordPress hosting. I ultimately moved to WP Engine when my to WordPress sites continued to go down, performed slowly, or got to the point where they were impossible to manage. Now, if I see someone …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    WP Engine is the preferred platform among all the competition I've worked with. Their support is second to none, as is their dedication to their customers and partners, which, more than anything, is the key difference I see vs other organizations. They are best in class, …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    WP Engine and Go Daddy both had great support offerings and were both very competent when it comes to hosting websites. We chose WP Engine because their platform was just much easier to use and our marketing personnel could perform the majority of the essential daily tasks that …
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    I have worked with other top web hosting companies and none offer the simplicity of WP Engine. WP Engine is more expensive, however we deem the cost justifiable for the features that are included.

    Other web hosts are simple boxes that give you more control, however do not offer …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    We tried to run this site on Wordpress-optimized versions of hosting offered at MediaTemple and GoDaddy... neither sufficed.
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    WP Engine blows these guys out of the water in regards to reliability, security and customer support
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    Prior to WP Engine, we had an off-site consultant hosting our site. It was terribly inconvenient and counterproductive. We selected WP Engine because the platform is intuitive and the price is very reasonable. I've never used another hosting service, so I can't speak to how …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    WP Engine was cheaper than the alternatives, and our site was already present on their servers. It wasn't so much a choice of WP Engine over another hosting company as it was a choice to stay with WP Engine rather than invest the time required to switch to another provider. All …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    There's no comparision in terms of reliability, uptime, convenience, flexibility, pricing, and especially, tech support. WPEngine support is just simply superb. GoDaddy support cannot come close, nor can the others. inMotion Hosting has been very unreliable of late. So was A2 …
    Incentivized
    Chose WP Engine
    WP engine is good if you don't want to do all of the IT work such as back up, website scaling, website performance, etc. Of course you will have complete control over customization.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    108 Answers
    89%
    Would buy again
    17 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    109 Answers
    84%
    Delivers good value for the price
    16 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    109 Answers
    84%
    Happy with the feature set
    16 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95 Answers
    83%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    15 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    100 Answers
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    Features
    WordPressWP Engine
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of WordPress and WP Engine
    Feature
    WordPress
    8.1
    159 Ratings
    2% below category average
    WP Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions8.1159 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of WordPress and WP Engine
    Feature
    WordPress
    7.9
    134 Ratings
    1% above category average
    WP Engine
    -
    Ratings
    API7.9124 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language7.8103 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of WordPress and WP Engine
    Feature
    WordPress
    8.1
    166 Ratings
    3% above category average
    WP Engine
    -
    Ratings
    WYSIWYG editor7.8151 Ratings00 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness7.3152 Ratings00 Ratings
    Admin section8.3164 Ratings00 Ratings
    Page templates8.7160 Ratings00 Ratings
    Library of website themes8.7162 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design8.5161 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publishing workflow8.1154 Ratings00 Ratings
    Form generator7.1131 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of WordPress and WP Engine
    Feature
    WordPress
    8.2
    164 Ratings
    9% above category average
    WP Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Content taxonomy8.1142 Ratings00 Ratings
    SEO support7.9148 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bulk management7.5125 Ratings00 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions9.2152 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community / comment management8.2152 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    WordPressWP Engine
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    Flywheel
    Score4.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Rackspace Managed Hosting
    Score9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    WordPressWP Engine
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.6
    (203 ratings)
    8.5
    (31 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    3.7
    (38 ratings)
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    8.1
    (50 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    Availability
    9.5
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.6
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (11 ratings)
    7.7
    (6 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    WordPressWP Engine
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Automattic
    Wordpress is a great solution for a website of nearly any type. It may not be as suitable if a fully custom solution or app is needed, and it does have some limitations when it comes to connecting it to external products (especially if the product doesn't have any support from a native system), and it does require a lot of testing. Multiple plugins in one install are common but also increase the risk of conflicts, and when those do occur, it can be exceptionally time-consuming and tedious to identify what is causing the issue. As third parties create many plugins, you're also at risk with each potential security breach, which needs to be kept in mind. I would be cautious to use WordPress to store any sort of sensitive PPI. That said, it's a wonderful, easily customizable solution for many, many different types of websites and can allow even inexperienced client users with low-tech knowledge to update basics.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Automattic
    • Easy to use User Interface
    • Coding / Plugin Implementation is awesome
    • There's always a solution available for the platform
    • Security is easy to use and robust
    • Implementation with 3rd party platforms, such as Google's variety of tools
    • Can download and host on your own server or use their hosted servers
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Automattic
    • WordPress breaks often so you need to have someone who understands how to troubleshoot, which can take time and money.
    • Some plugins are easier to customize than others, for example, some don't require any coding knowledge while others do. This can limit your project if you are not a coder.
    • WordPress can be easily hacked, so you also need someone who can ensure your sites are secure.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Automattic
    The complications we have and the lack of support. Every plugin has a differente team of support in charge and make one plugin work with the other one always affects the website performance. It's a thousand times better to have only one provider with all functionalities included unless you are an expert web developer or have a team dedicated to it
    Incentivized
    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.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Automattic
    Extremely easy to use and train users. It took very little time to get everyone trained and onboarded to start using WordPress. Anytime we had any issues, we were able to find an article or video to help out or we were able to contact support. The menu options are well laid out so it is easy to find what you are looking for.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    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
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Automattic
    Anyone can visit WordPress.org and download a fully functional copy of WordPress free of charge. Additionally, WordPress is offered to users as open-source software, which means that anyone can customize the code to create new applications and make these available to other WordPress users.
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Automattic
    Mostly, any performance issues have to do with using too many plugins and these can sometimes slow down the overall performance of your site. It is very tempting to start adding lots of plugins to your WordPress site, however, as there are thousands of great plugins to choose from and so many of them help you do amazing things on your site. If you begin to notice performance issues with your WordPress site (e.g. pages being slow to load), there are ways to optimize the performance of your site, but this requires learning the process. WordPress users can learn how to optimize their WordPress sites by downloading the WPTrainMe WordPress training plugin (WPTrainMe.com) and going through the detailed step-by-step WordPress optimization tutorials.
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Automattic
    I give this rating, which I believe to be a great rating for a community based support system that's surrounding it. Most platforms and products have their own, and as WordPress does have their own team that help here and there, a lot of it's handled by community involvement with dedicated users who are experts with the system who love to help people.
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Automattic
    Varies by the person providing training. High marks as it's incredibly easy to find experienced individuals in your community to provide training on any aspect of WordPress from content marketing, SEO, plugin development, theme design, etc. Less than 10 though as the training is community based and expectations for a session you find may fall short.
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Automattic
    It is very easy to find online resources to learn how to do just about anything with WordPress.
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Automattic
    WordPress is not a great solution if you have: 1) A larger site with performance / availability requirements. 2) Multiple types of content you want to share - each with its own underlying data structure. 3) Multiple sites you need to manage. For very small sites where these needs are not paramount, WordPress is a decent solution
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Automattic
    WordPress isn't as pretty or easy to use as certain competitors like Jimdo, Squarespace or HubSpot, but it makes up for it with its affordability, familiarity and the ability to find quality outside help easily. The same can't be said for certain competitors, as you might need to find an expert and it could get costly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Automattic
    WordPress is completely scalable. You can get started immediately with a very simple "out-of-the box" WordPress installation and then add whatever functionality you need as and when you need it, and continue expanding. Often we will create various WordPress sites on the same domain to handle different aspects of our strategy (e.g. one site for the sales pages, product information and/or a marketing blog, another for delivering products securely through a private membership site, and another for running an affiliate program or other application), and then ties all of these sites together using a common theme and links on each of the site's menus. Additionally, WordPress offers a multisite function that allows organizations and institutions to manage networks of sites managed by separate individual site owners, but centrally administered by the parent organization. You can also expand WordPress into a social networking or community site, forums, etc. The same scalability applies to web design. You can start with a simple design and then scale things up to display sites with amazing visual features, including animations and video effects, sliding images and animated product image galleries, elements that appear and fade from visitor browsers, etc. The scaling possibilities of WordPress are truly endless.
    Read full review
    WP Engine
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Automattic
    • Allowed us to being all websites under a single umbrella, saving costs on similar products.
    • It's increased our website turn time and made us faster and more efficient at launching websites.
    • Edits and tweaks happen much faster as we have a customized environment.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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