WP Engine - They Stay Up And Running
November 19, 2014

WP Engine - They Stay Up And Running

Joe Preston | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with WP Engine

WP Engine was the blog host for a busy corporate blog. We migrated there from shared hosting. There was not a lot of PHP expertise in the organization, or experience with self-managed web hosting, so WP-Engine was an appealing alternative at the price point and level of service. After several outages and configuration problems with shared hosting and the collective "Welp" from the development staff, I decided an upgrade was necessary.
  • Great reliability
  • Great Communication
  • A point of view and demonstrated expertise with the unique challenges of WordPress.
  • Dedicated to Wordpress, servers optimally tuned to take advantage of WordPress use cases.
  • They changed our pricing and charged the card without informing me in advance. They made good on that, but that was kind of a "Huh?" moment for me (and the accounting department).
  • Their attitude about plugin management, including the global restriction of some plugins to optimize for the WPEngine experience across all clients, is quite different from most blog hosts and takes some getting used to. Reducing the flexibility of WordPress is crippling one of WordPress's key business advantages.
  • Overage charges! Overage charges combined with restricting plugins in part due to bandwidth concerns. That's two levels of reduced service to me, for the good of the community-at-large (or is it for the good of WP Engine?). Overall, these three points coordinate into a story about WP Engine that suggests they don't really have the Customer Experience on the same priority as micromanaging the return per customer.
  • Development (staging) server to avoid breaking the blog with changes to the widgetry. - Mild Positive
  • Uptime and Communication - Big Positive
  • Integrated Customer Service Area with WordPress Admin - Mild Positive
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.
If you are sitting on a huge bucket of money; your boss decrees "It shall be WordPress", and you don't have experienced Apache server admins - man, save yourself 17 headaches and run to WP Engine.

Using WP Engine

3 - Social Media Manger
Web Developer
Me
1 - PHP is nice but not necessary.
WordPress experience is highly recommended for all WordPress-dependent sites.
  • Hosting the blog is all they do.
  • WordPress sites are quite flexible. Often this will be the most flexible publishing platform available. You can host landing pages, widgets and other promotions easier there than on most CMS's or e-commerce apps.

WP Engine Support

They are quite responsive and not done. I liked the support team's personalities overall and when there were problems, they were quite helpful. I did, in fact, feel special at WP Engine.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
Immediate help available
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
Need to explain problems multiple times
Yes - Most times yes. When it ran afoul of a vague policy about certified plugins in Wordpress, I did not resolve that to my satisfaction.
After they changed the billing terms without prior notification, they comepnsated with a huge credit. I question the approach for sure, but not the response. ;)