Wpengine Review

WPENGINE REVIEW:Coming from Hostgator Dedicated Hosting

by Lawrence Tam

To set the scene

I currently use WPEngine Personal account I have used (past tense) Hostgator Dedicated Baby Linux Plan I currently use Hostgator shared plan for my small websites

2007 - started with blogger.com

Now my relationship with Hostgator has me looking at other options

Reasons to move..

• Too much traffic • Forced into Dedicated servers ($$)

• Support slow down • Downtime (website down)

Why WPEngine ?

• Faster • Support level • Daily backups and restore features

• Version maintenance • Visitor stats • Automatic updates • Security levels

WPEngine Review: Pros & Cons

Pros• Support • 60-Day Free Trial • Server responsiveness • Blocked plugins • Free support on Site

Transfer • Pay As You Go • Testing area • Site caching

Cons• Costly • WordPress only • You have less control over

technical aspects • Difficult documentation • Not easy to set up • Limited to ONE website • Paying for visitors

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Content loads faster !The Content Delivery Network is customized and enabled through your website’s user portal.

CDNs make your site run more efficiently.

By using servers around the world, a website request is routed to the browser positioned nearest to the request

Pros

Content Delivery Network +/-

• Faster • Less strain on the server

• Crashes less • Lower bandwidth • Google friendly

• Cost • A new connection opened on

another server can slow down your site

• Managing cached files with different versions

• A constant internet connection needed

• Forces an additional DNS lookup

• Another point of failure for your website

Cons

CloudFareWPEngine recommends CloudFlare, a free service with paid upgrades. !I am testing this service at time of writing.

This should LOWER my overage costs, and block IPS from bad sites and malicious hackers. Security is a big. big. deal.

Paid versions are faster with more flexibility

WPEngine SPEED

A Tagman survey showed that a 1 second delay in the response time … can result in a 7% loss in conversions.

Hostgator is NOT unlimitedI still use Hostgator but IT’S NOT UNLIMITED

I hit 25% of the shared server’s resources in one day and they took my site offline

The WPEngine Disallowed Plugins

These plugins are either resource hogs, not optimized for speed or already provided !•Caching Plugins •Backup Plugins •Server & MySQL Thrashing Plugins !Speed and streamlined simplicity is why you use a WordPress Managed Hosting in the first place.

• Related Posts Plugins • Broken Link Checker • Duplicate Behavior Plugins

Visit my blog for the full list

Price comparisonHostGator Dedicated Server $174/month •with tax.. almost $190 per month and it STILL gets shut down due to traffic spikes !WPEngine Personal (no CDN)

$29/month* $290/12 = $24.17/month (*billed annually)

•Add OVERAGE …that includes real people AND bots… My Feb 13 ‘14 to March 13, 2014 overage = $26.00 $26 + $24.17 = $50.17 per month

HostGator Speed Vs WPEngine Speed tests (no CDN)*

#1 PageScoring.com

WINNER – WPEngineWPEngine

(Personal

without CDN)

Hostgator

(Basic

Dedicated

Linux)

HostGator Speed Vs WPEngine Speed (no CDN)*

#2 WebPageTest.org

WINNER – WPEngine

HostGator Speed Vs WPEngine Speed (no CDN)*

#3 PingDom.com

WINNER – WPEngine

HostGator Speed Vs WPEngine Speed (no CDN)*

#4 GTmetrix.com

WINNER – WPEngine

Out of 4 speed tests WPEngine seemed to be faster.

HostGator Speed Vs WPEngine Speed (no CDN)*

Final thoughts

A website should handle traffic spikes and security

WPEngine security does that

24hours… AFTER submitting a ticket.. they CRUSHED the dirty bug (no pun intended cause the malware was an adult site mobile bug hitting a lot of people’s sites) so they are good on this. Even though I had to point it out and their systems didn’t catch it on their end, at least they knew how to take care of it.

Recommendations• Hostgator - if you are new or have a lot of test

sites !• Otherwise I do recommend WPEngine !

Blogging? Yes, Yes, Yes • BUT not on blogger.com, wordpress.com or other FREE system. Go full custom or use this.

• FREE systems will cost you more than you think in business - click here to see how.

Thanks

To see the full article and stats of my Hostgator Dedicated hosting transfer to WP Engine click the button below.