I’ve been using WPEngine website hosting for 1 year now, and while there have been several positives:
- Good site speed
- Good support
But there have also been several negatives:
- Poorly written and incomplete support articles
- Confusing backend
- Difficult to migrate/transfer websites to and from other hosting providers
- And for $772/year (~$64.35/month), it just wasn’t worth it.
Many of the features offered by WPEngine are similar to what less expensive hosting providers offer, and the features unique to WPEngine just didn’t make a big difference to me right now.
I’m switching to SiteGround.
I’m paying $125/year (~$10.50/month) on a two-year contract ($250.80 total) for the GoGeek plan.
A few reasons:
- Good reviews
- Recommended by WordPress.org
- Good support
- Good price
- SSD drives, free backups, free ssl certificates, website staging
- Unlimited websites
- A good reputation and comments around the web (I researched quite a bit)
- They do have a limit on traffic – 100,000/month in my case – but I should be well below that unless I see a huge spike in traffic, which will be a good problem to have. So I’m not really worried there.
- Additionally, SiteGround has a good affiliate program, which I signed up for. (You can sign up for SiteGround hosting through my affiliate link here: SiteGround website hosting.)
When my two-year contract with SiteGround expires, the renewal price will be $29.95/month. That is quite high, but I figure in two years I can evaluate and if it’s worth it for me to stay, and I’ve had a good experience with SiteGround, I’ll stay. If not, I’ll switch hosting providers. So I’ve got two years until I need to decide that.
Any questions? Let me know!
