For serious organizations that leverage WordPress, you can't go wrong.
November 26, 2019
For serious organizations that leverage WordPress, you can't go wrong.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with WP Engine
WP Engine is a great platform as a service. We use it across the organization to manage our client's website backups etc. It does daily backups and creates a ready-to-use staging and development environment. For a lean, small company it is great that they've thought through a lot of the hard decisions for us, so we can be more creative.
We love the fact that they are so focused on their product, only serving the WordPress community. They do a great job. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention their support. They have people available via chat 24/7 which has bailed us out on many occasions. Their support knows WordPress, and is always willing to help.
We love the fact that they are so focused on their product, only serving the WordPress community. They do a great job. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention their support. They have people available via chat 24/7 which has bailed us out on many occasions. Their support knows WordPress, and is always willing to help.
- Support. Their 24/7 support is second to none. I use A2 hosting for my less important clients because of the cost, but if you want premium WordPress hosting and support, there is no parallel that I've found, period.
- Automatic daily backups. You don't need to do anything but show up and build sites. They have a great staging/backup system that never fails. I haven't found another service like it, without a ton of custom work.
- Genesis themes. This used to be a separate charge/company that they acquired. I used Genesis themes for long before WP Engine acquired them, but still can't recommend them enough. They make WP theme development much easier, and straightforward. You now get all of their themes included with your WP Engine account. Look up and follow Bill Erickson, who is one of the authorities on WordPress development, particularly around theme development with Genesis.
- It is pricey compared to a lot of competitors. However, you get what you pay for. If you're looking for cheap, look elsewhere. If you want great quality and support, for serious organizations, look at WP Engine.
- Their git version control management has been slightly behind the times but is improving as of late. It's almost its own codebase management tool at this point, but still valuable. For complex setups, it can cause some extra work, but for lean, mean startups, it can be great.
- It limits some of the plugins you can use in terms of speed and optimization. The plus side is that they vet their own list, but it is more controlled.
- We pay a good amount monthly for WP Engine, but we feel like we net positive financial and time results because of the support and pricing. We make sure to structure our accounts in a way that WP Engine is definitely a benefit to our organization and to the client.
- The math is simple for us. We charge our clients more than what we pay and everyone is happy. The peace of mind of the support is almost immeasurable in strictly financial terms, but a huge boost for our organization.
- Their free Let's Encrypt SSLs helped us to catch up to Google's SSL push of 2017/2018 and makes it easy for us to check off the security box for our clients.
I used to work for GoDaddy when they released their own WordPress hosting. It's not bad, but not nearly as well developed. They have too many irons in the fire if you ask me, and WP Engine is so laser-focused on WP hosting. A2 hosting is a great budget solution that is also based in the USA, but their support is nowhere near the level that WP Engine is at. I use A2 for some of my personal sites and clients, but for those that understand their budget better, WP Engine is the best overall balance of features vs. cost.
Do you think WP Engine delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with WP Engine's feature set?
Yes
Did WP Engine live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of WP Engine go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy WP Engine again?
Yes