I’ve been running sites since the 90’s and have worked with more hosting companies than I can remember. Often, they have been a source of aggravation, but then I tried WP Engine.
Many hosting companies look the same from the outside, so why do I like these guys?
Well, I’ve currently got a lot of sites spread across different hosts (dedicated servers with 1&1, Liquid Web, and Rackspace, and a shared hosting account at Bluehost), and I am always monitoring the uptime, downtime, and performance.
I’ve been most pleased with Liquid Web, but since I’m not monogamous with hosts, I wanted to try WP Engine, since I’ve been hearing raves about them.
So anyway, their tech support has been superb. I reached out to them during migration, as I tried doing it without reading the instructions and messed up. They were fast, nice and helpful.
And their support folks are WordPress experts. All my sites are in WordPress these days, and I don’t remember ever dealing with a support person at a different host who was helpful with WordPress issues.
Then there is their staging area. Have you ever installed a new plugin or theme and broken your WordPress site? If no, lucky you. I’ve done it plenty of times.
That’s why I love that with one click I can set up a clean copy of my site to test stuff with WP Engine.
Also, they are obsessive about speed, and that is a great thing.
At first, I was surprised that they had a list of plugins they didn’t allow on sites hosted with them.
WP Engine performs security and performance scans on customer sites, which includes scanning for plugins on their disallowed plugin list. The reason for this is that they’ve determined certain plugins adversely affect site performance and/or security.
When I got a notification that I had an offending plugin, I was given a 7 day warning to find and test suitable replacements and then remove the prohibited plugin.
Any customer failing to act will have the plugin removed from their site.
Oh, and one of the investors in WP Engine is Toni Schneider (CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress). Now that’s a vote of confidence.
In addition to being a great company to work with, there is also a WP Engine affiliate program with a nice payout on ShareASale.