Likelihood to Recommend When you dont know how to set up a cloud server technically, (The LAMP stack or the PHP settings etc) Cloudways comes handy. You can easily modify the server settings with one click.
Less Appropriate - If you want to save costs, go for direct cloud providers. Setting up technical stuff is a one time job.
Read full review I am an enterprise user of WordPress and host over 7000 sites with WPEngine. Areas that I think they are well suited for include customers that need enterprise-level support and uptime and have more complex needs than a simple blog. They also manage scale well with a variety of isolated install options that you can scale up or down depending on your contract needs. They also provide premier support for enterprises and have highly knowledgable Technical Account Managers that provide a significant value add. If I were to look at where it isn't as appropriate for usage I would focus on the low-end needs and say while they do support small sites, there are options out there for cheaper hosting that lack the support a WPEngine gives you.
Read full review Pros Automatic Daily One Click Restore Backups Integrated CDN Easy & Intuitive Alternate Interface to cPanel and WHM Very Affordable for High Specs 24/7 Customer Support is Extremely Helpful Serve & Application Management is a Breeze Choose from Multiple Server Locations Read full review I love the database backups and how quickly & easy it is to restore from an old backup point. This gives me & my clients confidence that any change can be rolled back. The built in caching & CDN mean that I have to spend less time worrying about the speed of the server & site. The caching has some side-effects that take getting used to (on-page dynamic PHP code sometimes needs to be moved to API endpoints), but this is true for most caching systems. They have really good support for multiple environments. It's very easy to have separate production & staging environments. It's also very simple to deploy from staging to production, making product launches and large scale website copy changes much easier to coordinate. Read full review Cons Their free alternative to WP Rocket could be made more user-friendly and easier to understand Create a function to automatically report heavy usage to specific email IDs Read full review I'd like to see WP Engine offer their own monitoring solution. When I say monitoring, I mean specific use cases that may end up being something you could script. This would keep customers from having to pay for additional services like Pingdom, New Relic, etc. I would like to see some proactive analysis done by WP Engine on their customer sites - at least on their home pages, and offer up suggestions. This kind of goes along with the other example. Finally, it would be nice to see a "lighter" offering, perhaps a plan that costs $49 for those who want to host only a few sites, or even 1 site. Read full review Likelihood to Renew I was in a situation where I had to bolt Wordpress on to an existing infrastructure that could not support it. If I ever end up in that situation again, please kill me. Other than that reasonably common use case, I don't think it offers a lot of value over robust shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated servers.
Read full review Usability It took very little time to learn their dashboard for managing WordPress sites. Their built-in tools are really well done, and the addition of security and CDN tools is great.
Read full review Support Rating Technical support is just 2-3 clicks away and the Cloudways homepage and the operators are available almost 24/7. They also are able to answer any kind of question related to their services, whether economical or technical. I sometimes made mistakes while using their services and they have been keen to help me, and fixed my problems really fast.
Read full review Support is generally great. Enterprise support is fantastic, with little to no wait times. I find that chat support can almost always take care of the problem without escalating to a ticket for a higher level of troubleshooting. The chat support for many other hosting providers can only handle basic issues. This is a big bonus for us to get quick and helpful answers.
Read full review Alternatives Considered VPS and dedicated hosting are costly, Therefore cloud hosting provides a cheaper way to own a powerful server, and IP is dedicated as well. Cloudways was the decision because:
1) Easy to set up without any linux commands we can set up the server
2) Live chat for technical help. (Excellent agents, they helped out of the scope issues too)
Read full review While we still use
GoDaddy for some services, WP Engine definitely has been a major upgrade for our WordPress hosting. In addition to faster load speeds, WP Engine has been more adept at allowing us to manage a high number of websites without straining the system. We have never used
Network Solutions for our own hosting needs, but when we do interact with them on behalf of our clients, their systems always seem to be clunky and hard to use, and they often overcharge customers by selling them products they do not need.
Read full review Return on Investment Massive ROI compared to Go Daddy's Server Read full review WP Engine reduces our time investment and upkeep costs which increases our margins. WP Engine simplifies site management with a built-in development server, which saves us headaches. WP Engine itself is positioned as a premium service, which allows us to use their branding as a tool to close sales. Read full review ScreenShots