In fact, XName is down as of the writing of this article, as is its partner site Kazar Hosting. It is not clear whether it has gone offline for good or whether this is a temporary error, but you can check the current online status of XName by checking this website (https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/XName.org.html). 

This article will explain what XName is (or was) and what DNS hosting is. You will also learn about 10 great alternatives to XName. 

What Is XName? And What Is DNS Hosting? 

There’s a lot of confusion around what DNS hosting actually is. DNS hosting is not the same thing as web hosting!

Web hosting is the place where your website is stored on the internet. Think of it as a virtual version of a storefront, like a retail building where you have a store and sell stuff. 

However, when people want to access that storefront, they need to know how to get there. This is where DNS (Domain Name Server) hosting comes into play. 

DNS hosting is where information about how to access your website is stored. Think of it as a phone book that contains numbers of stores and people, except it’s actually a database of IP addresses. 

Better yet, think of it as an operator who you call when you know the name of a person or business but don’t know their number.

Just like the operator will connect you to that person or business over the phone, a DNS hosting service connects people who are browsing the internet to your website/virtual storefront. 

When you buy a web hosting package (which is like renting a virtual storefront), you will have to point your domain name to a DNS server (which is like giving the operator your phone number or adding it to a phone book so people can find you). 

Usually, when you buy a domain name from a domain name registrar, they will provide you with free DNS hosting so people can find your website on the internet. 

However, not all domain name registrars do this, and even if yours does, you may not want to use their DNS hosting as it may not be good quality (meaning it may experience downtime issues, which will prevent people from being able to find and access your website/virtual storefront). 

XName.org is a free DNS hosting service. However, it obviously is not the best one out there, because the XName website is currently down, preventing users from using it properly (though if you want to set up your own DNS hosting engine you can download the open-source XName engine from this page, which is still currently up). 

In this article, we will go over the top 10 alternatives to XName which are actually working at the moment. 

Interesting Post: WP Engine Review

Best XName Alternatives

1. Cloudflare DNS

Cloudflare’s DNS hosting services are perhaps the most well known. They are especially known for being pretty fast. 

Think about it: The amount of time it will take for your web page to load on a user’s device will depend on how fast they can look up your site by sending a DNS request to your DNS hosting provider.

Cloudflare speeds up the request processing time by using servers placed in strategic locations around the world and making use of caching technology to load pages quicker. 

One of the best parts about Cloudflare is that not only is it free to use but it will not limit DNS queries on a free plan. This means that you can use it for free regardless of how many website visitors you have. 

You can point both main domains and subdomains to the Cloudflare DNS servers. Any website that you operate and for which you have control over where the DNS nameservers point can be used with Cloudflare. 

Cloudflare is also a CDN. They cache your website so that even if their main servers are down, they can load cached versions of your content on users’ devices, which is what allows them to promise that they are “Always Online” with virtually no downtime. 

In addition, the caching can help speed up the loading of content on users’ devices. 

When you use Cloudflare for your DNS hosting services, it is almost certain that your website will remain accessible on the web almost all the time, unlike with XName which can not promise you that. 

However, the free Cloudflare DNS plan does come with limits. To start, you will have access to the Content Delivery Network, as well as DDoS Attack prevention features. 

However, for most other features, such as the Web Application Firewall and cache analytics, you will have to upgrade to one of the paid plans, which start at just $20/month. In addition, with the free plan, the average email response rate is 24 hours. 

You can see updated pricing information on the Cloudflare pricing page. 

Also Read: WP Engine Vs Kinsta

2. Namecheap

Namecheap offers a free DNS service that is pretty good. Unlike XName, they actually offer 24/7 tech support for users of their free DNS hosting service. 

The reason Namecheap is doing this is that they hope that users who use their free DNS service will end up using Namecheap as their main domain name registrar in the future. 

Namecheap, like XName, offers AAAA records support. However, they also offer support for A/CNAME/NS/MX/TXT/SRV DNS record types.

In addition, they offer email and URL forwarding for no additional cost. DynamicDNS updates are also available free of charge. 

If you want, you can use the Namecheap free DNS service as a backup. This means that you don’t have to make it your primary DNS host. 

If you already are using your domain name registrar’s DNS hosting service or are using another free DNS hosting service and are somewhat afraid that it might experience downtime and your website will no longer be accessible, having Namecheap’s DNS hosting service as a backup can ensure that your website remains accessible at all times. 

Namecheap’s DNS hosting service is free, but you can always upgrade to PremiumDNS if you want a better experience.

However, even if you use the free DNS hosting service, it will be free forever and you will never be forced to move to Namecheap as your domain name registrar. 

Check Out: WP Engine Vs Bluehost

3. FreeDNS (Afraid)

FreeDNS (found at https://freedns.afraid.org) is a great alternative to XName because it is totally free and actually works. Many forum users who have used XName in the past report that FreeDNS is a more reliable alternative. 

FreeDNS is a free DNS hosting service for both domains and subdomains. They also offer web forwarding and reverse IPV6 features. 

The free plan of FreeDNS will be sufficient for most people who are looking for a free DNS hosting service for a personal project or a small website.

However, it is capped at five subdomains, and it also does not include wildcard support, does not remove captchas, and has a global propagation time of one hour. 

Premium plans start at $60/month and allow for up to 500 subdomains, depending on the plan; they also reduce global propagation times to 60 seconds. 

You can see updated plans on the FreeDNS pricing page. 

FreeDNS was founded in 2001, and the website still looks pretty outdated. 

Also Read: WP Engine Vs Pantheon

4. NameCoin Dot Bit DNS

This is an alternative to XName for those who are into cryptocurrencies. It is based on blockchain technology, and it is designed for those who have .bit websites. 

To use NameCoin DNS, you will have to find a registrar and buy a .bit domain, which you can do using cryptocurrency. 

It is important to note that this DNS hosting service is a new blockchain that is entirely separate from the main Bitcoin blockchain. 

You can find out more information on how to get NameCoins, how to register a .bit domain, a full list of .bit domains, and more on this page. Here is some more information about Dot Bit. 

To be honest, this is not an XName alternative that most people would be interested in, and you should probably not use it unless you are into blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. 

Also Read: WP Engine Vs AWS

5. ClouDNS

ClouDNS is a forever-free DNS hosting provider. Unlike XName, it offers 24/7 customer support, even for the free plan; customer support is lacking with XName according to online reports. 

However, when compared to Cloudflare, it comes in a bit short. This is because unlike Cloudflare, which does not limit DNS inquiries on their free plan, ClouDNS does limit queries to 500,000 a month. 

So, if you have more than 500,000 visitors a month, you would need to upgrade to a paid plan. In addition, while the free plan does include web redirects and one mail forwarding, you will be limited to one DNS zone. 

Nevertheless, the paid plans for ClouDNS are pretty affordable. In fact, they start at just $2.95/month; for updated prices, make sure to check out the ClouDNS pricing page. 

Worth Reading: WP Engine Vs Siteground

6. Hurricane Electric DNS

Hurricane Electric is another DNS hosting service that is entirely free. It is a great alternative to XName; like XName, it provides IPv6 reverse zones but also IPv4 reverse zones.

In addition, like XName, it supports AAAA records but also A, ALIAS, CNAME, CAA, MX, NS, TXT, SRV, SSHFP, SPF, RP, NAPTR, HINFO, LOC, and PTR records. 

In addition, they have added a dynamic checkip service, which you can access at http://checkip.dns.he.net. 

Its servers are geographically diverse, which means that regardless of which language your website is and/or in which countries users are trying to access your site, they will be able to access it quickly. 

One of the reasons Hurricane Electric is a great XName alternative is because it is actually updated regularly.

The last XName news update is from 2013, while Hurricane Electric’s page says that it was last updated in July 2020 (as of the time of this writing; always check their website for the latest updates). 

In addition, they are always adding new features. Right now, they are exploring new features like Bind Zone Import/Export and DNSSEC.

Explore: WP Engine Vs Flywheel

7. Server Space

Server Space is a free DNS hosting provider that allows you to host up to 20 domains at no cost at all. The main types of records they support are A, AAAA, MX, PTR, CNAME, NS, TXT, and SRV. 

Server Space is a great alternative to XName because they provide a number of additional services in addition to DNS hosting. This way, you can get all of your needs met in one place without having to use so many services and companies at once. 

For example, you can get an SSL certificate starting from just €5 for a single domain. Also, you can build free private networks with up to a stable 1 Gbps Bandwidth with global access points and up to 10 networks in a single project. 

There are various other services, which you can see updated prices for on the Server Space pricing page (all prices are paid in Euros). For the paid services, you only pay for what you use, and payment will be deducted from your account. 

As you can see on the pricing page, the DNS service is free forever, but data storage starts at €0.02/mo for 1 GB.

Unlike XName, which looks pretty outdated, Server Space has a sleek, modern, up to date website. 

Also Read: Best WP Engine Alternatives

8. GeoScaling DNS Hosting

GeoScaling offers a free DNS hosting service. It allows you to handle up to one million DNS requests per month for free. 

They have nameservers in three different countries: France (Paris), Romania, and the USA (Dallas, Texas). Regardless of where a visitor to your website is located, if you are using GeoScaling’s DNS hosting services, your page will load quickly and without delays. 

Unlike XName, which can be a bit confusing since it is so outdated and has all kinds of spelling mistakes, GeoScaling actually has a pretty easy to use interface. There are no confusing bells and whistles; instead, it does what it is supposed to do. 

Another great benefit of using GeoScaling is that you can redirect users based on a variety of factors, including which country they are in, their city, their network name, and more. 

Not only that, but with the use of smart subdomains, you can make live redirection decisions in real time. All you have to do is contact GeoScaling support, and they will help you. 

If you do need to handle more than one million DNS requests per month (which you likely won’t unless you operate a large business), you can always contact GeoScaling for a custom, cheap price.

This price will be decided on between you and their team, but for most people, one million DNS requests per month are more than enough. 

Another great thing about GeoScaling DNS is that they actually listen to what you have to say and the feedback you have to offer.

They have a page where you can submit feedback, and they claim that a lot of their features have been inspired by feedback given by users. 

In addition, the owners of GeoScaling use their own DNS services for their other projects. This means that you can be sure that they are actually invested in making sure that it is a great service that fulfills their own needs. 

GeoScaling offers a number of unique features that are offered by no other DNS services (or at least they claim not to be aware of any DNS service that offers these features).

This means that unlike with XName, you will be able to do things such as redirect visitors based on the network name, city, country, and latitude and longitude.

As mentioned, they also have smart subdomains. A used-defined script will make a decision on which IP address to return based on factors previously mentioned (the visitors’ country, for example) and other factors like uptime. 

Not only that, but if you do not know how to write those scripts, GeoScaling will write them for you! All of these things make GeoScaling unique and different from XName and really any other DNS hosting service. 

9. Duck DNS

Duck DNS is a free DNS hosting service. The entire team behind Duck DNS only consists of two engineers, but these two engineers have more than 15 years of experience in the industry. 

You can use Duck DNS to make your home network accessible from anywhere by setting up a Duck DNS subdomain. However, it can be used for any purpose, really. 

Like XName, Duck DNS has a very simple website interface. However, it is a great alternative to XName because not only is it forever free, like XName, but it has tons of tutorials for many, many types of operating systems; also, it actually works!

In fact, I counted 18 different operating systems, in addition to types of routers and standards. 

10. 1984 Free DNS Hosting

Finally, the last DNS hosting service that we will be looking at is called 1984 DNS. 1984 Hosting is a hosting company, but you do not need to use their web hosting to use their free DNS hosting services. 

They are offering it for free because they hope that some people who use their DNS hosting services will also move over to their web hosting services. However, know that there is no requirement to do so and that you can continue using your previous web hosting provider without any pressure. 

1984 is a great alternative to XName for those who are careful about their privacy and the environment. You may have suspected that the name “1984 Hosting” is in reference to George Orwell’s book, 1984. 

Your data is safe with 1984. They are based in Iceland, and although the company was started in 2006, they have since become Iceland’s biggest web hosting company. 

1984 has three main missions and core values that they stick to: 

1. Upholding civil rights: There is a reason why 1984 continues to be based in Iceland, and that is because, in Iceland, IMMI legislation is in the works. The founders of 1984 are passionate about civil rights and freedom of speech, which is why they will go the extra mile to protect their customers’ rights and inform them of any requests by governmental agencies about their information. 
2. Green energy: 1984 only uses renewable energy and strives to be as efficient as possible in their energy usage. When you switch to 1984 DNS hosting, you know that you will be making a minimal impact on the environment. 
3. Free Software: 1984 Hosting is dedicated to creating free software whenever possible. 

In a nutshell: If you are passionate about civil rights, freedom of speech, and environmental protection, 1984 DNS hosting is a great alternative to XName. 

Should You Use A Free DNS Hosting Service? 

There is nothing wrong with using a free DNS hosting service. However, you should make sure to use one that is reliable and does not experience slowdowns or downtimes. 

XName is not one of those DNS hosting service providers, as they do not seem to be very reliable. However, various others, such as Cloudflare, ClouDNS, and 1984 Hosting, seem to be more reliable. 

However, if you do want better features, upgrading to a premium plan or using a premium DNS hosting service can always help. 

What Is The Best XName Alternatives? 

The best XName Alternative is Cloudflare. ClouDNS is a close runner-up, and Namecheap is pretty good too. 

However, Cloudflare trumps them all if you are looking for a free DNS service. This is because unlike ClouDNS, it does not limit queries on the free plan. 

In addition, unlike XName and all the other DNS services on this list, Cloudflare includes a Content Delivery Network. This ensures that your website is not only shown to people from all around the world but that there is virtually no downtime and that your pages load very quickly. 

In addition, you will be protected against DDoS attacks if you use the free Cloudflare service. 

The post 10 Best XName Alternatives appeared first on Rigorous Themes.

This is one of the principles of WP Engine – a large-scale, premium managed hosting service founded in 2010, designed for websites built with WordPress.

WP Engine helps you save time, money, and headaches that would otherwise be spent running your business or project by yourself. 

It also provides extra features that most such hosting providers don’t, such as automatic plugin updates and daily backups, besides handling other technical tasks.

This gives you more time to focus on enhancing your targeted promotions and offering quality content for your business or project’s audiences.

WP Engine has three customer segments for general WordPress users, web developers, and small business owners, all with stable, lofty performance and stout security.

It’s an exceptional web host, but there are several reasons that would lead you to seek out alternatives. For example, it’s pricier than other hosts offering similar services, plus you can’t install some plugins in their plans. 

It also doesn’t include email hosting, which means you can’t create branded email accounts.

So where should you host your site if not with WP Engine? We’re going to list 7 top picks of the best WP Engine alternatives you can go with that offer great features, security, speed, and reliability at affordable prices too.

1.   FlyWheel

FlyWheel is a strong WP Engine alternative that holds a substantial position on the WordPress hosting market. Its solution is compatible enough for different users including bloggers, designers, and developers, and manages over 72 million sites and domains to boot.

As one of the recommended hosts on WordPress.org, FlyWheel, which started in 2012, offers speed-optimized and finely-tuned managed hosting for web designers and developers alike.

Its experienced team consists of experts with skills in design, marketing, WP CMS, web developing and building infrastructure. This helps the company focus on offering quality, premium-class, and speedy web solutions for WordPress sites.

Its robust services ensure you get consistency in service, reliability and high-speed hosting, all at a more affordable rate than what WP Engine charges its customers.

FlyWheel’s multiple plans offer web hosting for small sites at just $14 monthly, while the Personal plan has near-similar specifications as WP Engine’s Basic plan, but it’s more about value than fancy features.

It also charges almost half the amount WP Engine charges for a CDN ($19.90 per month), and integrates with a caching tool installed on the server side, which means lower load times and better speed. 

Free CDN is available for higher packages for both hosts though, but FlyWheel charges as little as $1 per 1,000 visits for overage usage, which is affordable if your site has huge traffic or sudden traffic spikes.

In terms of security, FlyWheel offers multi-layer features such as malicious IP blocking, Brute Force protection, and automatic WP updates with its preloaded web hosting service.

What’s more, its partnership with Sucuri – a reputable WordPress security software – means you get free malware scanning too, plus each plan comes with nightly backups stored on Google Cloud, and free SSL.

You can also install a third-party SSL, unlike WP Engine that doesn’t allow this on its Basic plan. Your part is just to create a strong password to avoid any incidents due to weak logins, and FlyWheel will do the rest, including installing core updates as soon as possible.

FlyWheel also offers a collaboration feature, which is ideal for teams, and comes in handy where you have to create multiple logins or password sharing with your members. 

This way, you can also add more team members and specify control, while FlyWheel offers them automatic access without security compromises.

If you want to check out how your site will look like before committing, you can create a demo site on FlyWheel’s server at no cost. 

Once you pick a suitable design or layout, you can pick a plan and go live. You can also migrate your site to FlyWheel’s server freely, with its 30-day money-back guarantee.

Customer support is available weekdays from 9am to 5pm, via phone, open ticket, or email, but you can use the live chat (not 24/7) and get a response to your issue.

2.   SiteGround

SiteGround has grown to become one of the best web hosting service providers today.

It’s known for its affordable and competitive WordPress hosting, customer support service options, and excellence as seen from its portfolio of more than 2 million domains, and counting. 

It also offers faster, secure and up-to-date services, plus its backup system, plugin for speed optimization, and security protocols.

With SiteGround, you can install multiple applications on its hosting, unlike WP Engine, using a one-click installer as you would with Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, and Magento, among others.

Its cutting-edge hardware ensures you get faster service. For example, it uses SSDs to process databases and other files that are speedier than HDD drives. 

It also has technologies like NGINX, PHP 7, HTTP/2, and SuperCacher, among other speed-friendly technologies that reduce load time.

Advanced cached features are available with the higher plans, so you can further reduce loading time, but you can activate the built-in CloudFlare CDN for more optimization.

SiteGround owns multiple data centers so your audience can render data much faster where there are centers closer to them.

For stability, SiteGround has the Linux container that allocates resources intelligently, so that your site’s speed is faster with an incredible 99.99 percent uptime, sometimes even 100 percent.

In terms of security, SiteGround offers an AI system that prevents any unauthorized access, like Brute Force attacks, which many other hosts don’t offer protection against. It also provides free SSL, daily backup system, pro-monitoring, and account isolation.

SiteGround’s customer support is available 24/7 via phone, live chat, and support ticket.

All its plans have free email hosting, which WP Engine doesn’t include in any of its plans, so you can create branded email accounts. 

However, while you may get a lot more with SiteGround at lower prices, it limits the CPU cycles and numbers of visitors, but traffic surges are managed using its LXC technology, which also maintains the server’s efficiency.

3.   Kinsta

This is another strong contender against WP Engine, with exceptional managed WordPress hosting. All its plans are backed by the Google cloud infrastructure, which means it can control speed and uptime, among other crucial hosting features.

Since 2013, Kinsta has been delivering ultimate speeds to its users thanks to Linux containers technology, NGINX, PHP 7.0+, and MariaDB, among other resource isolation features. 

All these work together to ensure you won’t worry about outages on your site from a shortage of resources.

Kinsta’s plans offer automatic scalability, so your site can stay up and running even with huge surges in traffic. It also outdoes WP Engine and other providers in locations with low latency as it has 18 locations globally, and you can pick any data center at no extra cost.

If you’re looking for security, Kinsta offers you peace of mind as it keeps its systems updated while offering complete assistance in the event of a hacker attack, thanks to the 24/7 rapid response team that helps with undesired events.

Secure HTTPs connection is integrated for free so you can turn it on with a click and encrypt SSL, plus there are free backup services with manual and/or automatic options.

Kinsta also offers developers premium services like staging area, SSH access, Git, and various PHP versions among other features. It also has a site cloning feature on all its plans, except for the Starter plan.

An in-house dashboard is available and it’s easy to operate, plus there’s a multi-user feature that you can use with your team to assign roles like developers or admin, with access to specific websites.

Support is available 24/7, 365 days a year, via email, chat, and other channels, so you can chat with their excellent support team, which backs enterprise and Fortune 500 clients. It also doesn’t offer different support tiers, so everyone is on the same level and gets the same expertise available to them.

Pricing is available in ten tiers, from just $30 per month, as you scale up to its Enterprise plan, and custom solutions. 

The plans have no hard limits on bandwidth, but they limit total visits, and the very basic plan offers you 20,000 monthly visits, free SSL integration and CDN, 5GB storage and 1 website.

This is a stark contrast to WP Engine, which may come with lower price tags, but you pay more if you need add-ons. For example, Kinsta offers Geo-IP for free on all its plans, while WP Engine charges you $15 for it.

If you’re running a WooCommerce site, Kinsta will ensure smooth running thanks to its essential features and optimized services. 

Plus, its server-level caching can be bypassed automatically where required, especially on checkout pages. It also backs up your data in five ways: hourly, every six hours, 24 hours, or manually, so everything is secure.

4. WPX Hosting

WPX Hosting (formerly Traffic Planet Hosting) may not be the first name that comes to mind like other popular WordPress hosting services, but it’s a robust and rock solid service provider, with affordable prices compared to the competition.

Founded in 2013, this web host set out to offer top-in-class, excellent WordPress optimized hosting for sites with small to large traffic, with servers that can handle huge traffic surges. It also doesn’t overload its own servers with many customers on one machine just to maintain performance.

Like WP Engine, this host provides managed plans devoted to WordPress, but offers domain registration services at incredible prices, making it a strong alternative to WP Engine. 

For just $10.99 per year, you can get a .com domain with free lifetime privacy guard.

It also hosts your site fully on SSD servers, plus you get a 99.95 percent uptime guarantee, and security initiatives that manage against DDoS attacks and daily scans that detect and hunt down viruses or vulnerabilities.

A free unlimited SSL certificate is available, with 28 days auto-backup on all accounts. If you want to migrate your site, WPX Hosting doesn’t charge you for it, plus you can create custom email accounts at no cost too.

Its pricing structure is unbeatable compared to the competition, so if you’re a newbie and want to create various small projects, WPX’s Business plan would be great for you. 

It also allows you to host five sites with 50GB bandwidth and 10 GB storage, plus you can choose from UK or US data centers and find the server nearest to your target audience.

Unlike WP Engine, you can use plugins for free, and enjoy seamless services including free backup, security and cache plugin installations. To tighten your security, WPX recommends using iThemes, Sucuri, or Wordfence.

However, it only offers free MaxCDN for the first year to ThriveThemes users. Customer support is available, though not 24/7, but like SiteGround, you get expert level support via live chat, phone, or support ticket, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

5.   Pressable

Since 2010, Pressable has been offering developers, marketers, and businesses alike specialized services for the WordPress platform, just as WP Engine, so you can’t use their servers on any other platform.

However, if you’re building an eCommerce store on Pressable’s robust platform, you can get WooCommerce hosting that’s fast and secure too.

Pressable has lower prices than the competition, with more monthly visits than WP Engine offers, plus you can host a maximum of 5 domains with unlimited storage, and up to 100 or more sites on its higher plans.

You won’t need to install caching plugins to optimize your speed, like you would with traditional shared hosting, as Pressable’s caching technique is built-in, so it renders data fast via cached web pages. This also helps boost your site’s performance.

Pressable also offers free premium MaxCDN, compared to WP Engine that charges for its CDN. Plus, security is available via a combination of nightly automatic scanning to detect and remove malware, and firewall app for your site’s security.

You also won’t have to do updates on your own, which is cumbersome and time-consuming, as Pressable handles all WordPress updates, so you can focus on your core work. SSL and daily backups are also available for free, regardless of the plan you pick.

Like Kinsta, Pressable also offers site cloning in case you want to set up similar sites to your current one, and developers can use the staging feature to test updates without interfering with the main website.

The Jetpack premium version is also offered at no cost, as with DreamHost’s service, and if you’re working with a team, you can use the collaborator tool to give access to your teammates instead of creating several logins.

If you want to migrate your site, there’s a tool for that, though it requires some details, but it’s still doable.

Customer support is available via phone (although it’s only for presale queries), and a ticketing system that’s available 24/7, but you have to be a Pressable customer. 

You won’t get live chat any time you want though, as it’s only fixed within business hours, but you can always send an email or explore the knowledgebase for quick fixes or troubleshooting assistance.

Pressable organizes its pricing plans according to Basic, Moderate, and High Volume use. 

It doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee, but there’s a 15-day trial account if you’d like to test the quality of its services before you commit.

6. DreamHost

This is one of the oldest web hosting providers on the market, since 1997, that’s recommended by WordPress.org, and manages more than 1.5 million sites on its platform.

One of its unique features is DreamPress, which offers all the features you need to create your blog or business website. It also offers excellent performance and reliability, which gave it a name in the WordPress managed space.

DreamHost features several technologies like NGINX, PHP7, Brotli, and SSDs, plus caching systems like Varnish for fast provisioning, and object cache.  It’s also a reliable and trustworthy host when it comes to speed.

Plus, you get limited free bandwidth at a low price, and an unlimited number of visitors. The Basic plan lets you host one site and offers 10GB-SSD storage, and you can install any type of plugin, unlike WP Engine, which bans plugins like backup, caching, broken links, and others.

Security is a priority for DreamHost as it provides a firewall, timely response against DDoS attacks, Let’s Encrypt SSL, and automatic updates, so you can have peace of mind. 

For developers, features like SSH access, Git, and cron jobs are available, plus much more so they have a nice playground on which to create great sites.

Other goodies that come with DreamHost include unlimited IMAP/POP/SMTP email accounts to create or host unlimited accounts, unlike other services that you have to buy email storage for your branded email accounts.

It also offers dedicated, cloud, VPS, shared, and domain registration services, the latter of which comes at standard rates with free WHOIS guard that protects your data from public access or spammers. 

You can get a free domain name for a year if you go with their annual plans, and if you keep your domain with WHOIS, you get it completely free.

Unfortunately, DreamHost charges $99 for automatic migration of your site, which most other providers offer for free. You can do it manually and save money though, as it’s not as difficult to do, especially if you use their tutorials on knowledgebase.

Customer support is available round-the-clock via email, live chat (though only available for paid customers) knowledgebase, and discussion forums. 

Phone support isn’t as straightforward. For instance, there’s a ‘Request a callback’ feature, but it’ll cost you on the Basic plan, while other plans offer some limited free call support.

The pricing doesn’t limit you on monthly page views, for example, the Basic plan gives unlimited monthly visits, and free Jetpack Premium subscription per month.

7.   MediaTemple

MediaTemple offers shared WordPress hosting since 1998, when it was founded to serve designers, entrepreneurs, developers, and enterprises with reliable hosting services.

The “Grid” hosting is designed from a blend of cloud capabilities, powered by Amazon AWS, and offers various packages like dedicated, managed, VPS, and cloud server. 

Your site will thus be hosted on multiple servers, which translates to maximum security and availability, besides the uptime guarantee they offer.

MediaTemple’s features are akin to WP Engine’s but at a lower sum. The Personal plan is the smallest, but comes with value-adds such as 250,000 monthly visits, 50GB SSD storage, and unlimited data transfers for only $20 per month. 

You can save more by going with annual plans, or high-duration purchases, and host two websites while you’re at it.

Security is provided through malware detection and removal, DDoS protection, automatic backup, and restore, plus you get automatic core updates to PHP, WordPress, and MySQL. However, they don’t offer free SSL with the smallest plan, but the Pro plan has two free SSL only for the first year.

Unlike SiteGround, you don’t get to use plugins like backup, caching or security, and others, so it’s not as flexible.

Support is available via live chat, phone, social media (Twitter), and email, but there’s a community page with videos and articles on any topic you’d like help with.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are so many WP Engine alternatives you can pick from, which offer security, reliability, stability, plugin accessibility, and so much more, including affordable pricing, that WP Engine doesn’t. 

WP Engine is a leading WordPress hosting service, but its pricing can dent your wallet too. 

Whether you want to build a small or large site, and are expecting many visitors once you’re set up and running, you can choose from any of our seven picks to get you started, based on your needs and objectives.

The post 7 Best WP Engine Alternatives appeared first on Rigorous Themes.

Your website host lays the groundwork that determines how your site will fare in terms of performance, reliability, and security, which is why it is important to choose the right hosting company from the outset. 

In this article, we’ll be looking at two of the most recommended WordPress hosts and what they offer in terms of functionalities and pricing. 

Let’s dive in!

WP Engine

Image source: WP Engine

Pagely may have been the first platform to offer managed WordPress hosting services, but WP Engine currently holds the plaque as one of the biggest companies in the industry.

The Austin based company was among the first set of companies to offer managed WordPress hosting services and they now serve more than 80,000 customers across over 140 countries.

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While they have a lot of competition in some of the most popular brands like GoDaddy, Bluehost, and others, WP Engine stands out because of their wealth of experience hosting thousands of WordPress sites over the years, not to mention their trained support and top-notch server-side features.

The hosting company delivers in other areas such as high-speed and powerful security, which are the primary reasons why many WordPress users leave their previous hosting companies.

Here’s a full rundown of what to expect from WP Engine:

WP Engine Speed And Performance 

When it comes to websites, slow and steady loses the race. Chances are that there are at least a few hundred other websites that do what you do, so if your visitors find it difficult to load your site, they’ll bounce.

There are many variables that determine the speed of a website, but the consistent thing is that complex websites tend to load slower because of all the functionalities that come with them.

Luckily, a WordPress site in pristine condition is fairly lean, hence, it is fast.

If you are running a blog site that requires more text and fewer plugins and images, then you will be fine buying an inexpensive shared hosting plan from just about any managed WordPress hosting company.

However, if you plan to do something that requires more plugins, heavy custom themes, and lots of media files, then you must be ready for the load that follows. These loads can slow down your website loading speed.

When this happens, most WordPress users tend to opt for a higher subscription plan, but improving your website speed takes more than just paying more.

In some instances, you will need to upgrade to a bigger and more powerful server, but sometimes, caching some resources and optimizing your files will simply do the trick. 

The bottom line is that you have to put in effort one way or another to make your website stay fast, especially as you introduce additional functions to it, which is where WP Engine comes in.

They care for everything that can affect your speed with their customized servers and powerful caching system.

If your site is a little bit more complicated than caching can solve, they have a dedicated and well-trained engineering team that will log into your website to find the root of the problem.

You can channel your time and effort to figure out how to grow other parts of your business since your site will perform well even if you do not optimize your WordPress installs on your own. 

This makes WP Engine an ideal solution for complete beginners. The platform makes it unnecessary for WordPress website owners to be schooled on how to optimize WordPress for speed, since it offers super-speed straight out of the box and remains that way even as the site gets bigger.

If you are not particularly familiar with how speed works in WordPress, you may crash some essential parts of your WordPress such as the layer caching plugins.

They have data centers in the USA, Europe, and Asia, which keeps your data boxes close to your audience, wherever they may be. 

WP Engine Customer Support

For companies that provide more services than products, customer support should be given more emphasis. 

That is not to say that companies that sell products should suck at customer service, but for service providing companies, customer support is part of what the customer pays for, and WP Engine understands that, which is why customer support is one of the integral parts of their business.

From personal experience, their support team typically responds in minutes, and they do that without autoresponders.

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Now, a lot of people have complained in the past that WP Engine over promises when it comes to customer support, but that may just be a few cases of a hot-tempered customer dealing with a rookie, or even an experienced customer rep on a bad day.

If you truly want to nail a company’s support service, then check for their knowledge, systems, and access, judge from past dealings with them, and also what people say about them. WP Engine has all three boxes checked.

Their tutorial videos and interactions with members of their support team show that they have extensive knowledge of the workings of WordPress.

The best part for me is that you can get on a three-way call with a member of their team and your client, even if you are on a low budget plan. 

WP Engine Security 

WordPress powers more than 30% of websites on the world wide web and as you know, with great power, comes even greater threats.

WordPress status as one of the most popular website building platforms makes it a target for hackers and malware distributors.

Being an open-source platform, a lot of people believe that WordPress-based websites are more likely to fall to cyber attacks than websites built on closed-source platforms, but they couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Aside from all the issues that can affect any software, there’s no reason that your WordPress site should be less secure than the others because it is built on an open-source platform. 

If anything, being an open-source platform has its own perks as WordPress has a robust community support system that releases new updates and tests for different vulnerabilities.

On your own part, you may only be required to keep to a few security basics such as installing plugins from only verified creators, updating your plugins regularly, and backing your website in case things go south.

However, WP Engine goes out of their way to do these things for you. They backup your website to keep your resources off-site in case something goes wrong and they act on your behalf if you are ever hacked. 

WP Engine Market focus

WP Engine wasn’t designed for everyone. The platform is typically for three types of customers:

Those that require a highly scalable architecture, the non-techies that want a support team on standby in case they hit a wall, and website owners that are seeking an enterprise-based security system.

The first set of customers are the tech experts and developers who are not seeking to use themes and templates, but are merely looking for a platform that allows them to focus on design and development without having to worry about hosting maintenance.

It is ideal for developers who are working for clients that are on a fixed budget. The developers can build their website on WP Engine’s virtual environment, launch it, and hand it over to the client when it’s ready.

The second type of customer can equally be placed in two categories.

There are those that do not know the first thing about coding and development, and so they need guidance through their site-building process.

The second group are those who may know a few things about web development, but are simply frustrated by their previous host, and so they need a more reliable one.

Finally, the third type of customers are startups and established businesses that give priority to their online presence, and so they want a website that can stand the test of time. 

WP Engine Hosting features

WP Engine has a wide range of hosting features, which makes it the managed WordPress hosting platform to beat.

For starters, it is able to integrate every new developer feature that comes with version 4 of WordPress, and there has been a lot of changes since WordPress first started.

For example, the Git push setup feature that allows developers to deploy their works from Github has been around for a couple of years now, but it has seen its own fair share of changes.

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Another development that is noteworthy is WP Engine’s acquisition of StudioPress.

StudioPress is a framework that allows web developers and non-techies alike to build some of the best WordPress websites that they can, following the best practices in the industry.

This acquisition unlocked WordPress users’ access to dozens of themes that they can download from the WP Engine user portal and upload directly to their websites.

Most of the themes in StudioPress are easy to use and they also have documentation to help you set up and launch your new website as quickly as possible.

One of the best parts is that these themes have a live customization option that lets you see real-time changes to any part of your website that you edit even before you publish the changes.

The platform has rolled out quite a number of useful hosting features, which is one reason why it has stayed on top for so long. 

WP Engine Complexity

If you have noticed, the first few points have mostly shown the positive part of WP Engine, but here’s where we tilt towards a few drawbacks that you may experience along the way. 

WP Engine has delivered fat on speed, security, and development as they say they will, but at what cost?

From thousands of user-generated reviews on the internet, you will find that although many WP Engine subscribers acknowledge the fact that the platform is worth the time, they wouldn’t mind if it was a lot less complicated.

It is not only newbies and non-techies that think so. Even some pros believe that while their backend interface has gotten a lot cleaner, it is still missing that traditional cPanel hosting backend that they are used to.

For example, WP Engine does not host DNS, which means that you will need to update your DNS directly to with your DNS provider.

These differences can lead the developer to make costly mistakes that will hurt their websites in the long run and this is perhaps the most prominent deterrent for a lot of beginner customers.

Of course, you will eventually get used to it once you get over the learning curve, but it does require a lot of patience, which is something you don’t often find in users that want to create and launch new WordPress websites as quickly as possible. 

WP Engine Versatility

WP Engine draws a big line on what thresholds you can and can’t cross in order to run their architecture as well as they can, but this creates a sort of limited versatility.

In their bid to make all the installations on their platform uniform, they ensure that users can only use certain predictable plugins and rely on a predictable visitor pattern to discourage sudden spikes in visitor’s index.

Surely all hosting companies have set aside rules that their users must confine to, but WP Engine defines their limitations quite boldly.

In fact, they have banned several plugins and admin behaviors, and while some will argue that these bans will do more good than harm, they do prevent their users from making random experimentations, thus preventing you from fully getting the best that your website can handle.

One of the most popular plugins not allowed on WP Engine is the ‘Yet another related post’ plugin.

This plugin may be resource-intensive, but it is a fantastic option, especially for very small websites. However, you cannot install it once you are on WP Engine.

Of course, this is neither good nor bad for your website, but it does limit your power of imagination since it is scarcely open to experimentation. 

WP Engine Pricing

Using WP Engine makes the phrase “WordPress is free” sound like a big fat lie. In other words, WP Engine is not cheap at all.

Their plans are based on the number of visits that you expect on your site and their startup plan costs $35 per month for a maximum of 25,000 visits.

This goes without saying that you can get more visits for less than half the cost if you buy a shared hosting plan on the likes of Bluehost and others, but here’s the thing:

WP Engine emphasizes price on value, which means that after a breakdown of the features that the platform offers and the time it will take you to do the things that you want to do, you will find out that the price is actually worth it.

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For example, it is the best practice to update your website every month and this usually takes about 30 minutes. If you have a developer to do this for you, they will probably charge you around $50/hour, which surpasses your WP Engine monthly fee.

Remember that a bad plugin update can result in downtime that will make you lose visitors, and by implication lose a lot of money. Plus premium security isn’t cheap, so all these considerations indeed make WP seem like a smart investment. 

Pantheon

Pantheon is a different type of platform made by developers for developers. 

They target experts who want to create enterprise-level WordPress and Drupal sites.

In fact, when the developers of Pantheon spent sleepless nights working on the platform, they had it in mind to create a platform that supports only Drupal websites, but now, they have introduced Pantheon for WordPress.

The goal of the platform is to allow developers to build, launch, and manage their platform from one account so that they can focus their attention on other things without worrying about the working conditions of their server.

Pantheon is responsible for several big websites built on WordPress and they currently power over 55,000 websites already.

They have a free plan for you to test out that lets you deploy your WordPress site on their developer’s environment. Once you are satisfied with what you see, you can then choose from any of their paid plans so that you can take your site live.

Here are a few things to expect on the platform:

Pantheon Scaling

My most favorite thing about Pantheon is that you can scale your website’s millions of page visits even when you first launch.

Let’s say that you have been working on launching an online clothing store for a while and have done lots of marketing for it. If you play your cards right, chances are that you will have more than a few thousand visitors and you will have to make sure that your website can handle that much traffic.

For a lot of other hosts, you will have to upgrade to VMs and heavier servers if that happens, but with Pantheon, you can use their ‘containerization’ feature to adjust the number of containers that you have.

According to Brian Krogsgard of Post Status, “The containerization is much more nimble and much more efficient than virtual machines are. “

Pantheon is the first platform that uses container infrastructure, which makes its handling of page views top notch. 

Pantheon Partnership And Customer Support

They say that customer service is one of the most important parts of any servicing company and I agree.

A good company should have a team of engineers on standby who will always be able to provide solutions for when their customers get stuck. Well, what if you can even talk to the founders directly?

Crazy, right?

Maybe, but it’s true. Pantheon’s incredible customer service grants you access to the founders and top officials of the company.

You can reach out to them if you are looking to set up a special hosting service that you want the top guns to know about.

The company also has a partnership program for agencies and website development companies. 

There are a couple of great perks that come with the partnership offer, including live training from Pantheon Academy and free website hosting. 

Pantheon Multi-Site Dashboard

There are several concerns that come with running a business, so it helps if there’s a solution that lets you handle a lot of your business solutions from one place.

This is where Pantheon comes in. The platform provides you with a multiple site dashboard that lets you track and maintain your online properties from one place.

The only catch is that you must be subscribed to the agency or enterprise plan to be able to enjoy this service.

With this feature, you can see all your past and present WordPress and Drupal projects on one screen.

It also allows you to bring in a couple of people into the picture. You can interact with your client and develop on the dashboard, so it is ideal for companies and design agencies that have large development teams.

Although I haven’t tested the extent of it, Pantheon boasts that it is able to handle thousands of websites on one dashboard. If this is true, it will save companies a lot of money and time. 

Pantheon Pricing

Pantheon is just as expensive as WP Engine, even though their basic plan is $6 dollars cheaper than WP Engine’s starter plan. 

Bear in mind that WP Engine allows up to 25,000 monthly page views for that price range, whereas Pantheon has a limit of 10,000 monthly page views. 

Pantheon lists $687 per month as the price for 300k page views, but they also make provisions for companies that go over that. 

Note that the prices are the same for Drupal and WordPress hosting. 

Our Choice

Both WP Engine and Pantheon are reliable options for hosting your websites. 

Pantheon is perfect for experts and professional developers that are in charge of handling enterprise websites, but for this comparison, our top pick is WP Engine because they offer a wide range of cutting-edge features and services.

The post Wpengine vs Pantheon – Which Is Better? appeared first on Rigorous Themes.

Besides, it is highly recommended to opt for a renowned web host to benefit from their exceptional services. 

WPEngine and Bluehost on the other hand, are big names in the web hosting industry with thousands of customers across the world.

However, a prospective customer may find it hard to opt for the best among the two prominent web hosts.

If you are confused about which of these platforms is ideal to use, this post will walk you through their features, pricing details, and similitudes. 

After comparing them against each other, you can decide which the best is.  

What Is WPEngine?

Founded in 2010, WPEngine is a prominent web hosting company with a specialty in WordPress – a widely used content management system (CMS). 

With its team of WordPress experts, WPEngine has evolved to dominate the WordPress hosting sphere in the web hosting industry.

It is a reliable hosting platform for anyone looking to create a WordPress website.

As a managed hosting service, WordPress website hosting aspects such as speed, security, performance, analytics, are fully covered. 

WPEngine incorporates a series of software solutions that facilitate agility, intelligence, performance, and integrations.

This, in turn, ensures that users can customize their WordPress hosting experience on its unified platform.

Nevertheless, WPEngine offers users the perfect experience as it integrates technologies from Google, New Relic, and AMS.

With WPEngine, you can automate the entire process of creating and managing your WordPress websites without hassles.

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A robust architecture, unparalleled speed, fool-proof security and round the clock engineering support, WP Engine offers the best-in-class Wordpress hosting experience.

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Just as its name implies, WPEngine is the ideal web host for every WordPress website.

WPEngine has features that would interest any prospective customers. Some of its key features include: 

WPEngine Managed WordPress Hosting

WPEngine can host any WordPress website effortlessly; hence, you don’t have to worry about the technical aspects of hosting your WordPress site.

Besides, WPEngine is developed for WordPress CMS which powers 35% websites on the internet. 

WPEngine Global CDN

WPEngine incorporates a free content delivery network (CDN) service upon subscription.

This ensures that the WordPress website is accessible across all geographical locations at a much faster speed.

WPEngine Automated SSL Certificate

One of the WPEngine interesting features is the SSL certificate which ensures website security.

With a single click, users can activate the free SSL certificate which is powered by WPEngine for all hosted websites on its platform. 

WPEngine StudioPress Themes

WPEngine provides subscribers with up to 36 premium StudioPress themes for free.

Powered by Genesis Framework, these SEO-friendly WordPress themes are compliant with WordPress theming rules.

WPEngine Auto BackUp

WPEngine automatically backup the data of hosted websites daily.

This makes it possible for users to retrieve their site’s recent data in case they experience website issues. 

WPEngine Copy Sites Feature

With WPEngine, you can copy the design and structure of one WordPress website to another.

This saves site developers the time of having to recreate websites they intend to replicate.

WPEngine Two Factor Authentication

Other interesting WPEngine features is the two-factor authentication (2FA). This helps to protect your site from breaches and hackers.

Two security processes are required before access to the WP dashboard is granted. 

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WPEngine Automated Migration

This feature lets you transfer your WordPress website from any hosting platform to the WPEngine platform easily and concisely. 

WPEngine 24/7/365 Support

The WPEngine support team Is available all day of the week and at any time.

As a customer, you can reach out to them and get help whenever it is needed. 

Other outstanding WPEngine features include:

• Dedicated development environments 
• Services onboarding
• Git and SFTP connections
• GeoTarget 
• PHP 7.3 and HTTP/2 enabled 
• Proprietary EverCache
• Content performance

WPEngine Pricing 

To meet up with all kinds of web hosting needs, WPEngine provides users with various pricing packages.

Listed below are the WPEngine pricing plans:

Startup Plan 

$29.17 per month when billed at $350 annually, or $35 per month when billed monthly.

• For 1 website
• 25,000 Monthly visits
• 10 GB Local storage
• 50 GB Monthly bandwidth

Also, free add-ons for the Startup Plan include:

• Genesis Framework
• 35+ StudioPress themes
• Automated SSL certificates
• Development, stage, production environments
• Global CDN
• Transferable sites
• PHP 7.3 ready
• LargeFS
• Page performance
• SSH gateway
• 24/7 chat support

Growth Plan

$95.83 per month when billed at $1150 annually, or $115 per month when billed on a monthly basis

• For 5 websites
• 100,000 Monthly visits
• 20 GB Local storage
• 200 GB Monthly bandwidth

Free add-ons for the Growth Plan include:

• All free add-ons from the Starter Plan, including;
• Imported SSL certificates
• 24/7 phone support

Scale Plan 

$241.67 per month when billed at $2900 annually, or $290 per month when billed on a monthly basis

• For 15 websites 
• 400,000 Monthly visits
• 30 GB Local storage
• 400 GB Monthly bandwidth

Free add-ons include:

• All free add-ons from the Growth Plan

Custom Plan 

Custom pricing

• For 25+ websites 
• Millions of Monthly visits
• Up to 1TB Local storage
• More than 400 GB Monthly bandwidth

Free add-ons for the Custom Plan include:

• All Scale Plan free add-ons
• Content performance
• WordPress multisite
• Consultative onboarding
• Readiness assessment
• GeoTarget

Note: WPEngine provides subscribers of the Starter, Growth, and Scale plans with two free months when they opt for an annual subscription. 

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WPEngine Pros

• Specialized WP hosting 
• Reliable security
• 99.9% Uptime 
• Reliable customer support
• Integrated technologies 
• Automatic backup
• Free StudioPress themes 
• Yearly payment discounts 

WPEngine Cons

• Does not facilitate domain name registration 
• No cPanel
• No webmail
• Lack of support for the Startup Plan subscribers
• Not all WP plugins are supported 

What Is Bluehost?

Founded in 2003, Bluehost is one of the oldest web hosting companies used globally by millions of website owners. 

Owned by Endurance International Group, Bluehost dominates a larger percentage of the web hosting industry alongside its sister companies such as HostGator, iPage, BigRock, ResellerClub, and others.

With its many years of experience in the web hosting industry, Bluehost has evolved to be a household name for hosting all kinds of websites irrespective of the website technologies.

Besides, Bluehost supports WordPress hosting, WooCommerce hosting, shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated servers. Not to mention, Bluehost facilitates domain name registration.

On the other hand, Bluehost is recommended by WordPress.org as the best web hosting company for WordPress sites.

Therefore, individuals and businesses alike can make use of Bluehost to host any type of website.

Bluehost is recommended by so many customers including WordPress.org because of the features it offers. 

Some key features of Bluehost are:

Bluehost WordPress And WooCommerce Hosting

Bluehost provides specialized hosting services for WordPress and WooCommerce websites.

These are special hosting options with infrastructure and tools to build any WordPress or WooCommerce website. 

Bluehost WP Pro

Bluehost incorporates an easy-to-use dashboard known as WP Pro. This facilitates marketing and managed WordPress hosting features. It also enables users to enjoy improved customer support and advanced security features. 

Bluehost Shared Hosting

Shared Hosting is available on Bluehost. This feature lets you host your website or blog on a shared server with other websites. It is fully managed and has a user-friendly dashboard. 

Bluehost VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Server Hosting gives you a semi-dedicated server to host your website while ensuring better performance. The VPS hosting features increased bandwidth and storage space and can handle a high amount of traffic. 

Bluehost Dedicated Hosting

Bluehost allows subscribers to host their websites on its dedicated server without sharing bandwidth or server resources with other customers. The dedicated server is optimized for advanced hosting experience and advanced capabilities.

Bluehost Domain Name Registration

You can register your domains on Bluehost, which can then be used with your web hosting plan. About 17 domain extensions can be registered on Bluehost including .com, .net, .org, blog, .co.uk, amongst others. 

On the other hand, Bluehost allocates a free domain name for new users when they register for a hosting plan. 

Bluehost 24/7 Customer Support

Bluehost has a team of expert support which helps customers to resolve both technical and non-technical issues. Their support team can be contacted via phone, email, or live chat on the website. 

Other notable Bluehost features include:

• Webmail support
• SSL certificate
• Domain
• Free website scripts
• Unmetered bandwidth
• Free marketing credits

Bluehost Pricing Packages

Bluehost offers different pricing plans for each type of hosting package i.e. WordPress Hosting, WP Pro, WooCommerce, shared hosting, VPS hosting, and dedicated hosting.

Here are the Bluehost pricing packages:

1. Shared WordPress Hosting

Basic Plan 

• Starting Price – $2.95 per month
• 1 Website
• Free SSL certificate
• 50 GB SSD storage
• Free domain (for 1 Year)
• 5 Parked domains
• 25 Subdomains
• $200 Marketing credit

Plus Plan 

• Starting price – $5.45 per month 
• Unlimited websites
• Free SSL certificate
• Unmetered SSD storage
• Free domain (for 1 Year)
• Unlimited parked domains
• Unlimited subdomains
• $200 Marketing credit
• 1 Office 365 mailbox (free for 30 days)

Choice Plus Plan 

• Starting price – $5.45 per month
• All Plus Plan features, including;
• CodeGuard basic backup
• 1 Office 365 mailbox (free for 30 days)

2. WP Pro – WordPress Managed Hosting

Build Plan

• Starting price – $19.95 per month
• 100+ Free WordPress themes
• Daily scheduled backups
• Jetpack site analytics (basic)
• Malware detection & removal
• Marketing center
• Domain privacy & protection
• 1 Office 365 mailbox (free for 30 days)

Grow Plan

• Starting price – $29.95 per month
• All features of the Build Plan, including;
• 10GB video compression
• Bluehost SEO tools
• Jetpack premium
• Business review tools
• Jetpack ads integration
• Blue Sky ticket support
• 1 Office 365 mailbox (free for 30 days)

Scale Plan

• Starting price – $49.95 per month
• All features of the Grow Plan, plus:
• Unlimited video compression
• Elastic search
• Unlimited backups & restore
• Jetpack pro 
• PayPal integration
• Blue Sky chat support

3. WooCommerce Hosting

Starter Plan

• Starting price – $6.95 per month
• 1 Online store
• 100 GB SSD storage
• Storefront theme
• Free SSL certificate
• Domain privacy & protection
• Free setup call
• 1 Office 365 mailbox (free for 30 days)

Plus Plan

• Starting price – $8.95 per month
• All features of the Starter Plan, including;
• Unlimited online stores
• Unmetered SSD storage
• CodeGuard backup basic

Pro Plan

• Starting price – $12.95 per month
• All features of the Plus Plan, including;
• Bluehost SEO tools

4. Shared Hosting

The Bluehost shared hosting package comes with four plans each with different pricing, which includes;

Basic Plan

The Basic plan lets you host just one website and it is priced at a starting cost of $3.95 per month. It features a 50 GB storage space, a free SSL certificate, and unmetered bandwidth. The plan can hold up to 5 parked domains and 25 subdomains. You get to register a free domain name upon purchase at no additional cost. 

Plus Plan

The Plus plan is priced at a starting cost of $5.95 per month and it can host an unlimited number of websites. It also has an unlimited storage space and unmetered bandwidth. A free SSL certificate is included and it can host an unlimited number of parked domains and subdomains. 

Choice Plus Plan

The Choice Plus plan is priced at the same starting amount as the Plus plan i.e. $5.95. It includes all of its features and additional features like domain name privacy protection, and CodeGuard basic site backup. 

Pro Plan

The Pro plan is the highest shared hosting plan on Bluehost. The price is set at a starting amount of $13.95 per month and it includes all the features of the previous plans as well as a dedicated IP address. 

5. VPS Hosting

The Bluehost Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting plan provides you with more control and flexibility. Three hosting plans fall under the VPS hosting package, which includes:

Standard Plan

The Standard VPS hosting plan is available at a starting price of $18.99 per month. When you purchase this plan, you get a server with 2 cores, 1 IP address, and 1 TB of monthly bandwidth. It also includes a 2 GB RAM and 30 GB of SSD storage space.  

Enhanced Plan

The Enhanced VPS hosting plan is available at a starting amount of $29.99 per month. It features a server with 2 cores, 2 IP addresses, and 2 TB of bandwidth per month. Also featured is a 4 GB RAM and 60 GB of SSD storage space.

Ultimate Plan

The Ultimate VPS hosting plan is available at a starting cost of $59.99 per month. The VPS server features 4 cores, 2 IP addresses, and 3 TB of monthly bandwidth. Also, it includes 8 GB RAM and 120 GB of SSD storage space as well. 

6. Dedicated Server Hosting

This is the highest hosting solution you can get on Bluehost. It features 3 separate plans which include:

Standard Plan

Bluehost charges a starting cost of $79.99 per month for this standard dedicated hosting plan. Features of this plan include 4 cores at 2.3 GHz, 3 IP addresses, and 5 TB of monthly bandwidth. 4 GB RAM and 500 GB mirrored storage space are allocated as well. 

Enhanced Plan

Bluehost charges a starting amount of $99.99 per month for this Enhanced dedicated hosting plan. Features of this plan include 4 cores at 2.3 GHz, 4 IP addresses, and 10 TB of monthly bandwidth. Also, this plan incorporates 8 GB RAM and 1 TB mirrored storage space. 

Premium Plan

This plan is available at a starting price of $119.99 per month. For this Premium plan, you get 4 cores at 3.3 GHz, 5 IP addresses, and 15 TB of monthly bandwidth. The storage space and RAM are 1 TB and 16 GB respectively.

Note: All the Bluehost pricing packages come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

Bluehost Pros

• Reliable support
• Free domain name registration
• Reliable security
• Supports WordPress & WooCommerce
• Supports webmail
• Free SSL certificate

Bluehost Cons 

• Website migration is not free
• Confusing WordPress hosting packages
• High renewal rates
• Absence of Windows hosting

WPEngine vs Bluehost – Which One Should You Opt For? 

WPEngine is the ideal web host for WordPress hosting, while Bluehost is versatile for both WordPress and non-WordPress site hosting.

However, in order to isolate the best web host among WPEngine and Bluehost, we will be comparing the two web hosts using some specific criteria.

Ease of Use

WPEngine and Bluehost both incorporate user-friendly interfaces. 

The Bluehost dashboard is very easy for anyone including newbies to navigate and access its features.

On the other hand, the WPEngine dashboard is user-friendly as well. 

However, the series of management features on the dashboard can make it difficult for newbies to familiarize themselves with, although experienced users would not have any difficulty.

Cost

Both WPEngine and Bluehost feature various hosting plans with different prices. 

Notwithstanding Bluehost having many hosting plans than WPEngine, WPEngine’s pricing is much higher than Bluehost’s pricing plans. 

To launch a website on Bluehost’s Shared Hosting plan would cost at most $13.95 per month. The dedicated hosting plan has the highest cost at $119.99 per month. Not to mention that you get free domain registration and more flexibility.

WPEngine, on the other hand, has its lowest hosting plan priced at $35 per month. The scale plan costs $290 per month. While the cost for the custom plan is not fixed, it could cost more than $600 per month. 

Not to mention, for WPEngine, you still need to purchase a domain name from a third-party domain name registrar and you are restricted to hosting only WordPress websites. 

Therefore, for cost-effectiveness, Bluehost is highly recommended for the low-budget website owners.

Flexibility 

When it comes to flexibility, Bluehost takes the upper hand as WPEngine only supports WordPress. WPEngine features 4 hosting plans and they are all tailored for WordPress hosting. 

If you do not want to make use of WordPress CMS, you have to opt for a flexible web host such as Bluehost to elude the WordPress limitations.

On the other hand, Bluehost provides you with shared hosting plans, VPS hosting plans, and dedicated hosting plans. 

With this, website owners can host both WordPress and non-WordPress sites without hassles, not to mention the free domain name Bluehost provides new users on its various pricing packages.

Speed & Uptime 

WPEngine features some integrated technologies that make its servers reliable. 

The Google Next-Generation Hardware makes WPEngine websites load very fast and this is what Bluehost lacks. 

Also, the Proprietary EverCache feature allows WPEngine to handle a massive amount of web visitors and thus provides maximum uptime.

Meanwhile, Bluehost servers do not get affected by massive amounts of web visitors, so server uptime is guaranteed. Besides, SSD Hosting ensures that websites load faster. 

With Bluehost, speed and website uptime might be affected while on the shared hosting plan most especially if a particular website is utilizing excess bandwidth or server resources. 

Bluehost does not slack in any way, but WPEngine beats it when it comes to speed. Moreover, ‘speed is king’ in the web host industry.

Domain Name Registration

In this criterion, WPEngine gets a zero-rating because it does not facilitate domain name registration. 

Therefore, in order to host your WordPress website on WPEngine, you would need to purchase your domains from other platforms (such as Bluehost) and link them to your WPEngine hosting account.

Bluehost, on the other hand, is a renowned domain name registrar in the world. Users can register domain names with different TLDs with them and also set up hosting from within their Bluehost control panel.

Security 

As a managed WordPress hosting company, WPEngine handles all the security processes of its customers. 

The platform automatically updates the WordPress CMS whenever a new version or patch is released. Besides, WPEngine incorporates SSL Encryption as well as 2FA which keep your website safe from security threats.

Bluehost is no different as the platform also provides security features as proactive measures against cyber threats. 

Moreover, Bluehost updates WordPress versions automatically and also issues SSL certificates to all their domains for free for additional online protection.

In terms of security, WPEngine is more geared towards preventing WordPress sites hack through its provision of disallowed WordPress plugins list, resources, and other security measures.

WordPress Support 

WPEngine specializes in WordPress hosting so the platform can be used to host a WordPress website easily when compared with Bluehost. 

However, you might not be able to enjoy the full WordPress experience as some WordPress plugins are disallowed by WPEngine.

Bluehost, on the other hand, is a general web hosting company that lets you host any type of website most especially WordPress website. 

With Bluehost, users can make use of any notable WordPress theme or plugins as they are all supported.

Final Thoughts

To conclude, which is the better hosting platform between WPEngine and Bluehost? From our comparison, the answer definitely will be Bluehost. 

This is simply because you can do more with Bluehost than WPEngine. 

Whereas WPEngine is simply a WordPress-only hosting platform, Bluehost facilitates web hosting for both WordPress and non-WordPress sites.

Besides that, Bluehost also supports WooCommerce hosting as well, which is the eCommerce version of the WordPress CMS (via the WooCommerce plugin). 

Another interesting perk to consider is that Bluehost supports domain name registration. Also, their low pricing when compared to the WPEngine series of pricing plans makes Bluehost the dominant web host to consider over WPEngine.

Nevertheless, you can take your time to figure out which of the web host works well for your next web design project.

The post WPEngine vs Bluehost – Which Is Better? appeared first on Rigorous Themes.

Some people believe that most WordPress users now have enough knowledge of WordPress that they no longer need these hosting companies to help them set up their servers, but even though this is true, do these users have the capacity to take care of their servers on a regular basis on their own?

For a lot of WordPress users, the answer is no.

Unless you are a developer that works with WordPress every day, setting up servers with Ocean breeze or Linode may seem as easy as rocket science.

If you just want to create a website for your business or personal use without getting your hands dirty, then you need an expert’s touch.

For an average user, WordPress is merely a Blackbox that aids you to showcase your portfolio, make posts, and manage comments – and it should stay that way, even though it’s so much more.

As long as the primary purpose of your business does not involve the more technical aspects of WordPress, then there’s no reason why you should know too much about security, speed, daily backups, scalability, etc.

That is where managed WordPress hosting comes in. When you are signed up to their services, your managed host will be responsible for the more technical, administrative tasks so that you can focus more on building and marketing your business.

This article is about one of the best hosting companies in the game; WP Engine, but before we dive into details about them, let’s talk about cars for a minute.

The Bugatti Veyron is a super-fast car, and I’m sure you will perform very well if you use the everyday Veyron for a drag race.  But if I have learned anything from Fast and Furious, the winners of the race are always those who have optimized their cars, with better tires, a modified gearbox, and turbocharger.

At the end of the day, the car is still a Bugatti Veyron, but one that is optimized to perform better than the everyday stock Veyron.

It is the same thing with WordPress.

The out of the box web server has the same components, but the job of a managed hosting company is to optimize these servers to make your WordPress website a winning one.

WP Engine is one of those managed hosting companies that knows their stuff. They are experts in giving you the necessary support and backup that will help you drive (pun intended) your website to success.

They are headquartered in Austin, Texas, and are one of the pioneers of managed hosting services for WordPress.

WP Engine has a lot of competitors in the market including Siteground, Bluehost, Flywheel, Pantheon and others, but before you draw any conclusions, you must realize that the hosting industry has become a super complicated place.

A couple of the big names like GoDaddy, Bluehost, HostGator, among others, are hosting companies, but with different functions.

Some of them offer specialized WordPress technical support, while others are mainly focused on the server-side aspect of WordPress.

For WP Engine, their primary function is to ensure that WordPress users focus less on security, speed and performance, and the more technical functions of their sites.

That being said, WP Engine still remains an industry leader in both the general and managed WordPress hosting space, so let’s find out why. 

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WP Engine Features

Let’s take a look what WP Engine offers.

WP Engine Speed and Performance

It’s a general belief that the more complex your website is, the slower it will likely be, but there are a number of factors that will determine the speed of your website, regardless of what it contains.

Using the Bugatti narrative, how fast you can drive it depends on a lot of things, but the idea is to understand how the car works and what roads you will drive it on.

To know how your website can become faster, you need to understand what makes WordPress websites faster and what inhibits them.

Sounds like a lot? Well, luckily for you, WP Engine mostly has it covered.

WP Engine has some of the best types of machinery in place to make speed and performance one less thing to worry about.

For starters, their partnership with StackPath ensures that all their subscribers can access a content delivery network that uses CDN to reduce the ping rate, thereby making the site faster. This service is free for you as long as you subscribe to any of their paid plans.

Caching is another way to ensure faster speed and processing sudden traffic surges without ever going offline.

This is possible with the aid of EverCache that updates your site whenever there’s a new entry. The combination of StackPath and EverCache sees to it that your customers get content faster while caching static content on your site.

WP Engine ensures that all your pages are cached, as well as your subdomains and redirects.

You can always check how your site is faring by yourself. There’s a performance testing tool in your user portal that only requires you to input your site’s URL to know how it is performing.

More than that, the tool also recommends ways to improve the site speed and other areas where it lags. You will see the time it takes to display the first object on your site, as well as how long it takes to display everything on the site completely.

This will save you the stress of having to use third-party apps to gain insights into your site’s performance and how to improve it.

WP Engine has a speed tool that you can use to see how fast your website loads if you don’t want to use an external application.

Overall, WP Engine helps you maintain your site’s speed and performance even when you have more visitors coming, and it does this without having to mess with any layered caching plugin. 

Interesting Comparison: WP Engine Vs Kinsta

WP Engine Customer Support

Customer support is a big part of any business, especially one that is in the business of offering services. 

When it comes to WordPress hosting customer support, WP Engine is reputed as one of the best.

In fact, they have more than 200 support experts who work around the clock to ensure that customers get only the best-personalized support experience.

To ensure that there’s always someone to respond to you, WP Engine support centers are located in three global places, so when you do call, you can be sure that there will be someone ready to answer at the other end.

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The best part is that their support isn’t only limited to hosting problems. Their support team consists of WordPress experts and engineers that are capable of troubleshooting your site issues and recommending better solutions.

You can reach out to them via their live chat or ask any questions you may have over the phone.

Their user portal support is to be used for hosting or WordPress related issues, plus they also have a large knowledge base that contains several articles that can proffer solutions to your issues.

They boast of a 3-minute response time for their live chat, and from personal experience, I can confirm that they respond even faster, regardless of what time of the day you contact them.

WP Engine Security

Security will always be a concern for WordPress users being that the platform powers a higher number of websites than any other single platform. This means that many sites built on WordPress will be prime targets for hackers. 

That being said, there’s isn’t really too much to worry about. WordPress as an open-source platform does not in any way put it in a disadvantaged position in terms of security. 

There’s no saying whether closed-source sites are more secure than open-source ones. If anything, open-source platforms give you access to a large community that constantly releases new updates and tests for different vulnerabilities.

For WordPress users that handle their own server infrastructures, securing their websites is not a difficult task either. They simply have to install and update files and plugins regularly from verified creators, including a security plugin, and backup their content.

Despite being straightforward, the responsibility still falls on you, and you must be vigilant not to ever fall prey to malware distributors.

For WP Engine users, the host handles everything, and WP Engine will handle site security better than the average WordPress user as a result of their team of experts.

They observe all the best practices and backup your website to be ready to roll back if there is ever a cyber apocalypse.

Their partnership with top security firms guarantees that you have the best hand on your website and they are responsible for bringing your site back to normalcy for free if you ever get hacked. 

Check Out: WP Engine Vs AWS

WP Engine Market focus

Remember at the beginning, we mentioned that there are different web hosting companies with different flavors? Well, what we simply meant was that each different host has a different target market.

For WP Engine, their are ideal customers are placed in 3 classes and WP Engine has optimized their tools and staff to ensure that they satisfy these three classes.

The first class consists of developers that are looking for a platform where they can have a laser focus on development and design without having to worry about hosting maintenance and what comes with it.

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This way, everything is separated, being that the developer’s only job is to build the website on WP Engine’s staging environment, test, and launch it. Once that is done, they can hand over the website to their client, with the assurance that there will be no hosting, security, or performance issues.

WP Engine uses some of their most premium tools for this market, including Git push, transferable installs, staging, etc., and if they sound expensive, that is because they are, but some clients with huge budgets are willing to break the bank for the best service.

The second class of customers consists of the majority whose reasons for using WordPress in the first place is because they do not care to handle the technical implications that come with it. They are those that already have established businesses, but with a different (poorer) host, and can now afford a managed service.

WP Engine uses their automated migration tool to make the process faster and it is a lot smoother since they offer phone support.

Finally, the third category consists of new businesses that are looking to commit to a good platform for a long time.

They usually do not have previous infrastructures or content on other platforms, and would like to launch a complete website from scratch at once.

WP Engine Hosting

The WP Engine’s development team is known for upgrading and creating new features to meet new trends and demands from customers.

If there’s anything about WordPress, it is that new versions are rolled out frequently. The WordPress of today and a few years ago may look very similar, but a lot has changed. They have introduced many new developers’ features and, as far as I know, WP Engine has been able to integrate into every one of them.

One of WP Engine’s features that have simplified web development for its users is the acquisition of StudioPress.

StudioPress is a platform that makes it easy for WordPress users to access different WordPress theme frameworks. This deal is available to all WP Engine users, irrespective of the subscription package they paid for.

With StudioPress, WordPress users can use the Genesis framework and hundreds of other premium WordPress themes to quickly design a new and professional-looking website.

This is especially useful for new WordPress users with no prior experience in web development. The most difficult part of using StudioPress for them is deciding on the best theme to use.

All StudioPress themes are pre-set according to different industries and they are loaded with SEO and security features. 

WP Engine Complexities

One thing that WordPress users know about WP Engine is that they are able to achieve faster speed, security, and scalability, but what many don’t know is that in order to achieve those, the hosting company has to do things differently.

On the bright side, this difference isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, after all is said and done, it will be well worth it, but it’s the road towards the destination that will be a royal pain, especially to the non-techies.

WP Engine’s backend wasn’t always as clean as it now is, but the price for this is that it now requires more custom configuration.

For example, many hosting companies provide DNS nameservers for their users, but not WP Engine. Instead, they require that you update your DNS directly with the provider whom you purchased the DNS from.

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For an experienced developer, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem, but a single mistake can cause different types of complications resulting from redirect loops that are capable of leaving the developer’s site exposed to the public or unable to execute some features.

Of course, after a while of using WP Engine, you will get the hang of it, or at least become better at it. For now, you will probably have to watch videos on how to push your website live to get you through.

Even after that, you cannot truly boast of understanding WP Engine completely.

If you surf their knowledge base, you will come across different materials with a number of checklists that you need to diagnose your site-related issues. And if you set up your DNS based on a video that has a different method from what they have recommended, your site can go down.

In this situation, their customer support will be the only answer to your prayers.

WP Engine Limited Versatility

Another downside of WP Engine’s different setup method is that it draws a thick boundary to what you can bring into your site and what you can take out.

This is because the uniqueness of the site is reliant on the fact that the entire architecture and installations on the site are uniform.

The idea is that all their plugins, visitor patterns, and use cases must be on a predictable, unidirectional line.

Granted, different WordPress hosting platforms have their own different rules, but WP Engine goes the extra mile to determine what you can and can’t introduce to your own site.

One of the measures that they put in place to deter seasonal traffic spikes is the ridiculously expensive rate they have pegged the tiers at.

While they may find it easy to make a case for banning some plugins and admin behaviors, it does restrict the versatility of users.

‘Yet Another Related Post’ plugin is one of the most popular plugins that have been exiled by WP Engine. This plugin works very well with small sites that give a lot of emphasis to content marketing, but it is not allowed in WP Engine.

Another aspect of the host that hinders versatility is its pricing structure. For what it’s worth, the amount that will take to handle a medium traffic site on WP Engine can very well be used to buy a VPS server that is capable of handling much more massive traffic. 

With WP Engine, you are essentially paying for performance and not storage. 

WP Engine Pricing

Like we said before, WP Engine pricing isn’t cheap, but it’s worth it since you are paying for performance and not storage.

Looking at it based on features, they do not give you the most generous deal. 

Unless you run a large business that requires a dedicated environment and support, there are three paid plans that you can choose from:

Startup plan

Priced at $30/month, this one is ideal for businesses that are just kicking off, but can still afford a managed hosting plan.

Here are the main features of the Startup plan:

• Genesis Framework and 35+ StudioPress themes
• 24/7 customer support
• Staging environment
• PHP 7.3 ready
• Automated SSL certificates
• Global CDN
• Free transferable sites
• 10GB local storage
• 25k monthly visits
• 50GB bandwidth
• 1 website

Growth plan 

Priced at $115/month, the Growth plan is for businesses that want to scale up as a result of continual growth in traffic.

Here are the main features of the Growth plan:

• 20GB local storage
• 100k monthly visits
• 200GB bandwidth
• 5 websites
• SSH gateway 

Plus everything else the Startup plan has.

Scale plan

Priced at $290/month, this plan is designed for businesses with large WordPress websites that need a managed hosting service for better performance. 

Here are the main features of the Scale plan:

• 30GB local storage
• 400k monthly visits
• 400GB bandwidth
• 15 websites

Plus everything else the Growth plan has.

They also have a custom plan for large businesses. Contact them for a quote.

These are monthly payment plans. If you pay annually, you get some discount.

WP Engine - Best Wordpress Hosting

A robust architecture, unparalleled speed, fool-proof security and round the clock engineering support, WP Engine offers the best-in-class Wordpress hosting experience.

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WP Engine Coupon

If you want to sign up for WP Engine now, you’ll enjoy a discount off any plan that you want to subscribe to.

WP Engine is offering a coupon code that grants you a 30% discount off any of their plans or you can get the first five months of your web hosting free when you prepay for a year.

To qualify for this discount, use the code ‘CYBERWKND30’. 

How To Apply The Coupon Code

First, go to WP ENGINE from this page. Once you use this link, you will automatically qualify for a 30% discount and you will see a message to that effect.

When you click on ‘Apply Discount’, the site will take you down to the pricing section. There you are to click on the ‘Get Started’ button for your preferred plan. 

The next page will prompt you to set up your account. 

Before you fill out the form, check the right-hand side of the page to confirm that your code applied correctly. 

Enter your billing information and click ‘Create my Site’ when you are ready. 

Last Words

WP Engine has a few drawbacks, especially the high cost of their pricing tiers. 

That being said, if you want to scale your business to accommodate your online growth and increase your revenue in the process, I recommend WP Engine, any day. 

With its speed, performance, and security features, you will give your site visitors the best possible experience.

The post WP Engine Review, Pricing & Coupon appeared first on Rigorous Themes.

A managed WP hosting service takes care of all the technical aspects of WordPress, including backups, security, updates, and more.

Today, we’ll be looking at two popular managed WP hosting services – WP Engine and FlyWheel.

WP Engine Overview

WP Engine, without a doubt, is one of the most well-known hosted WordPress solutions.

The company has received a variety of awards, such as the International Business Award, Top Workplaces, Ethics in Business and Community, and more.

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A robust architecture, unparalleled speed, fool-proof security and round the clock engineering support, WP Engine offers the best-in-class Wordpress hosting experience.

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Who Is It For?

WP Engine is great for anyone who wants to improve the performance of their WordPress site but doesn’t have the time or resources to do it alone. Here’s who can benefit from their service:

• Small and medium-sized business
• Enterprise-level businesses
• Agencies that manage websites for clients
• Marketers
• Developers

Let’s explore some of WP Engine’s top features and how these features can be useful for marketers, developers, and the others mentioned above.

WP Engine Setup & Customization

WP Engine is easy to set up and customize.

• Themes – There are 36 free customizable StudioPress themes to choose from with built-in SEO features
• Migration Plugin – This plugin makes it easy to migrate your site to WP Engine with a few clicks, without losing anything
• Premium Migration Service – An account manager is also available to take care of the technical aspects of migration if necessary
• Launch Review – WP Engine’s team is available to review your site before you launch it to make sure it is ready
• Automatic Updates – All major WordPress updates will be handled for you automatically; minor updates will be tested first
• Automatic Backups – It is important to back up your site so that you don’t lose data, and this is done automatically when you use WP Engine
• Free SSL Certificate – You can add it with one click
• Free CDN – Start using a CDN to speed up your site with a single click

WP Engine Team Management

WP Engine is great for enterprises with small or large teams.

• Team Access – You can set up user permissions so that proper roles and access levels apply
• Site Ownership Transfer – If you are building sites for clients, you can easily transfer site ownership to them
• Activity Log – Check your activity history to stay on track of what your team members are doing on your site
• Developer Connections – There are Git and SFTP connections available so that your development team can keep using their tools
• Developer Tools – WP Engine comes with DevKit, which allows your development team to build sites with SSH Gateway access, push and pull deployments, and three environments: Dev, Stage, and Prod, including dedicated dev environments

Optimized WordPress Performance

One of the reasons to sign up for a managed WP hosting service is the improved performance you can get.

• Increased Speed – As mentioned, you get a free CDN, which can speed up your site and protect you from hackers
• Increased Security – Besides the free CDN, you get a free SSL
  Two-Factor Authentication – This optional feature can also increase security
• Threat Monitoring – WP Engine will monitor your site for threats by detecting and blocking malicious behavior before it gets out of hand
• Disaster Recovery – If your site does go down, it will be back up soon with the help of WP Engine’s experts
• Dedicated Security Team – All security audits will be taken care of for you by their expert team
• Global Performance – WP Engine has Global Data Centers in Asia, the Pacific, North America, and Europe for improved performance and speed regardless of where you are in the world
• Amazon Web Services – WP Engine is an Amazon Web Services Advanced Technology Partner, and they offer a variety of cloud solutions
• Downtime Prevention – Prevent website downtime with WP Engine’s CDN and other security measures
• Premium Caching – Speed up your site by using EverCache
• Scalability – WP Engine can manage increased spikes in activity without downtime

Detailed Reports and Analytics

WP Engine’s detailed analytics will help you optimize your performance.

• Simplified Google Analytics – See your Google Analytics stats straight from your WordPress admin dashboard, presented in a simplified manner so that it is easy to understand the most important data
• Website Speed Analytics – These stats are also integrated into your user dashboard. They show you exactly how new plugins or site features affect website speed and page performance
• Application Performance Analytics – See data about the performance of your web applications; this will help your IT team eliminate issues

WP Engine Integrations and Plugins

With WP Engine, you will have access to a wide variety of third-party plugins and integrated services.

Integrations – You can integrate with many third-party platforms and services

Plugins – You will have access to the entire WordPress plugin library

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Partnerships – WP Engine has partnered with services such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform

WP Engine Customer Support

WP Engine has a robust support center.

• Contributors and Experts – There are experts dedicated to 14 different specific subject matters ready to help you with any problems you might face. Each team member is trained for weeks
• International 24/7 Support – A team of US- and Ireland-based support experts is available 24/7
• Support Center – There is a large support center with how-to articles and guides on how to use every technical aspect of WP Engine
• Resource Center – The resource center has articles to help you grow your business
• Solution Center – Here you can find plugins and third-party services to help with any problem you might be experiencing
• WP Engine Status – This is a separate site that will tell you if any the main site or any other services from WP Engine is down (WPEngineStatus.com)

WP Engine Affiliate Program

WP Engine’s affiliate program has won several awards.

For WP Engine sales, you get $200 minimum commissions, and you also get 35 percent commissions from any StudioPress premium theme sales.

Affiliate cookies last for 180 days (StudioPress cookies only last for 60 days), and you will be able to use pre-designed banners and custom landing pages to promote WP Engine.

You will also be able to offer exclusive discounts and promotions to customers.

WP Engine Pricing

WP Engine is reasonably priced. They have several plans.

• Startup – $35/month or $350/year: One site, 25,000 visits, 10GB local storage, and 50GB bandwidth
• Growth – $115/month or $1150/year: Five sites, 100,000 visits, 20GB local storage, and 200GB bandwidth. You also get phone support in addition to live chat
• Scale – $290/month or $2900/year: 15 sites, 400,000 visits, 30GB local storage, and 400GB bandwidth
• Custom – Custom price: Up to 25 sites, unlimited visits, up to 1TB local storage, and unlimited bandwidth

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As you can see, you can get two months free off any plan by signing up for yearly billing.

All in all, WP Engine is one of the best managed WordPress services and is also a great value for the money.

Flywheel Overview

Flywheel, at GetFlywheel.com, was founded in 2012. Its three founders started it in Omaha, Nebraska, because they were tired of the unreliable solutions that were available to them at the time.

Who Is It For?

Flywheel is perfect for:

• Freelancers who want a managed platform that lets them build sites and collaborate with clients
• Agencies that manage websites for clients
• Enterprise teams with many members who want to collaborate securely and scale projects

Here are some of Flywheel’s best features.

Getting Started and Building Sites

Flywheel offers premium WordPress hosting solutions for secure and quick performance.

• Free Migration – Moving your website to Flywheel is easy. Whether you have one site or 100, migration is free – and you only start paying for Flywheel after the migration process is over.
• Blueprints – Flywheel takes themes to the next level. Blueprints are bundles of popular themes with useful plugins. You can create a blueprint for all your future sites so that they automatically come with the plugins you want. This makes setting up websites easy and quick and lets you focus on important design and configuration details.
• Test Your Changes – A common problem with editing sites is that you have to risk having something go wrong on your live site. This isn’t a problem with Flywheel as they have a separate sandbox environment which you can use to test your edits. They will only go live when you are ready.
• Push and Pull – This separated environment also lets you test WordPress and plugin updates and see how they will affect your site. You can also test out new plugins. You can easily push or pull edits to or from your live site to your testing environment, and you can decide whether to move only themes and plugins or also the database.
• Site Cloning- This is another way to quickly create sites. You can clone an existing site so that you have a copy. You can either edit and customize the second site or keep it as it is. This can be useful if you want to create many sites for clients with similar structures and only need to edit the details.

Optimized Performance

Flywheel helps optimize your site’s performance.

• Optimized Security – Flywheel optimizes your security at the server level so you don’t need any third-party plugins like Sucuri anymore. For example, their intelligent IP blocking service will prevent intruders.
• Two-Factor Authentication – This gives you an added layer of security.
• Limited Login Attempts – Turn on this feature to avoid people breaking your password through brute force.
• Disaster Recovery – If your site does get compromised, Flywheel’s team of experts will clean up your site and remove any malware.
• FlyCache – FlyCache speeds up your site by catching your content. It works together with Flywheel’s CDN to deliver cached content from global points of presence around the world and for increased security. This works even for ecommerce and membership sites. Caching is customizable, and exception rules are automatically applied for certain plugins.
• Choose Your Data Center- Flywheel has data centers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Regardless of where you are in the world, you will get quick speeds. You can choose your data center yourself for optimized performance.
• Automatic Backups- Your site will be backed up automatically every night. This way, all of your daily updates will be saved and can be restored with a single click.

Flywheel Analytics

Flywheel makes it easy for teams and organizations to collaborate.

• Organizations – Add team members to your organizations. You can assign roles and permissions and allow different team members to create, publish, and edit sites. You can invite clients or team members to collaborate on projects without having to share passwords. Teammates who have full access can be added, and you can revoke access and permissions at any time.
• Central Dashboard – All team member sites will be visible from a single dashboard.
• Real-Time Feeds – An activity feed will show you who is doing what in real time. For example, the feed will get updated as soon as someone publishes a site or makes an edit.
• Real-Time Notifications: You can also get real-time notifications through the Slack integration.
• Billing Management – You will also have a centralized dashboard to manage all of your organization’s subscriptions.

Flywheel Agencies

Agencies will find that Flywheel makes it easy to manage clients.

• Demo Sites – It’s important to be able to show potential clients what you can do. Create demo sites to showcase to clients.
• Ownership Transfer – You can easily transfer ownership to a client and send them a bill after you build their site.
• Retain Access – Even after transferring ownership to a client, you will retain access as a collaborator. This allows you to make edits and take care of updates when necessary. You don’t need a separate password; it will still be accessible from your dashboard.

Flywheel Agency Partner

You can also become an Agency Partner. This lets you resell hosting to clients.

You will get a dedicated account manager to help you manage your clients.

Your agency site will be hosted for free, and Flywheel will take care of all of your clients’ WordPress needs, including updates, backups, caching, security, and more.

You can get paid up to $500 for each site you develop and transfer to clients on Flywheel.

With Flywheel’s white-label service, you get a client-facing dashboard that is customized and branded with your company’s logos.

You will be backed up by Flywheel’s support staff, but you can set your own prices. You can also set up your own subscriptions for recurring revenue.

Flywheel Local WordPress Development

Flywheel’s local WordPress development environment lets you create shareable URLs to show to clients and has SSH access, free local SSL support, and more.

Flywheel Customer Support and Resources

Flywheel, like WP Engine, offers great support to their customers.

• Schedule a Demo – Go here to sign up for a free demo of the platform
• Ebook Library – Flywheel has a large ebook library, covering topics such as “Vacation Checklist for Designers” and “How to Solve Plugin Conflicts”
• Video Library – Videos about Flywheel and marketing tips
• Help Docs – Help documentation about technical and billing questions
• Web Design Trends – A free 14-day email course with web design tips
• Customer Support – Customer Support is available via live chat 24/7 from your dashboard. Phone support is only available on the highest plan.

Flywheel Pricing

Flywheel is cheaper than WP Engine. Here are the available plans:

• Starter – $25/month or $275/year: One website, 25,000 monthly visits, 5GB disk storage, and 50GB bandwidth
• Freelance – $115/month or $1265/year: Up to 10 sites, 100,000 monthly visits, 10GB disk space, and 200GB bandwidth
• Agency – $290/month or $3190/year: Up to 30 sites, 500,000 monthly visits, 50GB disk space, and 500 GB bandwidth
• Custom – Custom price and limits

Even the starter plan includes most of the features.

Some features are premium; for example, phone support, the migration dashboard, and a dedicated account manager are only included in the Agency plan.

As you can see, Flywheel’s cheapest plan is cheaper than WP Engine’s lowest plan, and while the other two plans have similar prices as WP Engine (at least if you sign up for monthly billing), Flywheel offers more monthly visits, disk space, and bandwidth for the same price.

Optional Add-On Services

Flywheel has several other services you can get for an additional monthly price.

• Performance Insights – starting at $25/month: Get in-depth performance insights about your visitors
• Plugin Updates – starting at $25/month: Monthly plugin updates done for you by the Flywheel team
• Security Insights – starting at $25/month: Get insights into security risks or attacks on your site. Quarterly security audits are included.
• White label – The White Label service costs $99/month.

Although Flywheel can be cheaper and offer more than WP Engine, you have to be okay with not having detailed analytics or done-for-you plugin updates without paying extra.

This is definitely a disadvantage with Flywheel.

WP Engine vs Flywheel – How Do Experiences Compare?

• TrustPilot Reviews: WP Engine has an average rating of 2.8 on Trustpilot, and Flywheel’s rating is 3.5. However, Flywheel currently has fewer than 10 reviews, making the data not very reliable. In addition, take Trustpilot average ratings with a grain of salt, as it’s common for even excellent companies to have low average ratings due to the small percentage of disgruntled customers who take to Trustpilot in droves to voice their complaints.
• Customer Support: WP Engine has better customer support. With Flywheel, you need to pay for an expensive plan to get phone support, and phone support is not available 24/7.
• Speed and Performance: According to this blog post, WP Engine delivers a faster average speed than Flywheel. In addition, WP Engine guarantees a discount if you experience any downtime.
• Migration: This marketer reported a bad experience with migrating to Flywheel, reporting that there were endless errors with uploading WordPress and it took 1.5 hours. However, it’s possible that it was a one-off thing.
• Design: WP Engine offers great design options with their StudioPress themes.
• Price and Value for Money: As shown above, Flywheel offers cheaper plans and more value for your money. WP Engine can get expensive.

Why Get WP Managed Hosting?

You may be wondering why it would be worth paying a few hundred dollars a year for managed WP hosting when you can be paying a few dollars a month with a hosting platform such as BlueHost.

Here are some of the top benefits of managed WP hosting:

1. Better Security : Your website will be more secure. Managed WP hosting services install security features to protect your site from spam and hacking attempts. They also monitor your site for suspicious activity and will help you restore your site if you do experience any problems.
2. Better Performance: Through CDNs, caching, and other services, you will get more uptime, quicker page load speeds, and an overall improved performance.
3. Support From Experts: The level of support you will get with a managed WP hosting service is a lot higher than what you can get with a regular hosting service such as Namecheap or Bluehost.
4. Testing Environments: You can get access to local and staging environments that allow you to test out features before you install them for optimal performance.
5. Done-For-You Updates: Don’t worry anymore about having to update all of your plugins yourself. Everything will be taken care of for you.
6. Team Collaboration: Managed hosting services make it easy to manage a team and collaborate with colleagues on projects.
7. Manage Clients: Agencies and freelancers can benefit the most from managed WP hosting, as it allows them to build and manage sites for multiple clients.
8. Be More Productive: At the end of the day, with regular, unmanaged hosting, you will need to focus on maintaining your site regularly. Things can come up that take up time and effort and reduce productivity, such as plugins that aren’t working properly or security issues. With managed hosting, you can focus on web design, creating content, and making sales.

Wrapping It Up

Both WordPress and Flywheel are great options.

If your budget isn’t an issue for you, you would probably be better off with WP Engine, as it has been around for a long time, is reliable, and offers slightly better performance.

On the other hand, if you are trying to save costs, Flywheel will give you better value for your money.

The post WP Engine vs Flywheel – Which Is Better? appeared first on Rigorous Themes.

Both WP Engine and Kinsta are incredibly fast (which is an important factor for Google ranking), offer excellent customer support, and high-quality hosting services.

If you’re struggling with which one to choose for your own business or blog, we’re going to help you make the right choice by comparing the two based on particular key metrics.

We’ll look at each host individually, and then compare them based on their features, performance, support, uptime, pricing, pros, and cons.

WP Engine

WP Engine is a leading and award-winning digital experience platform in the WordPress community, renowned for its performance and ability to run even the latest, computer-optimized virtual machine architectures.

This and other factors make it possible for the platform to provide its customers with the most performant, secure, and reliable setup on which to build great digital experiences with WordPress.

It’s trusted in 150 countries by over 120,000 customers, thanks to its performance.

They partner with world-class infrastructure providers like Google Cloud platform and Amazon Web Services, to continuously enhance their proprietary WordPress optimization stack to deliver performance improvements to customers.

WP Engine is the only WordPress hosting provider among its alternatives to have received a distinction for Web Content Management, as in the 2019 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice.

As the pioneer of managed WP hosting, and the first to set the bar for the rest, WP Engine keeps enhancing its services to offer their customers the superior speed, service, and support they need.

Let’s take a look at what WP Engine offers.

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A robust architecture, unparalleled speed, fool-proof security and round the clock engineering support, WP Engine offers the best-in-class Wordpress hosting experience.

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WP Engine Infrastructure

WP Engine’s software stack is fine-tuned with the flexibility to scale dynamically in mind, so your business can thrive in the midst of unpredictable traffic conditions, especially if it goes viral.

Its EverCache technology – a proprietary caching software – makes its customers’ digital experience pretty fast and scalable.

Plus, the flexibility of their plans allows them to leverage more traffic, hardware, and features so they can scale to millions of website visits and hits each day.

Explore: WP Engine vs Siteground

WP Engine Server Solutions

By partnering with other best-in-class services like Amazon Web Services, WP Engine is able to provide top-tier infrastructure to its customers for high-availability and clustered server solutions.

This ensures you enjoy disaster recovery and scalability.

They also offer Google’s next-generation hardware that delivers high performance and helps pages load faster than ever before.

Diversity of Scalable Options

WP Engine also offers a wide range of options that are scalable and powerful enough to meet the needs of their business and enterprise customers.

A dedicated virtual machine is also available that offers better isolation and performance consistently.

It also offers four infrastructure options you can choose from: Shared, Single Node, Dynamic Web Scaling, and Cluster.

We’ll look at these in our review of the WP Engine features below.

WP Engine Security

You shouldn’t compromise with the security of your website, which is why WP Engine’s platform offers multiple layers of security to choose from, plus a dedicated security engineering team.

It also allows you to tailor your security posture based on your business needs.

They also offer daily automated backups stored for 60 days, plus years of security experience specific to WordPress filtered into its DXP’s security environment.

Plus, they’ve included Global Edge Security, an advanced and high-performance security solution specifically for WordPress for all their customers.

This feature is built in partnership with Cloudflare, a leading web performance and security company.

With the Global Edge Security, you get managed WAF to mitigate threats at the edge and inspect SQL or XXS traffic injections, DDoS protection, and Cloudflare CDN for improved site speed.

Interesting Comparison: WP Engine vs Bluehost

WP Engine Plugin Updates

WP Engine also offers the Smart Plugin Manager, a tool that helps you safely update plugins on WordPress by incorporating artificial intelligence.

The tool automatically checks for updates for WordPress plugins every 24 hours, ensuring your site doesn’t miss anything when updates occur.

You not only save time and effort from the tedious process but also prevent plugin vulnerabilities that present a large number of the known entry points for WordPress site attacks.

Thus, your plugins stay secure and updated.

WP Engine - Best Wordpress Hosting

A robust architecture, unparalleled speed, fool-proof security and round the clock engineering support, WP Engine offers the best-in-class Wordpress hosting experience.

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WP Engine Developer Tools

WP Engine works together with developers so they offer the right tools they need at their disposal.

They’ve also added features and solutions that are geared to making the developers’ work and lives much easier, such as Local by Flywheel, the top local WordPress development tool.

This allows developers to spend more time launching sites and less time debugging local environments.

WP Engine’s developer workflow has the development, staging, and production environments, which help developers build projects faster, launch smoothly, and efficiently maintain what they build.

Check Out: WP Engine vs Pantheon

Access to the Genesis Framework

With WP Engine, your developers can quickly build secure, search engine optimized, fast and great-looking WordPress themes.

It also has tools like Page Performance that give them a real-time view into performance data and recommendations, developers can speed up their site performance.

Signing up for any WP Engine plan gets you free access to more than 35 premium StudioPress themes so you can create mobile responsive and beautiful web pages and websites in just hours.

The themes are integrated with HubSpot, eCommerce-ready, Gutenberg-optimized, easy to customize, and SEO-friendly.

WP Engine Dedicated Tiered Agency Program

WP Engine partners with agencies and offers them a dedicated, tiered agency program with support and benefits that’ll help them grow their business while delighting their customers with better digital experiences.

The platform comprises over 4,500 agencies dedicated to delivering WordPress solutions for enterprises.

Each agency partner receives a free WP Engine developer account, a listing on their recommended agency page, and specialized developer documentation.

Higher tiers offer joint marketing, dedicated sales support, and custom training programs to evangelize about the benefits of WP Engine.

WP Engine Affiliate program

WP Engine’s affiliates can earn high payouts ranging from $200 to $7500.

The commission range impacts on how much you get, plus cookie tracking timeframe for referrals – tracked for 180 days – influences the number of referrals credited to your name.

WP Engine - Best Wordpress Hosting

A robust architecture, unparalleled speed, fool-proof security and round the clock engineering support, WP Engine offers the best-in-class Wordpress hosting experience.

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Other benefits affiliates earn include co-branded landing pages, a two-tiered affiliate program, and access to the ShareASale Affiliate dashboard.

Also Read: WP Engine vs AWS

WP Engine Support

WP Engine’s award-winning customer support team ensures your issues are resolved quickly and correctly.

It offers high-quality support and access to resources such as a directory of consultants and seasoned WordPress experts who partner with the platform to offer maintenance or development services 24/7.

WP Engine Migration Services

WP Engine’s Automated Migration plugin helps you migrate to its platform in just a few clicks.

Once you download the plugin, you can use it by entering basic information about your site, and the migration will be done automatically.

In case you’re stuck during the process, you can always reach their tech support team who are always on standby to help with any issues.

Be sure to check your site and check that everything looks proper before you switch your DNS.

WP Engine never charges for site migration – it’s free always, whether you cancel within its money-back guarantee period of 60 days or not.

Interesting Comparison: WP Engine vs FlyWheel

WP Engine Pricing

WP Engine offers four pricing plans –

$30/month, $115/month, $290/month and a custom plan for big businesses. Annual plans are slightly cheaper.

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A robust architecture, unparalleled speed, fool-proof security and round the clock engineering support, WP Engine offers the best-in-class Wordpress hosting experience.

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WP Engine Pros and Cons

Pros

• Excellent support
• Access to StudioPress and Genesis Framework
• Great security
• Fast speeds
• Good performance
• Scalable and flexible
• Safe plugin updates
• Developer-friendly
• Excellent support

Cons

• No lower-tier plans
• Limits on bandwidth
• Site migration requires a plugin

Kinsta

Kinsta is a managed WordPress hosting provider that’s built for scaling and performance so that your site stays online even when there are traffic surges.

Its entire infrastructure is built upon the Google Cloud Platform and doesn’t fall under traditional hosting categories, which means it’s different from the conventional VPS, shared, or dedicated infrastructure.

Kinsta uses orchestrated LXC software containers and LXD managed hosts for every site so that each is housed in its own container with everything it needs to run it (Nginx, Linux, MySQL, PHP).

The software resources are 100 percent private, so no one else is sharing it with you, not even your own sites if you’re running multiple ones.

Regardless of the plan you choose, Kinsta gives you the same core infrastructure, and provides a seamless and painless upgrade or downgrade for your plan – Starter or Enterprise.

This is different from WP Engine, where you have to move to a VPS from a shared environment, then over cloud hosting or to a dedicated server, and perform multiple site migrations at every step of the process.

Kinsta’s hosting configuration is private and secure by design, while allowing scalability (up or down) of server resources as needed, and based on your site’s demands.

Let’s see its notable features.

Kinsta Is Optimized For eCommerce Sites

Kinsta’s platform is optimized for Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce. Ecommerce sites can demand a lot from their owners, besides generating lots of cache-bypassing dynamic page loads.

Clients that use Easy Digital Downloads and WooCommerce daily can increase the speeds of their stores thanks to Kinsta.

It offers fast server-level page caching and automatic bypass caching in the checkout process, and by excluding cache from certain pages like my-account, cart, or checkout.

Kinsta Performance

Kinsta has scored the title of “top tier” performance on Review Signal’s annual review, which puts it as the fastest WordPress host on the web.

The review rigorously tests the performances of top hosting providers, and Kinsta hasn’t failed for five years in a row.

Kinsta has also performed well in tests like Blitz.io Test, which detects if a site is caching its front page, and determines the performance of the caching system.

It managed to handle 5,000 concurrent hits without issues.

Kinsta Is Developer-friendly

Like WP Engine, Kinsta also boasts of being developer-friendly, having built their dashboard and tools with WordPress developers in mind, and because they’re developers too. They offer accessibility features that allow developers to enjoy a more efficient workflow including:

• SSH access, WP-CLI, and Git on all their plans
• Custom setups like Trellis and Bedrock, plus Sage and other starter themes
• One-click staging environments to push changes easily from staging to production
• Restore automatic backups to staging and production
• Post and page revisions available by default
• Switching between PHP engines in one click
• Ability to load sites over reverse proxies
• Add-ons such as Elastic search for faster search and Redis for faster database performance

Kinsta Migrations

Kinsta is offering unlimited free migrations through October 31, 2019, to all WP Engine customers that want to switch to its platform.

As we’ve already seen, the migrations in WP Engine are done using a plugin, but you handle the process on your own, while Kinsta does it for you.

With the plugin method, data or images stored outside the WP Content directory aren’t migrated, neither are redirects, which are crucial in preventing SEO issues.

Consequently, large or complex sites can experience data loss or fail altogether if you’re not privy to the process and how it works.

This is why Kinsta offers an expert migration team that’ll handle everything for you, plus you don’t incur downtime.

They also inspect your migrated site before it goes live again.

Kinsta Support

Kinsta is designed by developers, which is why its entire support team comprises Linux hosting engineers and WordPress developers.

Most of these experts have created plugins and themes, managed their own servers, and contributed back to the platform so you’ll get expert advice from active WordPress users.

Customers also get to chat with the experts and team members who support Kinsta’s large clientele and Fortune 500 firms.

Support is available 24/7, with an average response time of 1 minute and 19 seconds compared to WP Engine’s 3 minutes average time. Kinsta also monitors uptime by the minute, and the staff is always on top of things even before you contact them with your issue.

Kinsta Presence

Kinsta has 20 data centers globally across five continents, as it’s exclusively powered by Google Cloud platform.

These centers are available across all their plans without hidden fees or extra charges.

Everything is interconnected over the premium tier network of the Google Cloud platform to reduce distance and hops and ensure faster and more secure data transportation.

It also means a more snappy and responsive WordPress backend dashboard, and quick file transfers.

Kinsta Content Delivery

Kinsta ensures your content delivery is turbocharged as it cares about your site’s performance from every point in the world, not just from data centers.

In partnership with KeyCDN, and provision of free bandwidth across its plans, Kinsta ensures your content is delivered and cached from KeyCDN’s 34 POPs worldwide, including regions like America, Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, and Australia.

The CDN also automatically protects your site against bad bots while offering industry standards like HPACK compression and GZIP.

Kinsta Affiliate Program

Kinsta offers one of the highest paying affiliate programs in the industry and has become one of the fastest-growing hosting providers because of it.

You can earn from $50 to $500 per signup based on the plan you refer people to.

You also get a 10 percent monthly recurring commission for the customer you refer to, which is a great way of building passive income.

The hosting dashboard is specifically built by Kinsta so you don’t have to use a third-party platform; it also allows Kinsta developers to build new features based on your needs so you can make more money from the program.

Kinsta Pricing

Kinsta offers 10 tiers at different prices per month from $30, $60, $100, up to $1,500 for the Enterprise plans.

Additional custom solutions are available if you want more, and the plans are only limited by total visits.

There are no hard limits on bandwidth though.

The overage charges at Kinsta are $1 per every extra 1000 visits on your plan’s limit, and a 30-day money-back guarantee is available if you want out.

Kinsta Pros and Cons

Pros

• Fast speeds
• Great performance
• ·Developer-friendly
• Global presence
• No hard bandwidth limit
• Excellent 24/7 support
• Handles site migration
• Expert team of engineers and developers

Cons

• Doesn’t offer themes nor access to the Genesis Framework

WP Engine vs Kinsta: Which is The Better WordPress Hosting Provider?

Both providers have their advantages unique to the platform.

To answer this question, therefore, we’re going to compare them against specific metrics:

Performance

WP Engine offers high performance for your site, so does Kinsta, even though it only runs on Google Cloud Platform. Kinsta also informs you that every site on its platform doesn’t share hosting with others, which is reason enough to trust its performance.

WP Engine offers hosting over a large platform, with a whole server dedicated to your website and multiple nodes working to service your site continuously.

This way, there are lesser downtimes, plus if you get any glitches, cloud hosting is available to minimize the effects of the problem, but this is a costly venture altogether.

Security

Security is critical for any site, which is why your hosting solution should prioritize this component and pay special attention to it.

WP Engine protects websites by restraining write-to-disk type of processes, and logging anything that’s written to the disk to track possible malicious items.

Both providers have system scanners that ensure your plugins are secure and updated, and any compromised ones are automatically disabled.

By having dedicated environments for websites, WP Engine and Kinsta ensure your site isn’t anywhere among the vulnerable ones, which impacts on its performance and ensures you’re not sharing resources like disk space, processing power, memory, and more with other sites.

Support

Both hosting providers offer excellent support, except WP Engine offers it on different levels and for different kinds of issues.

Kinsta, on the other hand, has a flat support structure such that there’s no back and forth or redirection.

Whether the query is basic or advanced, it’ll be handled.

They both resolve issues in less than five minutes on average, which ensures fewer hassles along the way for their customers.

Pricing

WP Engine is costlier than Kinsta to the point it’s inaccessible for business owners without big budgets.

Its cheapest plan starts at $35, but lacks critical features like support, and the next plan costs $115, but you only get imported SSL certificates and phone support as an extra.

Kinsta’s packages aren’t very reasonable, though they save you the cost by having a global presence across five continents for wider reach.

They also don’t charge hard limits on bandwidth as WP Engine does.

Content delivery network

WP Engine’s CDN provider is MaxCDN, which has a solid reputation, while Kinsta uses KeyCDN’s services, which is a reliable HTTP/2 CDN that caters to speed and delivers on it too.

These partnerships with CDN services elevate the performance of your website, so both services deliver an ace on this front.

The only difference is while WP Engine has 19 locations for its CDN, Kinsta has 33.

Uptime checks: Both Kinsta and WP Engine monitor your site for downtime, with WP Engine’s at 99.95 percent while Kinsta’s is 99.9 percent.

Conclusion – Kinsta vs WP Engine

WP Engine and Kinsta have several similarities, which doesn’t make it easy to declare one better than the other.

However, when you dig into the details, you’ll see the apparent differences between the hosts, and one begins to emerge the winner.

With WP Engine, you get more for your money, unless Kinsta has a specific feature that you must access.

Otherwise, WP Engine offers the partnerships, power, security, knowledge, enterprise-grade features, and more that you need to scale your business at each stage of its growth, which is why it’s our winner in this round.

The post WP Engine vs Kinsta – Which Hosting is Better? appeared first on Rigorous Themes.

All this hinges around the type of web hosting service you choose to use.

Basically, your website cannot be “live” on the internet without a web hosting service provider.
Web hosts are services that provide cloud computing storage space for your website files and make it accessible to virtually everyone on the internet.

The platform you choose for your site determines the volume of traffic you’ll receive, the bandwidth available, percentage of uptime, support services, and a lot more based on their pricing plans.

Consequently, selecting a web hosting service will be affected by the size of your site – large or small – its scalability, and the resources at your disposal.

Among the most popular web hosting services on the market today are WP Engine and Amazon Web Services (AWS), which we’ll pit against each other in this comparison. Read on to find out our overall winner for this round.

What is WP Engine?

WP Engine was established in 2010 to provide ‘Managed Hosting Services’ to owners whose blogs and websites are built with WordPress CMS.

It provides its clients with series of WordPress-centric features such as Genesis framework, development environments, global CDN, automated SSL certificates, 35+ StudioPress Themes, and much more, as we’ll see in the list of features.

Some of their high-profile clientele include Thomson Reuters, AFV, Trend Micro, ASU, Under Armour, and Arizona State University, among others.

WordPress CMS is the world’s leading CMS with more than 30 percent of websites on the internet using the platform.

This makes WP Engine one of the preferred choices for web designers to easily launch any kind of WordPress website without hassle.

Its core benefits, especially for website designers, include saving time and effort, security, less downtime, free staging environment, daily backups, dedicated support and a bucket load of features.

WP Engine incorporates the following features:

WP Engine - Best Wordpress Hosting

A robust architecture, unparalleled speed, fool-proof security and round the clock engineering support, WP Engine offers the best-in-class Wordpress hosting experience.

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WP Engine Genesis Framework

With the Genesis Framework available to WP Engine users, you can build WordPress sites in no time, manage them easily, personalize your website/blog based on your preferences, and get your website published quickly.

WP Engine Staging Sites

WP Engine offers staging sites that let you test the changes you made on a clone website before going online, besides testing out other new features.

WP Engine Copy Site

The Copy Site feature is a great tool for replicating a website instead of building it from scratch. It also makes it easy to swap different types of content across your site.

WP Engine Performance Intelligent Tool

The Performance Intelligent tool monitors your site’s performance using the page speed performance tool, New Relic, and Integrated Google Analytics.

WP Engine Migration Plugin Tool

Migration Plugin Tool is an automated migration WP Engine feature that allows you to migrate your website/blog from other web hosts to WP Engine.

The best part is that you do not have to be an expert to use this feature to migrate to WP Engine.

WP Engine Ecosystem Integration

WP Engine integrates with the likes of Google, Amazon, Cloudflare, New Relic, BigCommerce, and other tech solution providers to provide you with a comprehensive WordPress hosting solution on its unified platform.

WP Engine Performance

Websites hosted on WP Engine enjoy high performance in terms of availability/uptime, speed, scalability, and security.

This is particularly helpful in keeping your website up-and-running to serve your website visitors.

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Other salient WP Engine features include:

• Regular security auto-updates
• Fast disaster recovery
• Regular offsite backup to prevent data loss
• Geo IP
• Billing transfer

WP Engine Web Hosting Pricing Packages

All the available plans are based on ‘Managed Hosting Service,’ a type of hosting that offers you less control over your server’s optimization and maintenance, but are taken over by WP Engine’s experts.

Thus, you don’t have to worry about the technical tasks associated with running and maintaining your websites.

WP Engine offers the following pricing plans:

1. Startup Plan – for 1 website (ideal for a blog or a small website)

• Starting at $35 (USD)/month
• 25,000 Visits / month
• 10 GB Local storage
• 50 GB Monthly Bandwidth

Free Add-ons include:

• Genesis Framework
• 35+ StudioPress Themes
• 24/7 chat support
• Dev, Stage, Prod Environments
• Transferable Sites
• PHP 7.3 ready
• LargeFS
• Global CDN
• Page Performance
• Automated SSL certificates
• SSH Gateway

2. Growth Plan – for 5 websites (Ideal for a growing business)

• Starting at $115 (USD)/month
• 100,000 Visits / month
• 20 GB Local storage
• 200 GB
• Bandwidth / month

Free Add-ons include:

• All Starter Plan free Add-ons, plus:
• Imported SSL certificates
• 24/7 phone support

3. Scale Plan – for 15 websites (ideal for Medium Businesses)

• Starting at $290(USD)/month
• 400,000 Visits / month
• 30 GB Local storage
• 400 GB Bandwidth / month

Free Add-ons includes:

All Growth Plan free Add-ons

4. Custom Plan – for 25+ websites

• Custom pricing
• Million Visits/month
• 100GB – 1TB Local storage
• 400 GB+ Bandwidth / month

Free Add-ons includes:

• All Scale Plan free Add-ons
• WordPress Multisite
• GeoTarget
• Content Performance
• Consultative onboarding
• Readiness assessment

For the Starter, Growth, and Scale pricing plans, you get two free months when you opt for an annual subscription.

WP Engine - Best Wordpress Hosting

A robust architecture, unparalleled speed, fool-proof security and round the clock engineering support, WP Engine offers the best-in-class Wordpress hosting experience.

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WP Engine Pros and Cons

Pros

• Free access to 35+ StudioPress WordPress themes and Genesis Framework
• Free backups
• Built-in staging environments
• Built-in EverCache caching plugin
• 60 day money-back guarantee
• Free SSL Certificate
• StackPath CDN integration
• Enterprise-grade WordPress security
• 24/7 support

Cons

• Email hosting and domain name registration is not provided
• A long list of disallowed WordPress Plugins
• No CPanel (User Portal)
• Premium pricing plans

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services (or AWS) is a cloud computing platform established by Amazon to provide on-demand web services to individuals, SMBs, and governments.

Established by Amazon in 2006, AWS has evolved over the years into an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).

This is because of its ever-increasing features geared towards cloud computing, networking, applications management, storage, deployment, and database management.

It has also expanded its offerings to provide mobile services, robotics, media services, IoT, Blockchain, web hosting, and a lot more.

Some of their high-profile clientele includes Netflix, Unilever, Airbnb, Philips, Expedia, and Intuit, among others.

This goes to show that AWS can service all kinds of web-related needs of their prospective clients.

Unlike other web hosts, AWS is a versatile Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider with a series of web services which are tailored for all kinds of web clients.

However, all its features are broadly classified into five categories namely: Compute, Storage, Database, Networking & Content Delivery, as well as Migration & Transfer.

AWS Compute

With any of the Compute service, you can develop, run, deploy, and scale your websites, cloud or native applications without hassles.

AWS Storage

AWS offers several cloud storage services which supports all forms of cloud storage as well as cloud-based data migration.

AWS Database

With the AWS Database services, you can manage all kinds of databases, whether RDMS, desktop database programs, text database, as well as object-oriented databases.

AWS Networking & Content Delivery

With the networking & content delivery services, you can easily streamline your website loading times by serving contents at a faster pace.

This facilitates high performance and deliverability.

AWS Migration & Transfer

Securely move your website, application, database, physical, or virtual server from either on-premise environment or cloud hosting facility to AWS.

AWS Web Hosting Pricing Packages

For web hosting, AWS offers the following web hosting packages:

Simple Website Hosting

This website hosting solution is ideal for simple websites, preferably websites which run a Content Management System (CMS), such as WordPress or a development stack, such as LAMP.

Nevertheless, it’s highly recommended for small or medium-traffic websites with the need for frequent content changes, mainly marketing websites or blogs.

It proves a powerful platform as a starting point for many new websites. However, websites hosted with this package are highly unlikely to scale beyond 5 servers.

Note: To access the Simple Website Hosting Package, use Amazon LightSail.

Single Page Web App Hosting

If you need hosting for a single page website or application which requires a single load, this AWS web hosting package is the ideal solution for you.

Websites built with static site generators or single page app frameworks can be hosted seamlessly with this hosting package.

They’re also highly reliable and blazing fast.

Note: To access the Single Page Web App Hosting, use AWS Amplify Console.

Simple Static Website Hosting

Unlike the Single Page Web App Hosting package, the Simple Static Website Hosting solution is geared towards hosting multiple static web pages or websites.

With this hosting solution, website developers can host static websites built with HTML, JavaScript, and other files.

However, this package is not ideal for WordPress websites or any other dynamic websites.
Note: To access the Simple Static Website Hosting, use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

Enterprise Web Hosting

With Enterprise Web Hosting, site owners can scale their web resources dynamically without the hassles.

This solution is ideal for popular websites or application-heavy websites such as social media networks, travel websites, online shopping sites, and others.

Besides, enterprise websites utilize multiple AWS services which span across several AWS data centres. This provides enterprise clients with high levels of availability, performance, scalability, and deliverability.

Unlike the other web hosting solutions, this package requires a higher level of technical knowledge and administration.

Note: To access Enterprise Web Hosting solution, use Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (Amazon EC2).

AWS Free Tier and Premium Pricing

AWS is available as either a “Free” or “Premium” service for both old and new customers.
With the AWS Free tier, users get an array of free AWS products (across specified regions) which are based on the following categories:

• Always Free: This category of free tier offers is available for both new and existing customers on an indefinite basis.
• Trials: Just as its name implies, trial offers are available within a stipulated (short) time from the time of first usage. Once the trial period lapses, you simply pay for the premium on a pay-as-you-go basis.
• 12-Months Free: This category of free tier offers is usually available for new AWS customers for a 12-month period. It is more or less an extended trial period service.

On the other hand, AWS offers a flexible pricing system; hence, you can pay-as-you-use. For instance, you can opt to pay per hour, per month, or even per year, based on your preferences.

Per month pricing is billed at $57.60, while per hour services starts at $0.08. However, AWS offers volume discounts based on large purchases.

AWS Pros and Cons

Pros

• Ideal for running production sites
• Cost efficient. Simple, pay-as-you-go
• Developer-friendly web hosting platform
• Large number of server farms around the world
• Critical software integrations (Adobe, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.)
• Free tier product offers
• Highly customizable package
• Top-notch customer support

Cons

• Steep learning curve
• Confusing products (excess can be confusing too)
• 10% premium for enterprise-level support

WP Engine vs AWS – Which One Should You Opt For?

WP Engine is a highly reliable hosting provider, while AWS is highly versatile.

However, in order to identify the ideal web host for your next website project, you need to opt for the web host that’s suitable for your needs.

For this purpose, we will be comparing WP Engine and AWS, using a few criteria:

Cost

WP Engine has four pricing packages tailored to several needs of website owners whether SMBs or large corporations. With plans starting at $35/month, you can easily scale your website as the need arises.

It also offers you two free months when you subscribe to its annual prepay plan.

On the other hand, AWS offers a flexible pricing scheme, so you only pay as you use.

In addition, AWS provides the TCO calculator and Simple Monthly Calculator which allows you to estimate proposed infrastructure usage, costs, and monthly bills, respectively.

However, AWS’ web hosting price is more expensive when compared to what WP Engine offers.
If you prefer clarity when opting for a hosting plan, WP Engine is a good platform to select.

Ease of Use

WordPress CMS is regarded as one of the easiest CMS to learn across the world. The process of setting up a WordPress website is much faster when you are making use of WP Engine.

Besides, WP Engine is built mainly for the WordPress CMS world. Therefore, novice WordPress designers can easily host their websites with WP Engine – thanks to the fast learning curve.

Further, WP Engine incorporates a user portal (rather than Control Panel), which eliminates the need for users to handle their website’ backend process.

It also provides managed WordPress hosting plans which facilitate 24/7 services as backups, WordPress upgrade, plugin updates, and more

AWS, on the other hand, is one of the most complex platforms for first-time users most especially by novice developers.

It also offers multiple services that might be confusing for the non-tech-savvy individual or newbie owing to the variety of options and pricing plans.

However, experienced developers can eliminate the strains of the steep learning curve and easily deploy/host their websites on the AWS platform within a few days.

AWS compensates for this by offering a free digital training for beginners to learn AWS Cloud skills on its platform.

Speed

WP Engine implements Google Cloud Platform’s Compute-Optimized Virtual Machines (VM) (C2) which is responsible for its top-speed WordPress hosting performance.

In addition, WP Engine implements its built-in caching system – EverCache technology which reduces server loads while boosting web page speed.

Also, WP Engine facilitates integration with StackPath CDN for faster loading times.

AWS has a large cloud infrastructure which spans across 22 geographic regions in the world.

Estimated to have more than 2 million web servers, AWS is ever-blazing when it comes to loading websites whether WordPress or non-WordPress sites, as well as applications.

Unlike WP Engine, AWS implements its proprietary CDN known as Amazon CloudFront for high deliverability of web content.

Email Hosting/Domain Name Registration

One of the drawbacks of WP Engine for hosting websites is its inability to facilitate email hosting as well as a domain name registration service.

Although this is a low-blow to the leading managed WordPress hosting provider, potential users will have to purchase domain names from recommended third-party providers.

AWS on the other hand, facilitates both email hosting and domain hosting through its services –

Amazon WorkMail and Amazon AppDrag respectively.

Known Limitations

WP Engine is limited to only WordPress hosting, so you can’t host non-WordPress sites on the platform.

Another known limitation of WP Engine that it doesn’t allow you to have a series of WordPress plugins such as W3 Total Cache, VersionPress, Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, WP Mailing List, Hello Dolly!, and several others.

Meanwhile, AWS imposes service limits which keep users in check when they are about to exceed their resource limits. It also suffers downtime, especially during migration processes.

Uptime and Reliability

WP Engine’s guarantee comes with a remarkable 99.95% uptime.

It also compensates five percent of the client’s cost for each hour of downtime undergone.

Reputed for its extreme security approach, WP Engine automates daily backups for websites being hosted on its platform, plus backups are retained for a period of two months.

Additionally, WP Engine frequently scans their servers for viruses and hacks. By partnering with Cybersecurity service providers like Sucuri, they disavow malware-ridden WordPress plugins and setup preventive measures against all known threats.

On the other hand, AWS comes with a 99.99 percent uptime and improvises its cloud computing resources to ensure that websites hosted on its platform are available all the time.

In the same breadth, Amazon Web Services automates the encryption of data onto its platform, and stores uploaded files securely on its storage systems.

One of the perks of the Amazon Web Services is its readiness to withstand all forms of cyber threats directed against its products and services.

Customer Support

WP Engine offers 24/7 support system for all its users and intending customers.

Their support team can be reached via email, phone, live chat, FAQs, comprehensive resource centre, as well as social media.

It also offers architecture support for their custom pricing package.

Conversely, their phone support is not available for subscribers of the Starter Plan.

Alternatively, AWS offers support via their Support Center and Knowledge Center, but in order to get technical support for any of the subscribed services, users are expected to subscribe for any of the AWS Support Plans.

Final Thoughts

The website building process can be a thrilling experience for the budding website designers, developers, or owners at large.

However, a website must be hosted on the internet in order to reach diverse website building goals.

If you are a new website designer and/or developer, you can opt for a web host such as WP Engine which makes the entire web hosting secure, thrilling, and easy.

Besides, WP Engine is built with WordPress Content Management System (CMS) which makes it possible for you to develop any kind of websites you want via WordPress plugins and themes, which are geared for multipurpose use.

Another WP Engine highlight to consider is its easy-to-spot pricing plans which make the entire process transparent and conspicuous.

However, if you are an advanced developer with technical website hosting experience, you can opt for AWS.

Both web host service providers are notable for their speed, security, and performance.

However, this comparison reveals that WP Engine is ideal for individual, SMBs, and even large enterprise users, while Amazon Web Services work well with enterprises with the need for large web resources.

As much as preferences and needs ultimately influence your choice, WP Engine is our clear winner for this comparison.

The post WP Engine vs AWS – Which Is Better? appeared first on Rigorous Themes.

A slow, unresponsive site is not only frustrating, but it can be a business liability.

Customers who experience even the slightest delay can abandon your site, sometimes never to return.

Two of the most prominent web hosting services out there are Pressable and Bluehost. We take a deeper look at these two products to help you determine the best fit for you.

Both of these hosting services are managed by WordPress. Bluehost has garnered over one million users, worldwide.

These users consist of all types of websites, from blogs, to various businesses; while Pressable offers hosting primarily for developers and businesses.

Interface

Bluehost makes use of cPanel hosting control panel software. cPanel is highly popular as it is very aesthetically appealing and user-friendly.

This makes it ideal for new entrepreneurs, because starting a business is difficult enough.

Having a website that is easy to navigate just makes it that much easier to get things going. The interface also has a comprehensive layout of extensive information.

All features and options are clearly available on the interface, where you can manage domains and view all website traffic data and other crucial web performance and audience data.

Pressable uses its own custom control panel. While it offers the basic features for adequate functionality, this panel is not as user-friendly as cPanel and it does not offer as wide a range of features.

Performance

With both services, users are guaranteed an uptime and both offer a reasonably smooth service with little to no glitches.

However, Bluehost servers are significantly faster (up to 100ms).

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, there is a huge difference between the two but is it worth it? Let’s see.

Pressable offers four plans –

Pressable Personal Plan

• $25/month or $20.83/month if you pay yearly
• Yearly payment will also get you two-months free.
• This plan offers 1 website and 30000 shared pageviews
• This plan is ideal for beginners

Pressable Starter Plan

• $45.00/month and it costs $37.50/month if you pay yearly + 2 free months
• This plan offers up to 3 websites and 50000 shared pageviews
• This is the most common option chosen by most users
• Popular for small to medium businesses

Pressable Pro Plan

• $90/monthly or $75.00/month if you pay yearly
• This plan offers up to 10 sites and up to up to 150000 shared pageviews
• This is the option usually chosen by bigger, more established sites

Pressable Premium Plan

• $155 monthly
• This plan offers 20 sites and over 400000 page views
• This is the ideal hosting option for established companies with large volumes of traffic

All Pressable plans offer a 15-day money back guarantee.

Bluehost is relatively cheaper. It offers users the option to register a domain for free for the first year and offers a 30-day money back guarantee to buyers.

Bluehost offers three plans: Basic, Plus and Choice Plus

Bluehost Basic plan

• $2.95/month
• This plan offers 50 GB website space and unlimited bandwidth
• This plan is ideal for beginners

BlueHost Plus plan / Choice plus plan

• $4.95/month $5.45/month
• Gives you unlimited space and bandwidth
• These options are usually chosen by bigger, more established sites

It is worth noting, however, that Bluehost is one service provider that does not offer free site migrations to their service as do some of the others.

If you already have a web hosting service provider and need to move your site and data over to theirs, you will need to pay a migration fee.

Furthermore, there is a limit to amount of sites and email accounts you can transfer.

Features

Both services offer impressive features, including many crucial security features. Bluehost’s features include unlimited domain hosting, disk storage, and features which help to build a site more easily.

It has the edge over Pressable as many of the features are appealing to novice and experienced entrepreneurs alike.

Here is a list of the key features of both services:

Pressable

• Free SSL Certificate
• Dedicated WordPress Support
• Server Side Optimization
• Managed Upgrades
• Collaborator Access
• Staging Sites
• Caching
• Daily Backups
• Intrusion Detection Systems
• Malware Scanning & Removal

Bluehost

• Unlimited GB of Site Transfer
• Unlimited Domain Hosting
• Unlimited Disk Storage Unlimited
• cPanel Account Control Panel
• Cloudflare CDN
• Dual Quad Processor Performance Servers
• New Drag and Drop Site Builder
• Diesel Generator Backup Power
• Custom Cronjobs
• Spam Assassin Protection

Support

Bluehost offers 24/7 live chat support, which is usually quite prompt. Pressable, on the other hand, does not offer 24/7 phone support, but does offer phone support weekdays from 8 am to 10 pm CST.

There is also online support via email or by submitting a support ticket from the control panel.

Here, you can track the status of your ticket to anticipate response time. The speed of response has been said to be disappointing, with representatives taking days to respond to a query.

In this regard, Bluehost has the clear advantage over Pressable, especially for beginners who may feel reassured to have support at all times.

Pressable does offer an extensive knowledge base filled with tutorials, FAQ’s, and other information you may need should you wish to figure problems out and learn on your own.

Overall Conclusion – Who Wins?

Considering all factors, Bluehost wins by miles. Not only is it ridiculously cheaper, it way out-performs Pressable in every category.

Pressable may be a decent web hosting service in its own right, but it is just not worth the price, especially considering that there are better and more affordable options out there.

Bluehost is more user-friendly, offers better and faster hosting, and better support. It is no wonder that Bluehost is one of the most popular hosting services worldwide and loved by its loyal users.

The post Pressable vs Bluehost appeared first on Rigorous Themes.