wpengine

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

June 18, 2019 by Webhead

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.

WPEngine for WordPress Hosting Worth It?

January 9, 2014 by Webhead

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.

Original Site

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.

Caching With Widgets

September 24, 2012 by Webhead

W3 Total Cache is a great WordPress plugin that will help your Google Page Speed score and will also speed up your website. The only problem is that it doesn’t clear the cache when widgets are updated. So for example if you have a custom theme with a widget on your page and you update this widget, changes are not going to be seen. You’ll have to empty the cache on the W3 Total Cache page.

WPEngine also has a caching system that doesn’t clear the cache upon editing widgets. This means that every time you update a widget you have to manually clear the cache. WPEngine is a great WordPress host, but doing something manually isn’t good for clients.

A solution is to add a function to clear the cache every time the widget is updated. The code below covers W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache and WPEngine. You can copy-paste it into your functions.php or just install the Clear Cache For Widgets plugin.

function clear_cache_for_widgets( $instance ) {

// if W3 Total Cache is being used, clear the cache
if ( function_exists( 'w3tc_pgcache_flush' ) ) {
w3tc_pgcache_flush();
}
// if WP Super Cache is being used, clear the cache
else if ( function_exists( 'wp_cache_clean_cache' ) ) {
global $file_prefix;
wp_cache_clean_cache( $file_prefix );
}
else if ( class_exists( 'WpeCommon' ) ) {
WpeCommon::purge_memcached();
WpeCommon::clear_maxcdn_cache();
WpeCommon::purge_varnish_cache();
}

return $instance;
}
add_filter( 'widget_update_callback', 'clear_cache_for_widgets', 10 );

Source: http://scratch99.com/wordpress/development/clearing-cache-when-widget-saved/
http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/25425/page-cache-for-categories-not-updating-with-w3-total-cache