SiteGround
is one of the
best web hosting
providers and
WP Engine
is one of the
best WordPress hosting
Providers—so which one should you choose?
top web hosting for small businesses
or
best ecommerce hosting
?
To determine the best option, I transferred an online store to both platforms and conductedWordPress benchmark tests as well as various performance evaluations to compare them.
SiteGround compared with WP Engine: Features and Cost Analysis
SiteGround
Starting at $2.99 a month for the first year( $17.99 a month after), SiteGround’s StartUp plan gives you a single website, 10GB of storage, unmetered traffic, and around 10,000 monthly visits. The plan is designed to accommodate spikes, rather than be a monthly limit. If your site regularly breaches the limit, you’ll be put on a more expensive plan, or your site will face performance restrictions.
This plan also includes free SSL, and a free domain and emails. Daily backups are provided, and the SiteGround Website Builder is also included This uses a combination of templates, themes, and AI content generation to help you get started.
SiteGround also includes speed and security optimization plugins, supports WooCommerce, and also has a WordPress “auto-migrator.” This is intended to simplify moving a WordPress site from another host.
WP Engine
Unsurprisingly given its name, WP Engine is a popular option for websites hosted on WordPress. We looked at the Essential package, which has four plans (Startup, Professional, Growth, and Scale). The Startup option, for $25 a month was selected – this is paid monthly, or annually ($300) without any discount.
I found out afterward that WP Engine provides a more affordable option called Lite, priced at roughly $12; however, this isn’t mentioned on the signup page.
The WP Engine Start-up plan provides you with one website, up to 25,000 “visits” per month, which equates to a significant amount of traffic—alongside 10GB of storage space and 75GB of bandwidth. While these figures may appear generous, they generally suffice for smaller websites, essentially offering unlimited resources unless exceptionally large volumes of data are regularly distributed. As before, both the visit and bandwidth thresholds are established to maintain peak efficiency throughout WP Engine’s server network.
Various website construction tools such as themes and blocks are included, together with a staging area. Additionally, you receive SSL encryption, DDoS protection, automatic updates for WordPress, PHP, and MySQL, content delivery network (CDN) services, and caching mechanisms. Backups of your site occur both daily and upon request, and WP Engine offers round-the-clock customer service. While subdomains are allowed, information regarding their setup process and limitations is limited.
You can migrate from another web host by utilizing the WP Engine migration plugin.
Migration Tools
Migrated to each site is a WordPress site with a pre-configured WooCommerce store. The aim of this is to see how efficiently and reliably the hosts can handle requests. This isn’t just from a customer service angle, but also as a demonstration of how the hosting environment can handle data configured elsewhere.
Each host provides specialized migration plugins aimed at simplifying this procedure. To ensure fairness in the comparison, I transferred the information from an identical origin for both.
SiteGround
Employing the exclusive SG Migrate plugin didn’t turn out to be as straightforward as anticipated. The plan was to set up the plugin on both the originating and target web servers, replicate a code snippet from the origin site to the destination site, then let the information migrate automatically. However, each try with the SG Migrate utility ended unsuccessfully. Following this, I experimented with All in One Migration and UpdraftPlus but encountered limitations regarding backup dimensions and storage sites, along with efforts to boost the upload caps within the wp-config document. Eventually, I discovered an alternative solution.
Backup Migration
, which successfully carried out a key-based data migration.
At first, it appeared that the issue with the migration (from Hostinger’s Premium Web Hosting plan) could be due to restrictions imposed by the source. However, considering how smoothly Backup Migration handled everything, it seems that SG Migrate may not be compatible with this specific hosting source.
If you’re pressed for time, SiteGround provides a paid migration service.
WP Engine
Shortly after signing up, you gain access to the WP Engine Site Migration plugin, which facilitates copying your database and website files all at once for migration onto WP Engine hosting. To use this tool, just install the same plugin on both the originating host and the target server.
Using a comparable key-based migration approach, the transition managed by WP Engine went seamlessly without a hitch, finishing within mere minutes. There were neither timeouts nor disconnections; it was an uncomplicated procedure throughout. This outcome is quite promising since, distinct from SiteGround, WP Engine does not provide a migration service. Rather, you handle everything yourself, and should it consistently be this hassle-free, that aspect won’t pose any concern.
Bear in mind that the origin website remained consistent throughout all instances—I’m inclined to believe that there might be a problem with SG Migrate.
Support
You don’t want to find yourself out of options when your website goes wrong. How do these web hosts measure up when it comes to answering and resolving support requests?
SiteGround
Although I faced challenges during the migration process with SiteGround, our interaction with their customer support involved an issue that was not pressing.
The manual migration using SiteGround proved extremely exasperating. Regardless of whether the issue stemmed from the plugin, the hosting service, or the originating server, I found myself making little progress. Despite the relative straightforwardness of the job, my pride prevented me from seeking assistance from the support staff. Discovering a resolution brought relief; however, it shouldn’t have been such an arduous endeavor.
From our experience, SiteGround’s support team may require additional time to handle more complex support inquiries. Nonetheless, this typically isn’t a concern for mostWordPress projects.
WP Engine
From the information provided in the table, you might have noticed that WP Engine lacks certain features like Domain Privacy and email hosting. Other host providers typically include these services. The AI-driven chat support available through the WP Engine website portal—similar to a cPanel interface—made it straightforward to understand these missing offerings.
Further exploration leads to the extensive knowledgebase, and where more specific information is required, the 24/7 support agents can be summoned. They’re very knowledgeable, and I found their responses to be quick and accurate. Access to support is available if not logged in, but a user PIN needs to be entered before you can get help from WP Engine.
Performance Testing
Websites face numerous threats to their stability, including traffic surges and deliberate assaults. In shared hosting environments, multiple sites share the same server; therefore, hosts must guarantee that each website delivers web pages effectively. Continuous or recurrent traffic peaks can result in intentional site slowdowns. Are WP Engine and SiteGround capable of managing an increasing volume of traffic? To assess this, we utilized two testing instruments,
Siege
, and
WordPress Benchmark
, to find out.
WordPress Benchmark
is a plugin that runs in WordPress admin and benchmarks the CPU, memory, filesystem, and database, along with the object cache and the network speed of the site. It provides individual ratings for each of these, along with a final benchmark score.
Siege
is a command line tool that tests for response time, concurrent requests, and returned data, as well as how many hits and the amount of data (in bytes) it sends to the site.
Different types of tests are clustered together. Our primary focus lies on the CPU & memory tests, filesystem assessments, and database evaluations, as well as the overall final score.
As shown here, SiteGround outperforms WP Engine. Although SiteGround has only slightly better file system writing capabilities, the significant discrepancy lies in their performance during database benchmark tests, where WP Engine shows weaker results.
I used Siege for testing to observe how the server manages transactions and concurrency. For this purpose, I conducted two tests on each website during their peak hours. In one test, I mimicked 5 concurrent visitors, whereas in another, I replicated conditions of 9 simultaneous visitors.
According to these tests, WP Engine appears to be approximately 25% slower compared to SiteGround. If we use these findings as guidance, then sites and online stores utilizing WordPress along with SiteGround hosting should offer quicker page load times and more responsive interactions for their visitors (like adding products to carts or finishing transactions).
Nevertheless, even though these outcomes favor SiteGround, remember that several elements can affect the score, with one of the most significant being the available resources on the shared servers during the test period.
Verdict
I’ve invested considerable time with each of these WordPress hosting providers, and both meet those needs exceptionally well. However, do I favor one over the other?
Before testing, I was inclined toward WP Engine, however, upon reviewing the cost-effective options provided by each hosting service, SiteGround appears to be the superior choice.
WP Engine comes at a higher cost, and its specialized WordPress-hosting approach lacks some typical features offered by other web hosts, like email services. However, it excels in ease of migration, boasts a speedy control panel, and generally seems better aligned for WordPress-specific hosting needs.
But SiteGround did better with both WordPress Benchmark and Siege, and it is more affordable. Migration might be an issue, but hopefully you follow my lead and use a specific third party tool.
If you prefer something more aligned with WordPress and can afford it, WP Engine is a solid pick. Alternatively, if cost-efficiency and performance are your priorities, go for SiteGround’s promotional offer and swiftness.
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