Last Updated on
Ante Rados
WordPress powers over 60 million websites. It is a CMS that was originally created as a blog publishing system, but in the meantime, it evolved to support all sorts of web content. If you are wondering how to start your own WordPress website, the first step is to get hosting.
Today, I will make a WPEngine SiteGround comparison. Those two are hosting providers that focus on different markets, but they both offer WordPress hosting. WPEngine focuses solely on WordPress and specializes in high-end websites. SiteGround, on the other hand, is beginner-friendly and offers various hosting options.
I will focus on WordPress hosting in this article, so SiteGround won’t get any additional points for providing other types of hosting. After all, you would be reading a different article if you were looking for some other type of hosting.
I will compare them based on the most common features of a WordPress host, such as ease of use, pricing, features, reliability, etc. I will rate both companies in each individual category and declare a winner based on the overall score they get. If you are considering one of these two as your hosting provider.
Read on and find out who wins this SiteGround vs WPEngine battle.
Table of Contents
So which is better, WPEngine or SiteGround?
WP Engine SiteGround hosting comparison
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WPEngine or SiteGround ease of use
WPEngine
☆☆☆☆☆ 4/5
SiteGround
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5
WPEngine doesn’t compete in the same market as SiteGround. They primarily have the ability to target people and organizations that need access to a high-performance service account for their websites. When you take a look at their prices (I will talk about them a bit later), it is clear they expect professionals as their customers.
If you are a beginner, you will have to put in a bit more effort to handle WPEngine hosting. They aren’t trying to make setup particularly hard, but being completely beginner-friendly just isn’t as important to WPEngine as providing a premium service.
The benefit of WPEngine is that servers are already optimized for WordPress. This means that there is no handling of technicalities you would have to handle otherwise.
For experienced developers, they earn some points in ease of use because there are more programming languages available to develop your website with WPEngine.
WPEngine or SiteGround WordPress hosting
WPEngine
☆☆☆☆☆ 4/5
SiteGround
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5
WPEngine focuses on WordPress hosting for high-end websites. Their prices are also on the high-end side. WPEngine offers three plans for shared hosting and an option for a custom dedicated server. Let’s take a look at WPEngine pricing for WordPress hosting:
Startup: $25/month
- 25,000 visits monthly
- 10 GB storage
- 50 GB bandwidth/month
- 1 website included
Growth: $95/month
- 100,000 visits monthly
- 20 GB storage
- 200 GB bandwidth/month
- 10 website included
- 24/7 phone support
- Imported SSL certificates
WPScale: $241/month
- 400,000 visits monthly
- 50 GB storage
- 500 GB bandwidth/month
- 30 website included
- 24/7 phone support
- Imported SSL certificates
All their plans are PHP 7.3 ready and use the Genesis Framework. Automated SSL certificates, EverCache, site transfer, and SSH gateway are also included in all of the plans.
If you are wondering what EverChace is, here is the answer. It is a scalable WordPress architecture used by WPEngine to handle significant traffic spikes easily. The high quality of EverChace is probably one of the reasons for the high prices WPEngine plans come at.
It is worth mentioning that you will pay overage fees if you exceed the monthly visitor, storage, or bandwidth limit allowance, but your website will continue to work properly. This is another thing that makes WP Engine suitable for high-end websites. If you are getting hundreds of thousands of visitors on your website, you will probably be more worried about your website's performance than additional costs you have to pay.
WPEngine versus SiteGround's server locations
WPEngine
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5
SiteGround
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5
The load speed of your website is one of the most important factors for user experience. One of the things that makes a great impact on the load speed is the proximity of the server your website is hosted on. This is the reason why you should always check where the data centers your hosting provider uses are located.
For shared hosting, WPengine has servers on four continents. There are 4 servers in North America; they are located in Iowa, South Carolina, Oregon, and Montreal. In Europe, they have servers in Belgium, London, and Frankfurt. In Asia, there are servers in Taiwan and Tokyo and in Australia, there is a server in Sydney.
Additionally, there are servers for dedicated hosting. Those are located in Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Montreal, Ireland, London, Frankfurt, and Sydney.
SiteGround vs WPEngine website builder
WPEngine
☆☆☆☆☆ 0/5
SiteGround
☆☆☆☆☆ 4.5/5
I already mentioned that WPEngine is geared towards high-performance websites. Website builders aren’t up to the task for such websites, so you need a good developer to get the job done.
WPEngine recognizes that, and they don’t have a website builder. This means there is no WPEngine v SiteGround duel in this section, but you are still welcome to check out SiteGround’s website builder offer.
SiteGround vs WPEngine SEO
WPEngine
☆☆☆☆☆ 3/5
SiteGround
☆☆☆☆☆ 3.5/5
SEO with WPEngine depends on how good you are at finding the right tools. With correct plugins and apps, only the sky’s the limit. Without plugins and apps, there are almost no integrated SEO tools.
There is a blog at WPEngine where they recommend the best tools for optimizing your SEO, but that is more or less all the effort they put in to help you get most out of your SEO.
Again, this isn’t that weird when you consider the market they are targeting. People aiming to create a high-end website will probably know how to handle their SEO or have SEO experts hired to do the job for them.
However, SiteGround offers some SEO tools and doesn’t lock you out from third-party SEO apps and plugins, so this is another category of WP Engine vs SiteGround comparison that WP Engine loses.
SiteGround vs WPEngine features
WPEngine
☆☆☆☆☆ 4/5
SiteGround
☆☆☆☆☆ 4/5
WPEngine specializes in WordPress, so they don’t support any other CMS.
Programming languages:
- PHP
- Python
- Ruby
Staging sites that come with WPEngine plans are an excellent feature for testing things out. Staging sites are basically clones of your website where you can tinker with various options without fear of messing your website up.
You can also copy any website you created rather than building it all again on a different domain. This way, developers who ship websites to clients can save a lot of time when they get an order for a website similar to one they previously created. They can just edit a website they previously created instead of doing all the work from scratch.
One of the cool features WPEngine offers is Geo IP. It is a feature that shows content specifically useful to visitors in a certain location.
It is important to mention that you are not allowed to install any performance or security plugins. WPEngine comes with built-in security solutions and performance features. Installation of plugins could interfere with built-in features and lower the account security and performance of your website.
WPEngine vs SiteGround domains, migration & site transfer
WPEngine
☆☆☆☆☆ 4/5
SiteGround
☆☆☆☆☆ 4.5/5
WPEngine doesn’t have an option to register a domain, so you will have to buy domain elsewhere.
For website migration, they have a free plugin that will handle the migration for you. This is a great feature because it lets you migrate your website at any time.
SiteGround offers free website migration for new customers with no downtime. If you don’t know how to do it, there is an option to let their staff handle the migration for you.SiteGround vs WP Engine customer support
WPEngine
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5
SiteGround
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5
There are three ways to contact WPEngine support, but not all are available for each of their hosting plans.
24/7 live chat support is available to all users. Phone support is available for all plans except the cheapest one, and ticket-based support is only available with the most expensive plan.
Although WPEngine has fewer support options on their cheaper plans, they make up for that by specializing in only WordPress. The focus on only one CMS makes them one of the best support teams for handling WordPress-related problems.
WPEngine vs Siteground speed, uptime and reliability
WPEngine
☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5
SiteGround
☆☆☆☆☆ 4.5/5
As expected from a reliable hosting provider WPEngine has almost constant uptime. 100% uptime simply isn’t possible, and their 99.99% is the highest possible uptime for a hosting provider
Uptime: 99.99%
Load time: 582 ms
Load times WPEngine and SiteGround are pretty close in Europe, North America, and Australia. WPEngine has servers in Japan so they have much better load time in Japan.
SiteGround vs WPEngine pricing comparison
WPEngine
☆☆☆☆☆ 3/5
SiteGround
☆☆☆☆☆ 4/5
I already listed the prices of their in WordPress comparison. Pricing is one of the first things we look at when we purchase services, of course, however, so I believe it deserves a special mention.
WPEngine plans came at $25, $95, and $241. The cheapest plan they offer is comparable with SiteGround’s middle plan, which comes at $19.95.
SiteGround’s middle plan comes with the same limit to monthly visitors, but there is no limit to bandwidth and number of websites, and the size of the storage is also larger.
This WP Engine vs SiteGround comparison makes it clear that it is more cost-effective to choose SiteGround.
WP Engine vs SiteGround conclusion
The winner is SiteGround!
With SiteGround, you get WordPress plans with all industry-standard features at a reasonable price. WP Engine has similar features, but their plans come at much steeper prices.
SiteGround simply offers better value for money, so you should choose them for WordPress hosting.
WPEngine versus SiteGround final score
Related articles:
WP Engine vs SiteGround hosting FAQs
What kind of hosting does WPEngine offer?
Where are SiteGround data centers located?
Does SiteGround have a website builder?
Who has better customer support, SiteGround or WP Engine?
Does SiteGround provide cheap hosting?
