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WPEngine, Kinsta, or Cloudways – Which host is best?

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Note:  I have websites hosted at WPEngine, Kinsta, AND Cloudways. Links to these hosts are affiliate links because I believe all these options are quality hosting companies.

The Players

First off, all hosts being compared here do managed hosting.  This means the host takes care of the server and possibly WordPress keeping your server up-to-date so you don’t need to worry about it.

WPEngine was founded in 2010 and employs 251 – 500 employees at the time of this writing according to Crunchbase.  They are located in Texas, USA and are very well funded. Automattic, the company behind WordPress was an initial investor in this venture.  WPEngine at one time used Linode servers, but I believe they are now using Google Cloud Engine servers. WPEngine does shared hosting where they host a number of websites that share a pool of resources.  I have been using WPEngine since 2014.

Kinsta came onto the managed hosting scene in 2013.  They are a small company employing 11 – 50 employees and are located in California, USA.  Kinsta uses Google Cloud Engine and is a blend of shared hosting and VPS. Their resources are shared over their websites, but the software that runs each site is only for that site.  They also allocate a set number of PHP workers to each site which prevents your site from going down because of a bad neighbor. I started using Kinsta in 2019 after some horrible 502 errors could not be resolved on WPEngine.

Cloudways started in 2012.  They are also a small company with 11 – 50 employees and are located in Mosta, Malta.  Where is that? Well, somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea below Italy.  Cloudways is basically a reseller of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Engine (GCE), Lindoe, and other cloud services.  Why not just go directly to the cloud services? Cloudways sets up the WordPress, Joomla, Magento server for you and keeps the server up-to-date.  They also make it much easier to use those cloud services with their own control panel. Cloudways basically offers Managed VPS hosting, but on cloud servers. Currently this website is hosted on Cloudways and has been since 2019. I decided to look for a host that used cloud services like Kinsta, but at a cheaper rate and found Cloudways.

The Good

WPEngine is one of the first managed WordPress hosts.  They offer secure hosting with CDN, caching, backup/restore, and multiple environments all with a few clicks.  The more WordPress installs you have the cheaper they get. WPEngine is constantly adding to their feature list with Content and Page Performance tools, git repositories, Genesis Themes, and now a Devkit that allows you to setup a local environment that can push and pull from WPEngine.

Kinsta’s logging interface and speed are outstanding.  If you thought WPEngine was fast, Kinsta is faster, especially for websites which have a membership or logged in area.  Because Kinsta dedicates 2 PHP workers to your site, you constantly get speedy responses when doing operations that require PHP (like a search or add/update/delete operations).  Kinsta has similar one-click staging, CDN setup, caching, and backup/restore like WPEngine. However, it exceeded my expectations in its logging interface. Logs show you instantly in a graphical way if you have any 5xx (500, 502, 504, etc), 4xx, 3xx, and 2xx responses and what URLs reported them. See here for how beautiful this all looks and how easy it is to identify.  This along with having a set number of PHP Workers (not variable like WPEngine) allowed me to resolve 502 errors which I couldn’t do on WPEngine.

Cloudways is the cheapest solution of the three.  For $10/month you could have multiple small websites running. See here for pricing.  If you need more, you pay for what you need. Cloudways’ moto is all about having choice. They have tiered plans to increase RAM and number of CPUs but if you just need bandwidth or storage you can do that separately and only pay for what you need.  Cloudways like Kinsta uses Google Cloud Engine, but you can also choose other cloud services which are all just as fast (ok, maybe .1ms differences between them). Their pricing structure allows customers with 1 website to thousands of websites to have very cheap hosting.

The Bad

WPEngine used to have superb support with quick response times and a knowledgeable staff.  Now, WPEngine’s support can only answer basic questions and at times there is a long queue.

Another issue with WPEngine is that they are a shared hosting environment.  Computing resources are becoming scarce as neighboring sites on your server take up all the processing (php workers) and leave you with 502 or 504 errors.  I’ve had one site that was crippled by these errors right after upgrading to PHP 7. Hence the trying out Kinsta.

I’d have to say Kinsta is the best host out of the three… oops, not yet, we’re still in the bad section. I really don’t have anything bad to say about Kinsta.

Cloudways is cheap for a reason.  They don’t have tools that WPEngine or Kinsta have and a lot of the one-click setup like cache, CDN, or even viewing logs is not there.  To view logs you have to use SSH/SFTP and download the log file. To setup caching you’ll need to install their plugin and do some simple setup.  Setting up a staging site is a bit more involved than clicking a button, but doable. No command line knowledge is needed, just a bunch of clicking and going through some tutorials.

Another issue I had with Cloudways is the discrepancies between support and the knowledge base.  On multiple instances I had to inform support that their knowledge base was conflicting what they were telling me.  I guess on the plus side they corrected it the next day.

The Recommendation

If I was so happy with one host I’d probably not have this review page comparing three different hosts.  So each host is recommended depending on your situation.

Use WPEngine if

  • you have 5 or more websites (or don’t mind the high cost)
  • Want things already setup and pretty
  • Don’t have a membership site.  You have a mostly static site that is cacheable.
  • Want more dev tools or want a larger company managing your server.

WPEngine has the most tools and is the most funded company of the three here. If you don’t care for the dev tools they offer, I’d recommend one of the other two choices. Support is not so great and their servers can be a bit crowded. WPEngine is still fast and reliable, but if you need a lot of dynamic processing I wouldn’t recommend them. Visit their pricing page.

Use Kinsta if

  • you have 5 or more websites (or don’t mind the high cost)
  • Want good logging
  • Want a set number of resources for your website
  • Want things already setup and pretty

Kinsta is faster than WPEngine in terms of processing dynamic pages. For example the WordPress admin dashboard is noticeably faster. Their logging interface will allow you to debug your website better. The set number of PHP workers for your environment prevents the “noisy neighbor” problem.  Be assured you won’t have your resources taken by other websites. Visit their pricing page and host your site on Google Cloud Engine.

Use Cloudways if

  • You want the cheapest solution
  • You like choices
  • Don’t mind doing a little setup

Cloudways allows customers with any amount of websites to have a very affordable hosting solution.  You can have as many installs as you want on your server and pick from AWS, GCE, Linode, and others. You pay for what you need.  Cloudways allows you to add on resources as you need them. Visit their pricing page.

Link from Google Redirecting

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After years of not having a client get hacked, I got 2 in a few weeks.  One client (client A) has a WordPress site which I developed the theme on.  Another client (client B) was brand new, no WordPress.  Client A’s site was redirecting to a porn site whenever a visitor went through a link from Google.  Client B’s site was redirecting to a 404 page (a php file was not found).  Both sites were fine when visiting the direct link.

I found malicious code in Client A’s .htaccess file redirecting anyone visiting from google, bing, or any of the major search engines.  I found and removed the PHP files that were not supposed to be on the site.

Client B’s site was clean as a whistle. Nothing suspicious in the htaccess file and no mysterious php files.  Needed to contact the host about this one.

In searching for more information on how the attackers may have gotten in, I came across this worrisome forum.  Both clients are on GoDaddy so this is probably the issue they both had:

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/malware-redirect-hacks-specific-question-regarding-vulnerabilities?replies=12

Moving Email Hosts

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Transferring where your email is hosted can be tricky.  When moving from one host to another email is usually stored with the hosting plan.  If you have bad luck with hosting companies you may want to consider hosting your email on Zoho or Google Apps so you don’t have to go through this lengthy process every time you move.

Here are the steps to move email hosting:

  1. Backup your mail on your email client.  Usually it backs up to a .pst file.
  2. Set your incoming mail server to the IP address of the mail server.  This is so your mail client looks at your old server even after you change hosts.
    1. To do this, find the setting for your incoming mail server
    2. Do a DNS lookup to get the IP address.
    3. Paste the IP address into the incoming mail server setting.
  3. Set up email addresses on the new hosting account.
  4. Set up another account in your email client with the new host settings.
  5. Import your old mail into your new account by following your mail client’s instructions on importing.
  6. Now you should get mail from both new and old servers.
  7. After a week or so you can remove your old account and cancel the old hosting.  Be sure to transfer messages from the old account before deleting your old account.

WPEngine for WordPress Hosting Worth It?

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This is not so much of a review, but more of how I came to a decision on WPEngine. 

At $29/ month for the Personal plan I would not have even looked at WPEngine a year ago.  Why pay that much for hosting when you can find $5/month hosting around every corner?  Updates?  I can do that.  Caching? Backups?  check and check.  What does WPEngine have to offer?

While in the proposal stage of acquiring a new client, this client got hacked.  Luckily to fix the hack WordPress just need to be upgraded.  But instead of redesigning the site, the top priority became finding a new host that offers better security.  This client was on a reputable host, so $5/month hosting like HostGator or GoDaddy would not satisfy the client’s peace of mind.

Finding WPEngine

My favorite WordPress focused company, WooThemes, had a recommended hosts page.  Among the hosts were Pressable (previously known as ZippyKid ) and WPEngine.  Pressable was the cheaper of the two offering SSL and CDN on their cheapest plan.  As ZippyKid they also touted having great security as a selling point.  However, as Pressable, they had no info whatsoever about their security.  Not even their “malware scanning”!  So wait, how can we justify to the client that Pressable is any better than their previous host?  Crap!  (I know no host is hack-proof, but we gotta have a reason for choosing a specific host).

Enter research into WPEngine.  The first thing I did on their website was search for “security” in their blog.  What surprised me was the amount of posts on their blog about security.  Do a search on security on their site and you’ll see what I mean.  Not only do they talk about recent security issues, but how the community is dealing with security issues and details on how their security system and processes are protecting their clients.  That in itself gave me peace of mind that these guys prioritize security.  The icing on the cake was reading “WordPress Hacked? We’ll fix it free!“.

Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side

I usually have buyers remorse especially when I could have gotten something cheaper and don’t really utilize all the features I have purchased.  But last year, before I tried WPEngine, I had a client that didn’t have a website yet, needed SSL and was OK with spending some money on quality hosting.  So I went with Pressable with this previous client (especially since the Personal plan at WPEngine doesn’t support SSL).  I have since migrated this client to WPEngine.  Below are some comparisons between Pressable and WPEngine (as of this posting).

Pressable vs WPEngine

  • Backups
    • WPEngine – At the click of a button, free.  Also automatically scheduled daily for  you.
    • Pressable – Inactive by default.  Need to back up to Amazon or Rackspace.  (in other words, not exactly free).
  • Domain settings
    • WPEngine – Doesn’t handle email or any of your domain settings
    • Pressable – If you want, you can direct your nameservers to Pressable and they can adjust your domain settings (like where to point your email) for you.
  • Git Support
    • WPEngine – Deploy your website using git ( i haven’t tried this yet)
    • Pressable – None.
  • Error Logs
    • WPEngine – View your php error logs from the User Portal
    • Pressable – None.
  • Stats
    • WPEngine – Visits and Bandwidth stats for you to monitor and download.
    • Pressable – None.
  • Speed
    • WPEngine – I have tested about a dozen different websites so far and all have a load time of less than 1 second from within the US.
    • Pressable – I have tested one website on here and the load time is above 2.5 seconds.

Both Pressable and WPEngine are great, but dollar for dollar WPEngine seems much more worth it.  If you have multiple clients, the Professional Plan makes it hands down worth it since you can install SSL and use a CDN for free.  Each install breaks down to $10/month.  You may be thinking you can do caching, and backups on your own, but what if something goes wrong with those plugins?  How many times have you actually restored a backup from that plugin?  How many times have you fixed a hack or prevented one?  How much is a peaceful mind worth?  WPEngine can handle all this for you.

Pre-pay for WP ENGINE HOSTING for 1 year and GET 2 MONTHS FREE!

Happily Ever After

As you know, I didn’t go to WPEngine because of the speed, but I was curious to see what differences it could make by simply moving a site over.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the site loaded almost 40% faster.  And believe me, it’s noticeable for this particular site.

To get a more accurate reading of the speed changes you should sign up for a free account at Pingdom and monitor your website for a week or so.  Then sign up to WPEngine (60 day free trial) and again try it at pingdom.  If you’re not happy with the results you can always back out of WPEngine.

Screen Shot 2014-01-08 at 10.56.26 PM
Original Site

Moved to WPEngine
Moved to WPEngine

 

Update: More on Security

After using WPEngine for about 6 months I am fully satisfied with the security on WPEngine for WordPress websites.  WPEngine stays on top of plugin vulnerabilities and they scan your installation daily.   here are some examples:

  • TimThumb script:  If you install a theme or plugin with the TimThumb script (a popular PHP script used to resize images known for having some huge vulnerabilities in the past) WPEngine will detect what version it is, and if it’s not the newest version, they will automatically update it.
  • JetPack plugin:  Jetpack recently had a vulnerability in their email sharing feature.  WPEngine was on top of it notified their customers of it while disabling that feature for them.

Also, WPEngine hosting is secure enough to be PCI compliant “as long as no payment card data is stored, hosted, or otherwise processed by WP Engine…”.   See more at WPEngine and PCI Compliance

Update:  Speed

WPEngine now offers a tool to test the speed of your website.

 

Disclaimer:  I have become a WPEngine affiliate because I do believe in their product.  Links to WPEngine on this site are probably affiliate links.

Free Web Hosting

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Today I realized I needed a reliable web host that I can use for development purposes.  Either for demoing to clients or testing things out, it needed to be online, free (because I wouldn’t use it for production), and not go out of business.

Doing some research these are the companies I came across:

Byethost

On a WordPress forum thread one of the comments suggested Byethost.  It’s free, seems to offer a ton of power and space.

http://byethost.com/index.php/free-hosting

Zymic

I don’t know too much about these guys, sorry.

http://www.zymic.com/free-web-hosting/

Koding

This is probably the Facebook for coders.  My first impression of Koding is that it seems to accomplish what GitHub is trying to do.  basically make a social network for coders.  At Koding you get a free VM with full root access.  It’s way more than just a free webhost.  The only drawback (for my current needs) is that the VM shuts down 20 minutes after you log off.  I’ll probably sign up for this later, but for what I need this isn’t it.

000WebHost

These guys are probably the most well known free web hosting company.   They’ve been in the business for a long time and they are well known.  However, be warned, they delete your site with no warning whatsoever.  I created two sites to test them out installing WordPress and some plugins.  A few weeks later I was ready to point my domain there but I couldn’t log in.  The forget password portion simply said the account with my email doesn’t exist.  I assume my account was deleted for inactivity, but I have no idea.

http://www.000webhost.com/features

Media Uploader Crunching Issue

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Problem

WordPress has a bug.  When uploading an image (even a small,  1KB image) the Media uploader stalls and freezes in when Crunching is 100%.   This problem happens in both the flash and html uploader.  In the HTML uploader you can see a 500 Internal Server Error.

 

Solution

There are 2 different problems that can cause this issue.

One is your server or hosting provider.  GoDaddy has since said they have fixed this issue.  However, when I contacted support they said to disable Fast CGI for PHP.  I responded with a link to the article above.  They then helped me out by telling me to update my php5.ini or php.ini file.   You’ll find that this solution was found on the WordPress forums also where you set the memory_limit and max_execution_time higher.  So in your php.ini or php5.ini if you use php5 (that’s important!  trust me, I’ve been frustrated with that before) add the following lines:
max_execution_time = 600
memory_limit =128M
upload_max_filesize = 2M

Adjust as needed.  You may also have to End your Web Process to quickly see changes.  See godaddy support forums for this.

The 2nd issue with this bug is a more frustrating and disappointing one.  I found out that WordPress uses the delete_posts capability to determine whether a user can delete a media file or not.  Well, guess what, it also uses the edit_posts capability when it crunches the file too.  So if you have a problem where only the Administrator can upload media files fine, check your user’s capabilities.  On a side note, to delete media the user needs the delete_posts capability.