Suddenly, WP Engine isn’t so Expensive

I no longer recommend using WP Engine. Here’s why I switched to Flywheel. Here’s a comparison between the two. And here’s why WP Engine is not even a true WordPress host.

If you run a WordPress website, and you really care about performance, you may have considered WP Engine (yep, that’s an affiliate link, but I love ’em and use them for all of my clients and my own sites).

You may have checked out their plans, and thought, “$29 / month for hosting?!”

Well, aside from the multitude of reasons that they’re worth every penny of that $29 (security, speed, support like you’ll never get from GoDaddy or MediaTemple), there’s some interesting news floating around the WordPress community.

Specifically, that Google is not only going to start giving search preference to sites that use SSL / https, but that Chrome will even be flagging those sites that don’t, come 2017.

So while a year’s worth of hosting with WP Engine costs $290 vs. GoDaddy’s cheapest plan (Linux Economy) only runs $95.88 / year, that gap starts closing quickly when you realize that WP Engine is now making it ridiculously easy to get a FREE SSL certificate. They previously charged $49 / year for the service, but it’s now completely free.

GoDaddy? They charge $69.99 / year. Suddenly, that $95.88 per year hosting goes up to $165.87.

Without the security (I have two clients who are with GoDaddy who were hacked this year, one at a cost of $650 just to fix the hacked site alone). Without the built in caching speed. Definitely without the stellar support.

Plus, if you host with me directly (still on a WP Engine server), and I built your site, you get free WordPress and plugin updates, easily saving you at least two – five hours a year.

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