SiteGround vs WP Engine 2019: Which is better for WordPress hosting?

If you are in search of a blazing-fast quality web host for your WordPress site or blog, then only 2 names you are bound to come across soon enough are SiteGround and WP Engine. SiteGround offers general-purpose web hosting service with a wide variety of hosting options (including WordPress hosting, VPS/Cloud hosting, dedicated hosting and so on) with the managed WordPress hosting package as their key service to their versatile hosting product range. On the other hand, WP Engine has focused only on the premium managed WordPress hosting space and has lately become one of the key players in this market garnered enough reputation.

Both these companies have an excellent track record and offer Managed WordPress-focused web hosting services for a long time now. But the real deal is which one is the best for WordPress hosting provider? Do you want to know how really does SiteGround hosting differs from the managed WordPress host WP Engine?

In our review on SiteGround vs WP Engine (2019) hosting comparison, we will be exploring the WordPress rich features on offer, which host delivers better uptime, which provides offers the fastest load times, and what all you get and need for your money.

WP Engine vs SiteGround
#1. Speed Test

WP Engine has multiple global data centers that give their customers the ability to choose which server location they want. This international server network of WP Engine enhances the stability and redundancy of your website or blog.

SiteGround hosting helps your websites load fairly fast and this is partly due to the SG Supercacher which makes use of certain custom computations when it comes to the cache items (consisting of template elements, images and so on) that are repeatedly used. It should be noted that SiteGround too has multiple data centers (6 major data centers worldwide) which contributes greatly when it comes to your website speed.

As per the tests, WP Engine’s TTFB was 456, while SiteGround features a TTFB of 302 ms which is impressive especially for the reasonable price.

While the speed of WP Engine isn’t bad, SiteGround’s is far better proving that their server quality is excellent.

WP Engine vs SiteGround
#2. Hosting Server Quality Test

As per the load impact test, SiteGround witnessed a few spikes initially and later stabilized, ultimately giving us an average of 508ms.

NOTE: Blue = Visitors; Green = Response Time

WP Engine offered an excellent load time which remained steady from the beginning (from 1 to 100 visitors) and registered an average of 285ms.

WP Engine clearly offers a slightly better load time than SiteGround which is mainly due to the inbuilt MaxCDN and their customized hosting plans for WordPress.

NOTE: With WP Engine you get this kind of speed at $35/month, while SiteGround plan only costs you $3.95/month. You can get WP Engine like speed by going for Free 1-click Cloudflare CDN offered by SiteGround. And if you purchase the MaxCDN separately, you can achieve similar to better load time than WP Engine even with SiteGround’s cheaper hosting packages.

WP Engine vs SiteGround
#3. Ease of Use & Control Panel

With WP Engine’s user interface, the in-built security solutions give you peace of mind as don’t need to handle WordPress related technical aspects including your website speed optimization. Furthermore, you don’t even need to unnecessarily worry about malicious threats and WordPress hosting server vulnerabilities.

All SiteGround hosting plans include a one-click installer that helps in quickly launching a site with your any of favorite scripts/applications. Also, SiteGround’s enhanced cPanel makes it easy for you to manage both your hosting account and website(s).

View SiteGround cPanel Demo

SiteGround is more traditional WordPress host which lets you to install any application on your website such as security solutions, speed plugins etc. Furthermore, there is a little learning curve involved when it comes to WP Engine mainly because of the different user interface it uses.

SiteGround vs WP Engine
#4. Customer Support

SiteGround has a quality 24/7 support staff that you can easily reach out to (via live chat, telephone, and ticket system/email) and their knowledge base consists of 100’s of useful web hosting tutorials and videos.

WP Engine has quickly established a reputation for amazing customer service as they offer 24/7 support via live chat. However, they offer telephone support only with their Growth or higher WordPress hosting plans. They are able to do this based on a singular focus on the WordPress content management system. WP Engine has become a WordPress hosting expert by focusing only on WordPress CMS and not including any other CMSes (such as Drupal, Joomla, etc). This specialization helps them in WordPress error troubleshooting along with answering support queries quickly and accurately. WP Engine customers can also contact their support team via their online knowledge base and their email/ticket support is available only with their custom dedicated server hosting plans.

The customer support team of both WP Engine and SiteGround are super-friendly as they respond efficiently and quickly to any of your queries. Because of WP Engine’s singular focus on WordPress hosting, it ties with SiteGround (which is equally good and swift) for the best customer support title.

SiteGround vs WP Engine
#5. WordPress Hosting & Compatibility

WP Engine WordPress hosting plans start at $35 monthly whereas SiteGround’s WordPress hosting packages start at only $3.95/month. SiteGround’s entry WordPress hosting plan is cheap and reasonable but lacks server resources that are included with its high-end plans such as GrowBig and GoGeek plan. SiteGround’s GoGeek plan which costs $11.95 monthly is much better than WP Engine’s StartUp package which is their entry WordPress plan.

Moreover, SiteGround is officially recommended by WordPress.org and WP Engine is not a WordPress.org recommended WordPress host.

WP Engine vs SiteGround
#6. Domain Name Registration & Email Hosting

WP Engine does not register domain names for you or provides email hosting service as they only specialize in WordPress hosting. Whereas, SiteGround registers domain names for you at a reasonable price and also offers domain privacy protection as an add-on service. They also provide email hosting service which is included free of charge with all their web hosting plans

SiteGround vs WP Engine
#7. Uptime

WP Engine has WordPress engineers working to perfect their uptime record which is result why their uptime is close to 100% and over 99.9% in most of the cases. A reason for such a good uptime that WP Engine enjoys is due to their No Overselling Policy that ensures enough server space to each of their clients.

Compared to WP Engine, SiteGround hosting offers 99.9% uptime guarantee (applicable to all of their web hosting packages) even the inexpensive ones. This is because they have developed a real-time detection technology that alerts them during any downtime and their team immediately makes sure the issue is fixed. Moreover, SiteGround has customized software which repairs any errors automatically that are possibly causing downtimes.

During the uptime testing of WP Engine and SiteGround, we monitored and found out the following results:

WP Engine Uptime = 100%

SiteGround Uptime = 100%

SiteGround vs WP Engine
#8. Pricing & Web Hosting Plans

SiteGround follows a very competitive pricing model especially considering the level of speed, performance, and service they offer you. Their cheapest web hosting/WordPress hosting packages are priced at only $3.95/month.

View All SiteGround Web Hosting Plans & Pricing

On the other hand, the price of WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting packages varies and depends on the traffic your site receives. This is why they even charge you overage fees whenever your monthly allocated limit exceeds which isn’t the case with SiteGround. Also, WP Engine’s price for their starter plan is $35/month which I believe would be too pricey for many.

View All WP Engine WordPress Hosting Plans & Pricing

If you are looking for an affordable managed WordPress hosting service which offers the same level of quality and performance what WP Engine offers, then SiteGround is indeed the best bet you’ve got!

SiteGround vs WP Engine
#9. Security

SiteGround’s recent proprietary anti-bot release helps in protecting the hosting account of their customers against the malicious hacks and brute-force attacks. This new AI-based system has been able to block over 2 million attacks across SiteGround’s shared servers which indeed is a stellar success.

It works by monitoring the hosting servers all at the same time, gathering all the analyzed data and automatically taking action to prevent such bad bots from doing any possible harm.

In terms of security, WP Engine relies heavily on rules that are constantly evolving with its hosting platform monitoring traffic in an attempt to identify and prevent any new types of attacks. This also involves the checking of a certain type of request patterns which could be causing a malicious activity from specific locations and thus those attacks are automatically blocked. WP Engine claims to have blocked over 200 million bad requests each day.

SiteGround’s AI clearly has an edge over WP Engine’s rules as a machine having the capacity to self-learn (learn new patterns faster than humans) is very powerful, impressive, advanced, and efficient.

Conclusion: SiteGround or WP Engine?

SiteGround is the best overall choice over WP Engine and it’s best suited for almost any user. Whether you’re just getting started with a new website and require an affordable quality hosting solution or you already have a site garnering a lot of traffic. SiteGround serves all these purposes by providing you with all the essential hosting features to ensure your WordPress website is up and running. Furthermore, their versatile plan offerings and a vast array of web hosting features are best suited for all sort of budget and needs.

On the other hand, WP Engine specifically targets a different user base with their WordPress hosting platform suited best for premium users (mainly consisting of developers, SMBs, and marketers) who want to smoothly carry out their marketing processes without taking any responsibilities of their site hosting maintenance. WP engine has an entire dedicated team of WordPress experts which made it possible to develop such a customized high-speed WordPress hosting environment. But then WP Engine is indeed expensive and far too pricier than SiteGround which makes their pricing model uncompetitive and way out of budget for many users.

In the end, it all comes down to price as SiteGround is a much better option than WP Engine. This is mainly because, at an attractive price of just less than $4 a month, you receive the same level of support and performance which otherwise costs $35 a month when it comes to WP Engine.

NOTE: I highly recommend SiteGround’s GoGeek plan costing $11.95/month as it is far better than WP Engine’s Starter plan costing $35/month. Moreover, you can SiteGround Priority support and much more WordPress rich features than WP Engine.

If you are a beginner, I highly recommend SiteGround over WP Engine as it’s very easy and user-friendly to get started and get going. I hope this review on SiteGround vs WP Engine Comparison (2019) was helpful to you and thus solved your confusion in choosing the right WordPress host for your site or blog.