WP Engine Review: Top 5 Benefits in 2022

If you are a WordPress Website Developer, you know the importance of using a good web hosting company. In this blog post, we will be talking about the top 5 benefits of using WP Engine.

One of the premier hosting companies today, WP Engine has been a massive name in the industry for a few years now.

You may be asking yourself what makes them so good. And what benefits come along with their hosting services. Well, we’re going to explore those benefits in this article.

We’ll also go over the drawbacks of WP Engine and its costs. With this information, you can decide whether WP Engine is the right solution.

Are you a WordPress Website Developer?

You know how important it is to use a good web hosting company if you are. WP Engine is that company.

With so many web hosting companies, it can be hard to decide which one is the right fit. This blog post will talk about the benefits of using WP Engine. 

WP Engine has powerful features which make it the perfect web hosting company for WordPress Website Developers. Some of these include;

1. Access to expert support whenever you need it.
2. An amazing caching system that makes your website load lightning-fast.
3. Security features that are top-notch and keep your website safe from hackers.

Let’s jump into the top 5 benefits of using WP Engine without further ado!

Key WP Engine Features

WP Engine offers a plethora of tools. Here are five features that set it apart from its competitors.

1. Managed WP Hosting

One of the benefits of using WP Engine is that it supports only WordPress. As a result, you receive an excellent support staff that is very familiar with WordPress.

WP Engine offers a variety of tools for basic WordPress websites and the most sophisticated ones too. This covers headless and large E-Commerce deployments.

Each site has a custom-built WordPress-specific control panel. Hence, Plesk or Cpanel is not available here. Likewise, the management toolset is custom-made for WordPress.

WP Engine user portal has a two-factor authentication option. With 2-factor authentication, you must use an additional passcode after entering your username and password. You can do this with the Google Authenticator, and there is support for Microsoft and Zoho alternatives.

This security measure requires you to provide factors beyond a password to gain access to your account. Taking extra precautions makes your WP engine panel more secure.

WP Engine has also been doing WordPress-specific sites on its cloud hosting for over ten years. In this time, they have built a great network of partners that you can find on the WP Engine agency partner portal. Additionally, you can access the agency directory portal on the company’s website to browse for a partner that may suit you.

2. Smart Plugin Manager

The Smart Plugin Manager automatically checks your plugins for updates every night. This ensures that if upgrades are available, your site does not break. In addition, by applying machine learning and visual testing, you may proceed with confidence that your plugins are up to date, your site is up, and it’s secure.

It’s not perfect, but it is better than blindly running your updates.

3. WP Engine’s Global Edge Security

Global Edge Security (GES) is an advanced security solution with WP Engine DDoS protection and a Web Application Firewall (WAF). Its main intention is to keep your sites secure while providing a faster client experience. WP Engine’s Global Edge Security builds on the platform’s existing security benefits. These include managed core updates, two-factor authentication, and daily backups.

The GES setup uses Cloudflare, which protects your site and makes it function well. Besides, Cloudflare’s AI-powered PNG decoder optimizes your pictures with Cloudflare’s polish.

GES eliminates the need for most websites to have an image optimization plugin. This allows you to keep your WordPress website free from yet another plugin.

4. Automated Backups

Few things are more frustrating than finding out that you have lost hours of diligent work. This could happen because of an unexpected problem, assault, or failure.

But, one of WP Engine’s most remarkable benefits is the automated backups. It backs up your site each night, so you can relax knowing that it’s safe. That is to say; you may even go back to previous versions of your WordPress website if the need arises.

Furthermore, if you have any questions or concerns about backups (or any other aspect of your WordPress site), the WP Engine support staff is available via chat support.

5. Chat Support

WP Engine assists 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. To get one-on-one help, log in to your WP Engine account.

In my experience, the chat support is good. The staff isn’t as well trained as Kinsta’s chat support, but they’re good enough.

WP Engine has more than chat support. It also has a ticketing system, a distinct benefit of the hosting company over Kinsta.

You can also get on the phone with their support team.

The escalation support can have you talking to true industry experts from WP Engine. For the price of these plans, that is a significant value that one cannot underestimate.

6. WooCommerce Search Tools

WP Engine has Instant Store Search (powered by ElasticPress). It provides shoppers with fast results that show the most valuable and relevant items.

Features like autocomplete and “did you mean?” are great for impressing customers and boosting conversion rates. With a single click, you can activate the search on your website. The search engine is built on top of ElasticPress, the industry leader in WordPress search for WooCommerce.

43% of shoppers use an on-site search. That is to say; these users are twice as likely to buy compared with shoppers that don’t search. Empowering a great search can increase checkout conversion by 18%.

The Cost of WP Engine

WP Engine has different hosting plans, including Startup, Growth, Scale, and Custom plan. These plans start at USD 25 per month, which is quite good value. So if you are looking to grow your agency or need a plan for one site, there are packages to fit all scenarios.

Moreover, if you are an agency, you can get bulk buying options that lower site costs. Where WP Engine also provides dedicated solutions. But, these are more costly. And if you need a custom solution, Cloudways or WPMU would be worth looking at to ensure you get the best value.

Get more information on the different plans offered and their prices on our partner page.

Note: Every hosting plan includes free SSL, an excellent user portal, and many options for data centres, including Australia.

Key Strengths of WP Engine

When looking at WP Engine and comparing it to other managed WordPress hosts, we have found these are the key strengths of their solution.

• 3 environments per site. These are all well resourced, unlike Kinsta where you only get an under resource staging site.
• SSH with WP CLI. Having SSH saves us a bunch of time.
• LocalWP Integration
• Chat support. You can get in touch with a team of experts on the phone.
• Agency support is great.

Pro Tip: WP Engine offers three environments per site. These are production, staging and development environments.

Key Weaknesses of WP Engine

Even with the listed benefits from WP Engine, there exist drawbacks. The hosting company is not perfect as they have some weaknesses that can be frustrating.

1. The database is underpowered. You will often get 500 errors in PHP My Admin and the SQL can be a bit slow.
2. No cron-jobs. You can run crons but WP Engine has a weird way of running crons that is not in line with standard WordPress.
3. Limits to WP Config editing. You can’t just make a WP Config edit. You have to use support so as to make this happen.
4. Limited Revisions. This is the most annoying for me. Why in 2022 do we have limited revisions on a host? This generally comes down to the low-powered database servers we already mentioned.
5. Limited Cloudflare Access. With GES security, you cannot access Cloudflare web rules or the control panel. The support team is also limited in how they can access this.
6. Multisite costs extra and the clone tools are not great for multisite. Hence if you want multisite, you could consider WPMU hosting.

The MRK WP Recommendation

At MRK WP, our go-to for WordPress hosting is WP Engine. The local development integrations and cost-effective GES support are the benefits of using WP Engine that you can enjoy. These make it good value, considering other managed hosts in the same price range.

WP Engine will be perfect for your needs without breaking the bank if you have a standard WordPress Installation. It also provides more advanced options like three staging environments per account. This way, you can accommodate more extensive projects with many developers working on them simultaneously.

For any client who has an active WooCommerce store or wants to build one in the future, we recommend using WP Engine’s Instant Store Search (Powered by ElasticPress). It can boost conversion rates by 18%.

We have chosen WP Engine as our technology partner. So if you visit our partner page, you could get yourself an attractive discount.