WP Engine is a popular WordPress web host in the industry. Undoubtedly, it is a great company due to the positive word of mouth and reviews. However, despite all the good stuff we have heard and read about WP Engine, better alternatives exist in 2024.
These WP Engine alternatives are not far-fetched because there are some red flags about the web host. Although, that is not to say it is a very terrible host. We only prefer the other web hosts to WP Engine because they offer better opportunities and flexibility.
Therefore, before you decide to host your website with this web host, we urge you to read this article presenting the best alternatives to WP Engine.
Reasons to Consider WP Engine Alternatives
After reviewing WP Engine services, we discovered a few turn-offs you should know before committing your site project to the company. Here are some reasons why it might be a good idea to check out the best alternative to WP Engine.
Not Suitable for Beginners or Small Businesses
If you are a beginner or a small business owner, WP Engine is not right for you. Its hosting plans are very expensive and not favorable to a low-budget spender.
The lowest package on WP Engine goes for about $20 per month, which can cover a 10-month subscription at a host like Hostinger, with better features and value for money. So its affordability and pricing flexibility ratings are poor.
Therefore, unless you are a well-established business with a lot of capital, it is better to turn to one of the best alternatives to WP Engine to create your first WordPress site.
Limited Storage Space
Another disappointing discovery we made was that WP Engine has terrible space offerings.
Its starter package, which costs about $20 monthly, gives only 10 GB of storage. This storage space is enough for only a few months for a media-heavy website. If you decide to scale up to get more storage space, the highest you can get is 50 GB for an almost $200 monthly package, which is not enough.
As a result, you may have to turn to third-party cloud hosting services to host your media. In practice, this increases the cost of running your business and is not ideal.
Thus, if you have a media-heavy site or are planning to have one, choose an alternative to WP Engine with better storage space. A few web hosts, like Hostinger, offer 300+ GB and unlimited storage space at a cheaper price.
WordPress Hosting is the only option
A pretty obvious restriction with WP Engine is that it only supports WordPress website hosting. As a result, it does not have cPanel and other web applications like Drupal, Joomla, etc.
This limits what you can use your account for and the features you may include on your site. For example, you cannot switch between using WooCommerce to PrestaShop or WordPress to Joomla. You cannot decide to run your site with ordinary cPanel either.
At the same time, it makes transition quite hard to do. Since it does not have cloud, VPS and dedicated server hosting, you will have to move to a completely new host if your business ever needs any of them. If you already have a big website, this can be problematic.
Very Expensive for Hosting Multiple Websites
WP Engine’s restrictions on the number of allowable websites are uncalled for. It has no provisions for hosting more than 30 websites, whereas other web hosts allow up to 100 and, in some cases, unlimited at more affordable prices.
WP Engine still charges $200 per year for each additional website you add to your hosting account despite the huge subscription price already paid. It is not worthwhile since the best WP Engine alternatives allow you to host multiple sites.
No Email Hosting
This is one of the most disturbing cons of this web host. Email hosting is very important to any online business. It allows you to create email addresses or mailboxes to receive messages. You can also use these email addresses to send messages, newsletters, and sales copies to your customers.
According to research, customers tend to engage with emails from a custom email address with a known domain name rather than generic addresses like [email protected], [email protected], etc. Therefore, it will help you get more sales if you run an eCommerce store and help your marketing generally.
However, since WP Engine does not offer this service even on its overpriced eCommerce packages, you have to buy a third-party service instead.
Low Regard for Security
Another reason to consider an alternative host is that WP Engine’s approach to security is not great. For its hosting packages, it gives only automated backups, SSL certificates, SSH access, and two-factor authentication (2FA) as security measures. Even though these are great, they are not enough to protect the type of site you would host with this expensive provider and are not worth the cost.
Instead of providing additional security measures like anti-DDoS protection, web application firewalls (WAF), and automatic SSL certificate installation for free, it charges heavily for them. The server monitoring and reports add-on costs $50 per year for each site on your account, while security measures like DDoS mitigation and firewalls are $300 per year!
You would get all these security features for free, even on the cheap shared hosting packages on many alternative hosts to WP Engine.
Add-ons and Upsells
An equally valid reason to consider an alternative to WP Engine is that it has too many add-ons and uses upsell tactics from the product-breakdown pages.
After restricting the number of websites customers can host per account despite the huge price of the packages, it flashes an add-on in their faces on the page for them to add additional sites in case they need it for an extra $200 per year per site.
Automatic plugin updates through the Smart Plugin Manager add-on also cost $100 per license, valid for only one site unless you are on the eCommerce packages. Since the service is called managed WordPress hosting, this should have been part of the typical package. Thus, the fact that it is hoarding security features as add-ons is not surprising to us.
3 Best Alternatives to WP Engine
Now that we know a little about what makes WP Engine a less desirable web host, let us take a look at the best alternatives of 2024.
1. Hostinger
Hostinger is the most affordable alternative to WP Engine. This company has plans for small businesses with one or more websites to host, allowing them to scale at their own pace.
Despite the affordability of its plans, Hostinger uses cutting-edge technologies to host your site. It uses LiteSpeed servers with server-level caching. This increases the out-of-the-box speed of your website, so it does not need an optimization plugin to load fast. It still provides the LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress (LSCWP) plugin so that you can get better speed for your site for improved SEO performance.
It uses other technologies like NVMe SSD storage disks, HTTP/3 protocol, and advanced caching to improve site performance.
Hostinger is not dormant when it comes to security. It has free security measures such as firewalls, anti-DDoS protection, malware scanning & removal set up to protect your site from attacks at all costs.
This web host also has an intuitive proprietary control panel called hPanel. It allows you to manage your site better with a cleaner interface. If you ever have an issue, its 24/7 customer support is out there to save you.
Read our Hostinger review to know more about this company and its services.
Features
Here are some of the features that make Hostinger the best WP Engine alternative of 2024:
- Pricing is as low as $2 per month
- Free domain for the first year
- Shared/managed WP/cloud/VPS hosting types
- Free domain for the first year
- Unlimited bandwidth and databases
- Free and unlimited professional site migration
- Intuitive and more appealing control panel (hPanel)
- Free unlimited email hosting
- Industry-leading performance features
- Automated backups and staging websites
- Industry-grade security features (brute force and DDoS protection, firewalls, malware scanner & SSL)
- 99.90% uptime guarantee
- 24/7 multilingual live chat support
- 30-day money-back guarantee
Reasons Why Hostinger is a Better WP Engine Alternative
Here are some of the attributes that make Hostinger a superior alternative to WP Engine:
More Hosting Types
Hostinger has more hosting types than WP Engine. It has shared, managed WordPress, cloud, and VPS hosting types. Thus, you can easily transition from one to another if your business needs it without changing your web host. This makes scaling your business quite easy.
At the same time, you are not limited to only WordPress. You can install other CMS like Joomla, Drupal…, using a one-click app installer.
Better Pricing Flexibility and Value for Money
Another reason Hostinger is a better alternative to WP Engine is its affordability. It is more affordable than WP Engine. Take the Hostinger Premium web hosting package, for example; this package costs around $3 per month and can host 100 websites with unlimited bandwidth.
It comes with a free domain, automatically installed SSL certificates, automated backups, and anti-DDoS protection.
On the other hand, the WP Engine Startup package costs $20 per month and can host only one website. It has a bandwidth of 10 GB and only automated/on-demand backups as its security feature. Its SSL certificates need to be manually installed and renewed by you, so it is not beginner-friendly.
Also, while WP Engine requires an additional add-on to enjoy the managed WordPress features, such as automatic plugin updates, the Hostinger Premium package comes pre-packed with the feature for free. Thus, it saves you that unnecessary expense.
Greater Space Offering & Number of Websites
Hostinger has more and better storage space offerings. The minimum storage space you can get from Hostinger and its $2 per month package is 50 GB, the same as the maximum you would get from WP Engine’s $200 per month plan. You can get up to 200 GB from the Business package, which costs less than $4 per month.
As a result, you can comfortably host more media without worrying about running out of space too early. At the same time, even if you have to use a third-party service in the future for more storage space, you will still spend less than you would with the other web host. Moreover, you can switch to the Hostinger Cloud Enterprise hosting package for up to 300 GB of storage space.
Furthermore, you can host more websites with Hostinger. While WP Engine limits the total number of sites you can host on its pre-packed plans to 30, you can host up to 300 websites with this provider. You don’t have to pay the bogus $200 per site when your project needs another domain.
Free Email Hosting
Another reason Hostinger is a greater alternative to WP Engine is free email hosting. Hostinger provides this service on all its packages through Titan Email. This allows you to create up to 100 email addresses for free and have access to its mobile app for easy management.
The app works like Gmail. You can send and receive emails on the go. It also comes with spam protection, so you have nothing to worry about concerning the quality of emails entering your inbox.
Thus, it makes your email marketing campaigns cheaper and more successful, especially if you run an online store.
Summary of Areas Where Hostinger Excels as a Better Alternative to WP Engine
- Free domain for the first year
- More affordable packages
- Better storage space and number of allowed sites
- More beginner-friendly
- Greater value for money
- Free email hosting
- More hosting types for easy scaling
- Free managed WordPress features
2. SiteGround
SiteGround is another amazing web host in the industry and a great WP Engine alternative. It is headed, managed, and operated by seasoned web developers who know what it takes to build a high-tech hosting environment and make it work.
SiteGround has many custom technologies that make it a unique provider. It created its Ultrafast PHP and MySQL setups to give your site a faster loading speed compared with sites using standard PHP and MySQL. We confirmed the effectiveness of these technologies in our SiteGround review.
Furthermore, the web host has a custom control panel called Site Tools. This control panel is far more intuitive than the traditional cPanel and makes managing your site easier and faster. SiteGround has a support team full of experts with hands-on experience to help with your queries. As a result, your issues are resolved as soon as they show up.
Moreover, SiteGround steps up its security game with many custom tools. It has a site scanning & removal tool for malware, an AI system to block bot traffic from your site, intelligent firewalls to prevent unauthorized access, and geo-distributed site backups to protect your files.
Features
Here are some of the features you can enjoy with SiteGround:
- The introductory price is about $3 monthly
- Free domain registration for a year
- Website migrations with a free tool
- Automated backups
- Proprietary control panel
- High-tech security
- Outstanding performance and uptime (99.99%)
- Free unlimited email hosting with a migrator tool
- One-click app installer
- Managed WP features
- Multiple data centers and CDNs
- Competent 24/7 multilingual customer support
Reasons Why SiteGround is a Great Alternative to WP Engine
Here is a deeper look into what makes SiteGround a viable alternative to WP Engine:
Better Security
SiteGround invests more into securing your website than WP Engine. It has custom setups such as the AI anti-bot system to prevent bot traffic from diluting your website activity reports. At the same time, this helps prevent bots from using up your server resources, weakening the server and making it defenseless against attacks.
Furthermore, it has security measures like anti-DDoS protection, firewalls, brute-force protection, and 24/7 server monitoring for free on its packages. These services, excluding brute-force protection, are charged heavily by WP Engine for more than $300 per year.
SiteGround uses geo-distributed backups for added protection. Therefore, your files and backup copies are a little safer than on WP Engine servers if your data center ever has a major problem.
At the same time, since SiteGround has a WP security plugin, you could use it to improve the security of your site by blocking all possible exits hackers or attackers can exploit. So, you will have a more secure site that you can control better. The security plugin is also easy to use, so there is no need for a high level of technical know-how.
Free Email Hosting
Free email hosting is another reason we recommend SiteGround as a superior WP Engine alternative. SiteGround has a free email hosting service that allows you to create unlimited mailboxes. You can use these email addresses for your email campaigns to build professionalism so that your customers see your brand as serious and trustworthy.
Discover SiteGround Hosting Plans
At the same time, it gives you access to autoresponders, email forwarders, spam protection, and an email migrator. You can use the email migrator to easily transfer your emails from another provider automatically, so you don’t lose any vital information in your mailboxes.
Greater Affordability
Even though SiteGround is a rather expensive web host, it is more affordable than WP Engine. For instance, SiteGround’s GrowBig package costs around $25 per month without a discount, while the WP Engine Growth plan is more than $100 monthly.
Both packages have only 20 GB of storage, but GrowBig gives better value for money concerning essential features. GrowBig can host unlimited websites compared to Growth’s limit of 10. It also comes with free CDN, firewalls, server monitoring, and DDoS attack protection, while Growth requires extra expensive add-ons to provide these services.
Summary of Areas Where SiteGround is Better than WP Engine
- Free domain
- Slightly more affordable
- Free email hosting
- Better value for money
- Greater security features
- Better and cheaper for hosting multiple sites
- More hosting types
3. InMotion Hosting
The last alternative to WP Engine that we wanted to introduce to you is InMotion Hosting. This web host is very affordable with stellar services.
The most notable area that makes InMotion Hosting a great choice is its performance. InMotion can host fast-loading websites thanks to its UltraStack hosting environment. It successfully eliminated the lag associated with hosting sites on Nginx servers by integrating Nginx proxy caching, NVMe SSD storage, and Redis caching. This configuration gives your website a fast loading that can compete with the speed of LiteSpeed-hosted websites.
In addition, it has a terrific customer support that is available 24/7. According to our encounter with the agents, they showed a high degree of competency and genuineness in helping customers resolve any website or billing-related issues.
Features
Here are some of the features that make InMotion Hosting one of the best WP Engine alternatives:
- Starts as low as $3 per month
- Shared/managed WP/reseller/VPS/dedicated hosting types
- Free domain registration for the first year and SSL certificates
- Unlimited bandwidth and databases
- Free WordPress migration plugin
- UltraStack performance
- Highly-secured environment
- Free email hosting
- One-click installer
- Staging websites & a free site builder
- Free ads credits
- Multiple data centers
- 90-day money-back guarantee
- Great 24/7 customer support
Reasons Why InMotion Hosting is a Better WP Engine Alternative
Here are some of the ways InMotion Hosting performs better:
Better for Hosting Media-heavy Websites
Choosing InMotion Hosting over WP Engine is advisable if you plan to run a media-heavy website. This web host offers at least 100 GB storage on its cheapest package, which is twice as powerful and accommodating for media files as the WP host’s most expensive package.
On the higher packages, you will get unlimited NVMe storage space, allowing you to host as much media content as possible without running out of space. Thus, InMotion offers a solution for media-heavy sites that won’t need a third-party service in the future, making it the best WP Engine alternative for this category.
At the same time, since it uses NVMe SSD storage, it has a faster and more reliable storage system than WP Engine. This will lead to a faster loading speed for your website and a better SEO performance which will drive more traffic.
More Affordable with Better Deals and Hosting Types
Another reason InMotion is an alternative host to WP Engine that we highly recommend is that it is more affordable. The company considered the needs of low-budget spenders and small businesses to build a befitting hosting service with undiluted quality.
With InMotion Hosting, you can start small with the shared packages, which are budget-friendly, and get better servers as your business scales. You will enjoy many features using these inexpensive optimized servers, and you have nothing to worry about since they have UltraStack performance.
Unlike WP Engine, with less than a 20% annual discount, you can get up to 40% with this web host for already affordable plans. Since there are 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year plans, you can get a better discount too by choosing a longer term.
The availability of more hosting types also makes moving from a server to a better one quite easy since you are not changing providers.
Summary of Areas Where InMotion Hosting is Better
To conclude this presentation, we offer you a summary of the strengths of this solid alternative to WP Engine:
- Free domain
- More storage space offering and faster NVMe disks
- Free email hosting
- More hosting types
- Affordable with better pricing flexibility
To learn more, check our InMotion Hosting review.
Conclusion : The Best Alternative to WP Engine in 2024
In our opinion, WP Engine is a very expensive web host and is not worth the cost.
Despite the enormous charges of this web host for monthly plans, it still holds back essential features from its packages to sell as add-ons. We consider this a selfish move by WP Engine to enrich its pocket and see no value in its overpriced services.
You can get better deals with Hostinger and enjoy superior performance. Hostinger is not only an affordable host but an industry-leading provider because of the high-tech technologies it uses to give an optimized hosting environment for sites. This is why it is the best web host among the WP Engine alternatives listed.
