We’ve been testing out WP Engine and so far, I’ve been very impressed. It’s managed WordPress hosting which means that they are managing many of the hosting administration that normally you would do. But in reality, it’s the kind of thing that they do that you don’t actually really ever do. Like what? Backup, upgrades, fixes, warnings. Should you keep an eye on this kind of thing yourself? Of course. But do you? Do you back up your family photos and floss your teeth regularly? Yeah, leave this important administrative work to the pros. Oh, by the way, it’s super fast.
It’s time to start update sites to 3.5! As part of our policy, we’re going to begin automatically updating all our customer sites soon.
I love the fact that they’ll upgrade WordPress core files as well as plugins for you. We here at Likoma have built several hundred websites, but we don’t manage them so once they’re live and running, it’s up to the new owner to keep things up to date. Do they do it? Maybe 10% of them. What’s the harm? Viruses, hacked websites, error pages, etc.
Huge speed increase when we switched to WP Engine.
Uptime has also been impressive. I find that anything above 99% is acceptable. Some hosts I’ve seen fall around 96% which does add up to some serious downtime. Of course, if no one notices (downtime is in the middle of the night), OK, fine, whatever, but it seems to always happen at launch time, sales special days, and when that big client needs to see your site. So if you’re going to play the numbers, it’s good to have 99%+ uptime on your site.
Uptime was so minimal, I choose to show the downtime graph.
In all, I’ve been very impressed so far. I just love that they do things behind the scenes that you say you’ll do but you know you probably won’t really do. OK, sure, I do them, but I live and breathe websites and WordPress. If you want your site to just be your business and want to focus on what you do best and not if the latest version of your tricked-out plugin will break your theme, let the pros at WP Engine host your site and you’ll be in good hands.
Hello,
If I remember correctly, your site was using shared hosting, probably Hostgator. When you move to a VPS or any dedicated WP host, you would experience the same speed difference, if not better speed. Of course, WPEngine does some unique things that others don’t do. When we pay so much, it’s natural to expect such things in the hosting package.
Thanks,
Pothi
Thanks for the comment, Pothi. Yes, WP Engine has their own versions of cache and backups, which is nice. I like the fact that they only do WordPress hosting. I recently worked with some VPS on HostGator (which I know and love), but it was confusing (first some sort of “envelope” and then WHM and then cPanel. I also like that WP Engine has a few little links within the WP admin panel to easily access their management panels. Thanks, Pothi!
Bradley, thanks so much for your blog post! I’m glad we’ve got your vote, and please do let us know if there’s anything else we can do in the process!
Pothi, you’re right, you ought to have high expectations for a managed host, particularly since you ought to get what you pay for. Compared to a shared host, I hope that we are a completely different experience!
Also, a side note, Bradley. We don’t always update plugins automatically. WordPress core, yes, but not plugins, simply because those can involve custom code, and we want to make sure that those variables are handled on the client side. Only reason I mention this is to set your expectations appropriately.
-AG
Thanks for the reply, Austin. I’m glad to hear you don’t always update plugins. As I’m sure you know all too well, not all plugins are created equal and updating some of them tends to break things (e.g. your entire site), so I’m glad you take the approach you do.
There’s something to be said for the Apple versus the Windows (or “open”) worlds. When you update an Apple product (or even an app), you know it went through some testing to be approved. But with Windows, it’s a jungle out there and you have to do your homework, check on update status reports and … cross your fingers. It seems WP is currently doing a bit of both worlds with, for example, JetPack as their product and then most other plugins the jungle. Thanks again for the comment.
From founder to the managers and the support staffs, WP Engine is filled with WP experts and specialists. It is truly the web host with the best WordPress supports.
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