Comparing Hosting Services: SiteGround vs WP Engine

Finding the right web hosting service for your WordPress site is not easy; there are tons of options available, but you need to choose one that sells the best of everything and fits your needs. SiteGround and WP Engine are both popular and reliable web hosts. But there has got to be a better one among these two, which is why we are comparing them here based on the features they provide and their performance.

We shall see the key features of both these hosting services and their pros and cons before deciding which one is the better web hosting provider.

Hosting Plans

WP Engine offer premium, managed WordPress hosting, and SiteGround offers services more suitable for beginners, bloggers, and medium-sized websites. Here, we shall compare the Personal Plan provided by WP Engine and the GoGeek Plan offered by SiteGround.

SiteGround GoGeek Plan

  • 30GB Storage Space
  • Unlimited WordPress sites
  • 100,000 visitors per month
  • Unlimited Bandwidth for Data Transfer
  • Starts at $11.95 per month

WP Engine Personal Plan

  • 10GB Storage Space
  • 1 WordPress Site
  • 25,000 visitors per month
  • Unlimited Bandwidth for Data Transfer
  • Starts at $29.00 per month
  • Additional sites available at $14.99 per month for each site

Features Offered

Managed hosting is perfect for beginners and experts simply because it takes a lot of work off your shoulders. You do not have to worry yourself with your site’s security as your web host will offer 24/7 threat detection and monitoring under managed hosting. Downtime and any technical issues will all be sorted out without you having to interfere.

An SSL certificate is an important security feature, and installing one can be tiresome. Both SiteGround and WP Engine offer quick, one-click installation of SSL certificate on your server, making your job easier.

Two other major premium features offered by both SiteGround and WP Engine are CDN service and daily backups. These are critical for any managed WordPress hosting provider, and both of these web hosts provide free CDN and regular daily backups with all their hosting plans.

SiteGround GoGeek Plan

SiteGround is well known for its exceptional, responsive customer support that responds within five minutes to your queries. In addition to this, with the GoGeek plan, you get 10GB storage and can have up to 100,000 visitors per month. They also provide a caching service called SuperCacher on all plans. It helps reduce the time required to load a page by more than half.

WP Engine Personal Plan

WP Engine does not match up to SiteGround in terms of visitors and storage, but they provide high-quality premium service. With WP Engine, you have an assured guarantee of no crowded servers, enforced by their strict No Overselling Policy. This prevents slow speed and poor performance that arises due to overcrowded servers.

They have an excellent customer support system that has won 3 Stevie Awards, and they also offer a caching service called EverCache with all their plans. WP Engine is one of the most trusted and highest-rated hosting service providers.

Performance

Performance is an important aspect to be considered before selecting your web host. It depends on the servers used by your hosting provider, and an overcrowded or slow server will not provide the necessary speed and optimum performance no matter what tips or tricks you try. While speed is one essential factor in judging performance, uptime is another. While even big enterprises face downtime, we need to ensure that our web host can guarantee at least 99% uptime. Lesser downtime leads to lesser loss of visitors, which is why we need nothing less than 99% uptime.

SiteGround – Uptime

SiteGround provides a 99.99% guarantee on uptime, which is maintained by their live monitoring. This helps detect any flaws or issues and report it to the concerned for repairs and rectifications.

WP Engine – Uptime

With their No Overselling Policy, WP Engine ensures that all users receive 99.9% uptime. This assurance is necessary to keep up with other premium web hosts, and they do maintain their standards by staying true to their word. WP Engine also has a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that guarantees 99.95% uptime, further strengthening its promise.

Speed

In terms of speed, SiteGround does better than WP Engine. The home page and pricing page of SiteGround load faster than that of WP Engine, and the loading speed is significant for your site. It helps prevent the loss of visitors due to the waiting time. Faster loading speed ensures smoother performance and a better experience for your visitors.

Pros and Cons

Pros and cons are essential before choosing a web host. They aid your decision by giving you an idea of what they offer and do not offer, which will help you narrow down your choices.

SiteGround GoGeek Plan

Pros:

  • Cheaper and more affordable plans compared to WP Engine, along with more resources.
  • Unlimited data transfer, unmetered bandwidth
  • You can have 100,000 visitors to your website and 30GB storage space.
  • 30-day money-back guarantee
  • Premium customer support that assures an immediate response within 5 minutes of raising the query.
  • Unlimited free email accounts for all your domains.
  • Free website migration

SiteGround also offers automatic daily backups, Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates, and Cloudflare CDN. Their hosting plans are optimized for best performance with content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, and PrestaShop. They also guarantee an uptime of 99.99%.

With SiteGround, you also get extra features like free backup and restoration tools.

Cons:

  • SiteGround is not a Premium Managed WordPress hosting provider like WP Engine.
  • WP Engine offers a 60-day money-back guarantee, whereas SiteGround offers only a 30-day money-back guarantee.
  • Windows hosting is not supported, as its high-speed service is optimized for Linux container technology.

SiteGround has limited features pertaining to its cheaper rates, such as disk space limitation. Site migration is also a slow and time-consuming process.

WP Engine Personal Plan

Pros:

  • WP Engine has professional experts who can help recover your website and restore the content if it gets hacked. This post-hack cleanup service is offered for free.
  • WP Engine is a Premium Managed WordPress hosting service.
  • They have a 60-day money-back guarantee.
  • Their customer service was awarded 3 Stevie Awards.

WP Engine offers premium managed WordPress hosting that comes with sliding scale tools to help you find a hosting plan that best fits your needs. They also have an excellent security system with DDoS, real-time threat detection, and brute force migration. WP Engine also monitors your site frequently and provides automatic installation of the latest updates and patches.

WP Engine also offers extra features like its EverCache caching system that increases loading speed. They also provide a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate and a tool for testing the page speed. They also provide CDN for professional and business plans.

Cons:

  • It is more expensive than SiteGround, and may not be affordable for beginners.
  • They do not offer migration; they can be availed by installing a plug-in that provides free migration.
  • One of the most significant drawbacks of WP Engine is that they only offer Live Chat support for Personal Plan users.

One drawback of WP Engine is that they only offer managed WordPress hosting. Another disadvantage is their expensive rates and limited resources.

Conclusion

Reading more reviews may lead to confusion, which is why it is better to look for a comparative review between SiteGround and WP Engine that can help you weigh your options better.

While both do not offer unlimited storage and data transfer, SiteGround lets you have multiple domains and endless emails. SiteGround also has more data centers than WP Engine, which aids their performance.

For a professional blogger or someone looking for excellent performance and a premium WordPress hosting service, then WP Engine is the best choice for you.

If you are looking for a dependable WordPress hosting service, then SiteGround is the right fit for you.