Solid, dependable web hosting is one of the most critical factors for any already established or developing blog.
Choosing the best web hosting provider for your blog will be one of the most challenging things you will encounter.
Many fantastic solutions are available, mainly if your WordPress site is tiny or medium-sized.
For a modest site, inexpensive hosting like SiteGround is enough. Still, the work becomes challenging when your WordPress blog expands rapidly, and more server resources are needed to meet your rising traffic.
I've previously experimented with several hosting providers, including SiteGround, Cloudways, Kinsta, and others.
But, given the complexity of my WordPress setup (40+ plugins & several custom scripts), I decided to leave these providers and look for a solution that would provide me with total peace of mind.
My objective with the new host was to put hosting hassles behind me so that I could concentrate on what I'm excellent at blogging.
This is when I discovered WPEngine and learned about the finest managed WordPress hosting.
I decided to join up and pay $290/month for their hosting services after considering the variety of options provided and the fully "hassle-free hosting" accessible for WordPress.
You must be wondering why I would spend so much when I could get a dedicated server for the exact cost.
The answer to this sensible query is that I once again wished for perfect tranquility of mind. Due to my experience, I firmly believe that: • Time is money. Thus I didn't want to spend an hour a day (or even an hour a week) dealing with hosting difficulties.
My review of WPEngine and the reasons I permanently stopped using the service
After extensive research, I ultimately switched to WPEngine and decided to pay the $290/month hosting fee for ShoutMeLoud.
I received hosting of the advertised quality, and WPEngine worked well for me until...
One day, they sent me an email informing me that I needed to pay an additional $223 for overage fees.
Seriously?
Charges for overages?
And they did take that much off my credit card.
My wallet took a significant financial hit due to this company's "overage charges," Any medium- and large-sized publishers using WPEngine or a comparable hosting provider that charges by the number of "visits" would also suffer.
The price structure of WPEngine is absurd.
Let's examine how WPEngine calculates "visits":
The following two problems did nothing except fuel my annoyance:
• Every day, we reevaluate our definition of "unique IP address."
Robots will be merged within one day but will count again the next day since they share a small number of IP addresses.
We consider how many visits a firm allows within the range of packages it offers when we purchase web hosting from them. Although WPEngine's "Business" plan permits up to 400,000 visitors per month and my Google Analytics only reported 356,000 visits, I chose that option.
What the WPEngine "Business" plan provides is as follows:
Google Analytics and WPEngine statistics comparison
In the photos below, I contrast Google Analytics' statistics for the 15th of August through the 15th of September 2014 with those provided by WPEngine for the same time frame.
Let's look at the Google Analytics statistics first:
Let's now examine the WPEngine statistics for the same period:
See the following message as well:
• "This displays the number of visitors across all your pages, feeds, and static assets" (images, JavaScript files, CSS files, etc.). While a visitor to your site may access one, two, or all three categories, we will only count it as one visit towards your total number of visitors. Nevertheless, the breakdown in this section will let you know whether excessive access to your RSS Feeds or photos occurs due to hotlinking or image embedding in a third-party website or email campaign. For visitors that access the robots.txt or favicon.ico files, WP Engine does not charge.
Please note that implementing CloudFlare is necessary for my costs to be at least 1.5 times more than what you see above due to horrible bot traffic.
In addition, I paid for hot-linked pictures (or images shared on Twitter, my email newsletter, and many other places).
Look at the illustration below, keeping in mind that the WPEngine team states the following at the top:
• "The top static referrers for you are listed below. Your WP Engine visit count will be lowered if a significant percentage of visits come from uncontrolled domains.
WPEngine hosting is essential for folks who don't want to worry about technical details and want to concentrate on their company or blog.
Its price structure is excessive for a typical end customer like myself and probably is for you.
They could have connected CloudFlare with their hosting service, or at the absolute least, they could have included a safeguard to prevent malicious bots from stealing their customers' money. Still, they are a profit-driven business that does not care about its clients' needs.
More to it exists...
You anticipate priority and premium service when paying a web hosting business more than $250 monthly. Even a low-cost host like Bluehost (whose monthly fee is just $6.95) provides 24/7 phone and live chat assistance.
WPEngine does not provide round-the-clock live chat help, and I have not found their assistance to be "high-quality."
This in-depth piece by Matthew Woodward, who shared his tale, is worth reading.
Below is a summary of his evaluation of WPEngine:
No Root access/disallowed plugins:
WPEngine provides no root access, and their list of plugins that are not authorized needs to be revised.
It's not permitted to use a plugin like Broken Link Checker, one of the finest plugins for WordPress blogs, to check for broken links.
WPEngine has blocked the broken Link Checker because an alternative has been developed.
They provide alternatives, such as Integrity and a few others, but all are desktop-based and need a lot of human labor to correct broken connections.
The verdict of my evaluation of WPEngine Hosting:
Regarding hosting quality, WPEngine may provide fair hosting to manage a memory-intensive WordPress site.
In terms of pricing, however:
• They are CERTAINLY not worth the price.
I spent $4,621 over 13 months to host, a terrible waste of money.
For $1,500, I could have accomplished the same thing with a far better host.
Below is a snapshot of my paid invoice; you'll note that there were additional fees from April through September.
I recommend only business WordPress sites or blogs with light traffic needs using WPEngine hosting.
If you choose to utilize WPEngine's hosting services, be sure also to use CloudFlare to avoid incurring hefty overage fees.
Such a depressing problem this overage thing is. Not only did it make me cease using WPEngine, but it also diminished my regard for the business.
Avoid using WPEngine for blogs with medium to high visitor volumes; it is not worthwhile.
This is my assessment of WPEngine. The knowledge I gained from working with them for a year has been imparted. Ultimately, it's up to you to choose whether or not to host your WordPress blog with WPEngine.
Regarding cost and service, I just discovered Kinsta or WPXHosting to be superior to WPEngine.
I'd love to hear from you in the comments box below if you're a WPEngine user and want to share your experience and tale.
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