7 WP Engine Alternatives and Competitors of 2024

If you ever plan to use managed WordPress hosting you must come to the name WP Engine. They are distinguished because of their premium quality and remarkable customer care services. Their plans are featured with all the essentials like daily backups, SSD storage, multiple datacenters, solid security, and well optimized servers.

But on the other side, many are looking for WPEngine alternatives because of their hefty prices and a couple of other reasons. Here look at some of most potential reasons that why you need its substitutes:

• The most basic plan costs you $35/mo while within this pricing you can get more value with very competitive performance to WP Engine which we are going to mention in this list.
• Tight traffic limits. The traffic overage will add further cost and makes it more expensive
• A $35/month plan allows you to host only one website.
• As declared on their page, a list of plugins are not allowed on their servers.

So, here in this list, we come up with the best WPEngine alternatives which are cheaper and deliver almost similar or better value.

Top 7 Best WPEngine Alternatives and Competitors in 2024

Kinsta

• Blazing fast performance backed by Google Cloud
• Custom designed control panel
• Daily backups and 1440 uptime checks
• Expert WordPress engineers for troubleshooting
• A cheaper alternative to WPEngine

Just like WPEngine, Kinsta is also a premium managed WordPress hosting provider utilizing the power of Google Cloud platform. They have integrated cutting-edge technologies and custom server-level cache to deliver blazingly fast speed and performance. The entire network is protected against DDoS attacks, Hardware Firewall, Malware monitoring, and SSL certificate support.

Free site migration and advanced features including NGINX, PHP 7, LXD containers, and MariaDB support are also included. Moreover, 24/7 uptime monitoring with daily 1440 checks ensures maximum stability and reliability. In case of downtime, they respond immediately to fix the issue on a priority basis.

Ultimate Speed on Google Cloud

Let us clear one thing, managed WordPress is the best solution to get highly optimized solutions for WordPress projects, right? So to achieve unbeatable page speed, Kinsta partnered with Google Cloud platform. You might know that Google Cloud is the most robust and secured hosting out there which means total peace of mind. They utilized it further and integrated with technologies like NGINX and PHP to deliver matchless performance.

Highly Scalable Platform

The next-generation flexible architecture powered by LXD containers provides on-demand scalability and capabilities to handle sudden traffic spikes. You can increase plan resources on the go without any hassle. Where traditional host failed to accommodate traffic spikes, Kinsta never slows down your website speed nor let it down for a single second.

Advanced Custom Dashboard

WP Engine offers an intuitive and user-friendly control panel, same goes for Kinsta, they also have designed a custom panel which makes them the best alternative. There you can monitor resources like bandwidth, space, and visitor statistics. Managing multiple sites through the dashboard is dead simple.

Free CDN and SSL Certificates

Compared to WPEngine, they give you free CDN services using which one can boost the page performance and enhance bandwidth by blocking bot or spam traffic. Plus, SSL certificate also included for all hosted domains at no additional costs. You can enable the SSL on blogs with a few mouse clicks.

Round the Clock 24/7 Support

No matter how good you’re regarding technical issues, sometimes serious problems popups. This is where the expert team behind Kinsta comes in the game and rescue you. They have WordPress passionate engineers having years of experience to solve any WordPress error. You can contact them round the clock via live chat, or phone.

WPXHosting

• Simple central dashboard with minimal options
• Cost effective – allow 5 domains on the basic plan
• Backups and SSL costs nothing
• SSD powered best managed WordPress hosting
• Can be used for domain registration as well
• Recommended by professional bloggers

WPXHosting was started in 2013 with priority aims to focus on Speed, Support, and Simplicity. They have own servers built with cutting-edge specs optimized with the latest PHP version, SSD’s, and advanced cache layer to deliver top-class speed. Instead of a messy control panel, they give simplistic and minimalistic dashboard to help you configure things like SSL, database, and email address on the go.

Affordable Plans and Domain Registration

You can host 5 websites at the cost of just $19.99/month which is way lower compared to WP Engine. Though offer the same storage but impose no monthly visitors with 50GB bandwidth. Even more free backups, email boxes, and FTP account, and email hosting also added making them an excellent alternative to WPEngine. Concerning about domain registration prices, domain fees are also affordable starting at $10.99/year for .com TLD.

Intuitive Control Panel

Similar to Kinsta, WPX designed an intuitive dashboard comes with easy navigation and clean look. It consists of essential options such as DNS, FTP, Database management, and Sites details. It is dead simple to use and take only a few minutes to get familiar with.

Offer Free Email Hosting and SSL

You may know that managed WordPress hosting provider don’t include email storage and address, but WPXHosting provides email addresses at no fees. Just like WPEngine, you also get free SSL certificates for all hosted domains. Here keep in mind, email storage will is accommodated from the overall 10GB allowed space.

Under 25s Support Response

WPXHosting claims to respond within 25 seconds through live chat. When tested, we really found them responsive. On top of that, 24/7 available technical agents are experienced and capable to fix your issues promptly. However, you can also make use of phone and email tickets to get assistance.

SiteGround – Cheaper than WPEngine

• Stands in our top 3 recommended hosting providers
• Thumbed up by WordPress.org
• Best money value plans with impressive support
• SSD hosting, free backups, and security certificates
• 5 Different data centers
• Cheapest WPEngine alternative for outstanding services
• Much more…

We’re using SiteGround for last one and a half year for some websites. In fact, we were satisfied enough to purchase two different accounts, GrowBig and GoGeek. So far, the uptime, speed, and reliability are incredible. Never encountered any technical issue nor software – they are way cheaper than WPEngine but provide impressive services with all the bell and whistles. Their technological features such as SuperCacher, LXC custom container, and pro-active monitoring are the significant innovations making them different than the entire industry.

Recommended by WordPress.org

You can check SiteGround’s authenticity by knowing the fact that they are officially endorsed by WordPress.org which means you’ll get feature-rich, highly secure, and peace of mind hosting. They also have 5 different servers positioned globally to help the users choose an appropriate region according to the target audience. The locations are Chicago, Singapore, Milan, Amsterdam, and London.

State of the Art Infrastructure

SiteGround similar to WPEngine also utilized the high standard hardware, advanced technologies, and redundant power supply to make sure highest availability. The state of the art platform support HTTP/2, NGINX, CDN integration, PHP 7, and HHVM alongside custom Linux container technology.

Exclusive SuperCacher and Multiple Cache Levels

Though SSD’s are being used but other cache features including SuperCacher, NGINX reverse proxy, Memcached, etc. also play a vital role to take page loading to the next level. SuperCacher work like a charm for both static and dynamic websites and available for popular CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. When enabled from the cPanel, all you’ve to do is install the plugin and you’re good to go. It works out of the box.

Robust Account Isolation Technology

In 2008, SiteGround was the first host who introduced CHROOT account isolation for shared hosting. It not only isolate each account’s resources but also secure against security breaches to protect individual user’s data on the same server. Furthermore, Linux container efficiently handles sudden traffic spikes thanks to custom LXC technology.

One-Click SSL Activator

Evey hosting company that offers free SSL includes a one-click installer for easy installation. They also give free SSL certificate by Let’s Encrypt but through “Manage HTTPS Setting”, you can enable “HTTPS Enforce” to renders all the content through HTTPS protocol. Usually, it requires to add a couple of coding lines in .htacces file for this, but it’s hassle-free with SiteGround.

Best of the Best Customer Suppor

In the very first package of WP Engine, you don’t get phone support and even ticketing which is a dealbreaker to some extent. Whereas SG provides outstanding technical assistance for all accounts no matter if it’s a basic one or higher. Even more, they are much faster than most of the hosts claiming to provide award-winning support. Plus, the knowledgeable team member resolves the issue in real time.

A2Hosting

• Various SwiftServers located worldwide
• Standard cPanel control panel even for WordPress hosting
• Affordable and cheap WP Engine alternative
• Free SSL, Backups, SSH access, SFTP, and WP-CLI
• Free email address and storage
• Turbo 20x faster global servers
• Anytime refund policy (pro-rated)

A2Hosting is an independent company working since 2001 and with over 16+ years of experience, they offer web solutions for all webmasters ranging from a personal blog to development. The Swift Turbo Servers located worldwide optimized for 20x faster performance with the help of A2Optimized, APC, and Memcached feature. The best part is all of these advanced features work out of the box and doesn’t require manual configuration. Moreover, 20k+ third party reviews by real users and average 5/5 rating are just fascinating numbers.

Lightning Fast SSD Hosting

Solid state drives perform 200% faster than traditional HDD’s hence fetch the data in no time resulting in outstanding speed. Gone a the days when SSD hosting was expensive nowadays you can avail affordable packages from A2Hosting.

Unlimited Bandwidth

Here is another significant difference between both hosts where WP Engine only allows limited traffic, A2 concede unlimited bandwidth. So you can host big websites getting a lot of monthly traffic. If you have a large site, then consider the upgraded plan as other presents high web space.

24/7 Guru Customer Support

This is something that we cannot resist our self to mention, WPE lacks phone and ticket support in the very basic plan. Meaning to say, you’ll only get live chat. On the other hand, A2 does offer 24/7/365 technical support through chat, email, and tickets.

Exclusive A2Optimized and Server Rewind

All machines under A2 platform comes with A2Optimized and custom multi-layer cache mechanisms to ensure max. reliability and incredible uptime. However, choosing the high-end plan “Turbo” comes with dedicated resources and CPU power. It also allows unlimited domains on a single account alongside unlimited email accounts.

Anytime Money Back Guarantee

WPEngine provides a limited 60-days money back guarantee whereas A2Hosting give a 30-day full refund and after that pro-rated credits for unused services. It’s quite good for long term contracts to protect your money. Deciding which one is best in this field is a bit difficult as both have their pros and cons regarding refunds. For long term subscription, A2Hosting is a clear winner.

FlyWheel

• Secure and stable web hosting services for WordPress
• Free automatic nightly backups
• Allow you to choose data center near your users
• Free Let’s Encrypt SSL
• Highly functional easy to use dashboard
• Friendly for developer, designers, and bloggers

If you are exploring an alternative to WPEngine that can grow with your web development needs, FlyWheel indeed has potentials. The company founded in 2012, offers solutions for freelancers, agencies, and enterprises. This Specialized WordPress hosting provider is the best package that includes swift customer support, perpetual security, and high performance. Moreover, you will get more cost-effective plans compared to WP Engine.

Create Now Pay Later Feature – Demo Sites

Typically you are only able to design your site after purchasing the hosting account. But Flywheel did a great job here by allowing the user to create a demo site. At demo site, without paying any penny, you can design your website freely. And when you believe everything setup then pay your billed amount and get your site online.

All you have to do just signup for free and you are all good to go for a demo site. That’s really handful like you don’t have to spend on paid service in site designing while you can do it for free.

Unbeatable Speed and Performance

Flywheel is one of the best performers when it comes to the speed and uptime. The company efficiently provide 99.99% uptime on their cutting-edge high-speed servers with economical pricing compared to the competition. The SSD based servers can read and write the data blazingly fast. Moreover, you can pick from their 7 globally located datacenters that help to achieve the lowest latency. Speaking honestly, you won’t be dissatisfied with Flywheel when it comes to high-performance servers.

Nightly Backups

Considering an integral part of any website, FlyWheel offers free nightly backups. The dashboard allows you to download the backup file in your local drive easily or you can restore it whenever you want to. You can also make on-demand backups.

User Collaboration Feature

FlyWheel collaboration is a convenient tool if you are likely to work in a team. So you don’t need to share your passwords or username with other members. By using the collaboration feature, you can add the others as a collaborator with their own login credentials.

Customer Support

Unlike WPEngine Flywheel support all basic channels of support on their basic plan. For technical assistance, you can call or send them an email. They do have live chat which is not 24/7 although as described by their support representative they are working on it and should be 24/7 chat towards the end of the year.

LiquidWeb

• Premium quality WordPress hosting provider
• Backed by 100% network uptime guarantee
• No limit on the monthly visits
• Free backup with the ease of downloading and restoration
• 30 min hardware replacement guarantee
• Automatic image compression and staging tool

Having more than 20-years experience, LiquidWeb is characterized by stable performance and round the clock customer care services. They are managing over 500K websites on their five globally located datacenters. They are mainly targeting the web host solution for grown-up sites which is why even basic plan offers plenty of resources and by comparing closely, you will find them more cost-effective compared to WPengine.

Business Class Solutions

LiquidWeb is known for their high performance. Due to their services excellence, they have some giant brands like FedEx, D&B, and Motorola, etc. on their client list. They are offering SSD hosting, automatic updates, NGINX server, varnish caching, and DDoS protection, etc. The company is capable of providing 100% network reliability and uptime guarantee. Moreover, they can fulfill your growing business needs by offering VPS, cloud, and dedicated hosting. You can even craft your custom solution.

Restriction-free Traffic/Bandwidth

WPEngine and many other managed WordPress hosting provider mostly put a cap on the number of monthly visits. And in case of overage traffic, you have to pay additional amount. Whereas LiquidWeb does not count your page views that means you don’t have to worry about the overage fee and traffic spikes.

Dedicated iThemes Sync

Every managed WordPress package except the “Personal” includes iThemes Sync. Managing multiple sites by logging in and out from multiple control panel is not just tedious but also a time eating. So iTheme Sync allows you to take care of multiple WordPress sites from a single dashboard. Furthermore, you can manage the updates and take administrative actions remotely.

Automatic Routine Backups

The daily backups is another beautiful part of LiquidWeb. They run automatic daily backups at no extra cost. You can access backups taken in the last 30-days. So either you want to download or restore a backup you can do so within a few mouse clicks.

Are they costly?

You may find them costly at first sight but as we mentioned earlier that they are really a cost-effective solution for huge websites. Like WP Engine, LiquidWeb won’t offer packages targeting smaller traffic sites. So if we compare LiquidWeb basic plan (Personal) with WPE’s second plan (Growth) then we can see that LiquidWeb is not only a lot cheaper but offer more resources like 30GB storage, unlimited monthly visits, 5TB bandwidth and free image compression tool etc. So if your blog is receiving more than 25K visits then LiquidWeb is a cost effective host to save some bucks.

Customer Support

No need to mention, they provide expeditious customer support. The customer support team comprised of technical guys. All the essential ways to live chat, tickets, and phone are available to assist you 24/7/365.

KnownHost

• Very affordable hosting for WordPress users
• Offers copious storage on the SSD based servers
• Includes email hosting to create branded email accounts
• 99.99% uptime guarantee
• Included free BitNinja server monitoring system
• Allow up to 100K monthly visits on the basic plan

KnownHost is a well-reputed for managed WP hosting. The company is doing business since 2005 powered by solid state drives and Dual Hex-Core Xeon hardware. They own 4 datacenters located in Texas, US East & West Coast and Amsterdam. Unlike WPEgine, they do offer domain registration services so its all-in-one place to set up your online business.

Huge Raid Storage at Cheap Rates

KnownHost is another best WP Engine alternative that built on the similar technologies to WPE, but doesn’t create a big hole in your pocket. The provided storage is based on the RAID 10 array. In this system, the data is stored on more than one drives so that it can be retrieved in case of any failure. So RAID 10 ensure the maximum availability of hardware. KnownHost offer 50GB SSD RAID 10 storage even on their most basic plan which is 4 times greater than WPEnigne.

BitNinja Monitoring

Providing a secure environment to their users is a crucial part of every hosting provider. The malicious and vulnerabilities can damage your hard work within no time. KnownHost using the BitNinja server security tool. The tool is known for scanning, detecting, blocking and removing the vulnerabilities. The best thing that it is provided to you at no cost.

Free Backups and Migration

Just like any managed WordPress provider, KnownHost also offers free of cost backup facility. They store off-server backups to ensure security against hardware failure. You can access the last 3 days backups. Their technical experts will help you to migrate your website from WPEngine to KnownHost with zero downtime.

Email Accounts

Obviously, you need some branded email addresses ending with your domain/business name. As WPEnigne does not include email hosting in their plans, so you can’t create an email account using their platform. On the other hand, KnownHost offers the facility to create an unlimited number of email accounts.

30-Days Money Back Guarantee

Although compared to the WP Engine you did not get lengthy money back guarantee but you must also keep in mind the vast difference between prices. With KnownHost you get 30 days refund period which is sufficient to test their quality.

Customer Support

They maintain live chat, emails, and phone for assistance. But remember that live chat is mainly dedicated for sale queries. So they provide technical assistance mainly through emails because it makes easier to share the files like screenshots etc.

Conclusion – What’s the Best WPEngine Alternative?

Undoubtedly WPEngine is a trustable and dedicated managed WordPress hosting provider. They keep your site always alive with an expeditious page loading time. But their high pricing tags are the deal breaker for most of the users. Luckily there are some close alternatives to WPEngine available which are not only cheaper but also deliver competitive quality.

Above we listed out some of the best and closed WPEngine competitors. If you ask us which one you should choose, we’ll recommend Kinsta and SiteGround to beginner WordPress users to host mid-size blogs. Both are amazing regarding performance, security, and customer support.

On the other hand, if you are planning to set up multiple sites with a reasonable pricing tag then WPXhosting is a great WPEngine alternative without compromising on performance.

But if you own a high resource consuming site with an enormous amount of traffic then Kinsta is the best choice to go. You can look at the table given at the top for a quick comparison.