How to host a WordPress website through the WP Engine?

Almost 27% of the successful businesses in the world have their websites developed on WordPress. WordPress is a web hosting platform with everything to offer, right from themes to safety and multiple plugins for better functionality of websites.

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Are you looking to build a secure and highly reliable website on WordPress? It would help if you had a WordPress web host.

One of the best hosting platforms is the WP Engine. It is a performance-centric WordPress web host that offers well-managed plans optimized specifically for WordPress.

Although the hosting services offered by them are not as cheap as those available on the internet, they are worth the cost. How? Through this review, you will understand where there is detailed information on the platform’s features, functionalities, and efficiency.

WP Engine: A brief overview

WP Engine was set up as a WordPress web hosting company in 2010. Currently, it is among the biggest companies in the WordPress hosting sector. They are highly dedicated to WordPress web hosting services which make them a perfect choice for professionals inclined towards WordPress for their websites.

The company has served over 1,20,000 firms spread across 140 countries, coming up with various WordPress sites. Apart from the high-performance hosting environments, the WP Engine also handles the tasks in progress to maintain the website’s stability and security.

WP Engine: Tools and functionalities

WP Engine has a huge list of tools to offer a broad arena of Managed WordPress Hosting functionalities. Here are the best ones among them:

1. Automated migration

The Migration Plugin feature by the WP Engine allows you to migrate your WordPress website from different hosts easily. The only effort needed from a user’s side is to enter the credentials into the tool and wait for a few seconds to get your website migrated.

2. The staging site feature

A staging site is the copy/ clone of your original website, where you can test the new features or any changes on your website. Thus, you can easily catch the bugs, and surprisingly, your live site will not be at risk throughout the process!

The feature allows you to test plugins, themes and comes with absolutely no harm to your live site. Once the testing is over, you can transfer the contents from the staging site to your public site and vice versa.

3. The copy site feature

This is one of the WP Engine’s fantastic tools that helps you make multiple copies of your website. So, if you are a web developer who has created a wonderful site, you will have to copy the site and remove some content to offer your clients the basic structure of your masterpiece.

4. Disaster recovery

WP Engine offers the disaster recovery feature to help their customers recover their information systems immediately after a disaster or emergency. They are constantly updating these tools to ensure minimum damage and maximum recovery in such situations.

5. GeoIP

This is one of the best tools provided by the WP Engine, which provides you with the information on the use of particular content to potential customers in a certain region. You can personalize the content for that audience accordingly for better reach. Further, if you own an eCommerce website, you can shuffle your products in the store according to your audience’s response.

The features of the WP Engine

Apart from the tools listed above, the WP Engine offers a huge variety of tools that allow you to perform a huge variety of functions on your WordPress website. Here are the features offered by these tools:

1. Zero cost StudioPress Genesis WordPress Themes

StudioPress is a WP Engine-acquired theme development company that produced the well-known Genesis framework. It also consists of a huge portfolio of WordPress themes available in their store. You can choose 35 themes for free from this collection.

These themes are available in different categories, ranging from eCommerce to different types of blogs. Thus, the WP Engine makes a theme store handy to ease your efforts f landing on different sites and buying them at exclusively higher rates.

2. Automate backups of your WordPress website

WP Engine takes a nightly backup of your WordPress files, themes, databases, modules, and plugins. Thus, you can easily restore the data without any losses if you come across an emergency or error.

Further, you can also go for a manual backup if the situation demands it. If you are launching a new theme or plugin on your WordPress website and something goes wrong, you can easily retrieve that data and immediately resolve the damage done to your site.

3. Automatic WordPress Updates

WP Engine always ensures that your WordPress website uses the latest WordPress version by updating it from time to time. You need not remember this action every time WordPress comes up with an update. You also get a 30-day trial period before switching to the updated version of WordPress.

Some technical aspects of the WP Engine

Following are the technical aspects handled by the WP Engine for your WordPress website:

• Regular and optional website caching.
• The Content Delivery Network is accessed from MaxCDN for free.
• Allows switching between PHP 7.2 and 7.3
• Creation of multiple high-security FTP accounts for better management of web space
• The WordPress software updates are installed regularly, but the WP Engine does not update any plugins or themes automatically
• The data centers are located in Asia, the US, Australia, Canada, and Europe
• 24/7 support on almost all the plans
• Regular visitor analytics and uptime check

Installing and Managing a WordPress website on WP Engine

After gaining detailed information about the working of the WP Engine, let us now go to the actual guide of working with the platform:

a. Installation of WordPress and adding a website to your hosting account

Here are the steps for the installation of WordPress and the addition of your website to your hosting account through WP Engine:

1. Log in to the WP Engine account.
2. Click on the button that indicates, “Install WordPress.”
3. Enter the name of the site
4. You will come across two options where one will ask you to create a new website, and the other will ask you to copy the site from the existing one.
5. Apply your initial website configurations
6. Wait for an email from the WP Engine that will indicate a complete setup of your site.
7. Choose a domain if you are building a new site.
8. Connect your website to your hosting account
9. You will land on the page that displays StudioPress themes.
10. Select a theme if you wish and apply the changes
11. Your website is now ready to launch and host

b. Management of WordPress website

You can easily manage your WordPress website through the WP Engine once linked to your hosting account. The plugin area helps you clear your web cache and create a staging website.

You can easily access your portal and get support from the WP Engine team through the Dashboard. The website management features can be accessed through the account area of the WP Engine portal. The user portal consists of options for enabling CDN, creating SFTP accounts, and encrypting SSL certificates.

WP Engine Pricing

WP Engine offers three pre-designed plans as follows:

1. Startup – This plan includes hosting services for a single WordPress website with a maximum of 25000 visits per month. You get 10GB storage with 50GB bandwidth under this plan. It costs $25 per month.
2. Growth – This plan includes hosting services for 10 WordPress websites with a maximum of 100000 visits, 20Gb storage, and 200GB bandwidth. It costs $95.83 per month.
3. Scale – The plan offers hosting services for 30 WordPress websites with a maximum of 400000 visitors, 50GB storage, and 500GB bandwidth for $241.67 per month.

Now, if you wish to add a WordPress website to your existing plan, you need to pay an extra amount of $20 per month for the same. There are some extra charges, even if you exceed your allowances for visitors every month.

This is known as overage fees, which are about $2 per month for every additional 1000 visitors that you get per month. There are no hidden costs either in the form of processing or service fees on the WP Engine. They are highly transparent in terms of pricing as well as services.

WP Engine Alternatives

Looking for alternatives to WP Engine managed hosting for your WordPress website? Here are five reliable options to consider for your affiliate marketing endeavors:

1. WPMU DEV: A comprehensive WordPress platform with managed hosting, premium plugins, and themes. Their hosting service ensures optimal performance, security, and support.
2. Cloudways: A managed cloud hosting platform allowing deployment on top-tier infrastructure providers. With Cloudways, you get a user-friendly platform, flexible pricing, and a robust set of features.
3. Kinsta: A managed WordPress hosting solution focusing on lightning-fast performance and top-notch security. Kinsta uses Google Cloud infrastructure and advanced technologies like PHP 8.0 and Nginx.
4. DreamHost: A reputable web hosting provider with managed WordPress hosting through their DreamPress plan. DreamPress offers solid performance, automatic daily backups, and built-in server caching.
5. A2 Hosting: Known for fast and reliable managed WordPress hosting services, A2 Hosting offers features like free SSL certificates, automatic backups, and optimized performance with their Turbo servers.

These WP Engine alternatives cater to various needs and budgets. Consider factors like performance, security, and support to choose the right managed hosting provider. 

Conclusion

WordPress hosting is now easier and more reliable with WP Engine services. They offer a wide array of tools leading to unique and better functionalities and features. The Geo tool is among the WP Engine’s exclusive features that help the brands get more leads and improve their convertibility.

The company offers services with a highly personalized approach to ensure that your WordPress website generates higher revenues. The cost of their plans is quite high, and so is the return on this investment.

There are various test reports available on different platforms for the WP Engine, which indicates that this platform provides the highest performance among all the WordPress hosting services available on the internet.

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