WP Engine vs Cloudways Hosting Comparison [2024] 💥
WP-ENGINE vs CLOUDWAYS
WP-Engine vs Cloudways, two of the very best Wordpress hosters. These two hosting companies are in the top for the best Wordpress hosting for [2024]. We are investigating whether there are important differences between these 2 hosting giants.
WP-ENGINE HOSTING (WP-Engine vs Cloudways)
WP-ENGINE HOSTING REVIEW
One of the best and fastest Wordpress hosters you can find.
We're not discussing just any hosting; we're talking about hosting utilized by prominent large companies and discerning entrepreneurs. While it may come at a slightly higher cost, the investment quickly pays off with a website that delivers lightning-fast performance to your audience. In this WP-Engine hosting review, I'll demonstrate why WP-Engine surpasses typical hosting providers and belongs to the league of elite WordPress hosters.
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WP-ENGINE CLOUD HOSTING
WP-Engine utilizes standard Google Cloud servers of the N1 type. You have access to the following WP-Engine datacenters: Iowa, South Carolina, Oregon, Montreal, Belgium, London, Frankfurt, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Tokyo, and Sydney. For advanced packages, you can host your websites on type C2 servers, which offer significantly improved performance for WordPress. Additionally, advanced packages provide the option to utilize Amazon Web Servers (AWS) with datacenters available in Iowa, Virginia, Oregon, Montreal, Ireland, Singapore, Frankfurt, London, and Sydney.
Advanced Network
For both new customers and those looking to make a switch, WP-Engine now offers an enhanced network in partnership with Cloudflare. This network provides several advantages, including Layer 3 & 4 DDoS Protection, and it seamlessly integrates with the Cloudflare CDN network. It's worth noting that Cloudflare boasts a CDN with genuine proxy servers, so for domains to benefit, you must configure the Cloudflare name servers at your registrar.
Speedtest GCP-N1 & GCP-C2
While Kinsta has all their customers on C2 VMs, at WP-Engine ot's a possibility. It must be said that WP-Engine was the first to offer this option. The difference between the older N1 and the new C2 servers is that the latter runs at 3.8 GHz instead of the usual 2.2 or 2.8 GHz. This makes everything but especially PHP and SQL work at least 40% faster. Wordpress websites that largely use PHP and SQL benefit a lot from this.
WP-Engine Cache systems
Page-Cache
In an effort to dramatically accelerate page loading times, HTML content is stored and readily retrievable for display. This optimization significantly enhances the loading speed of your website's pages. WP-Engine offers you the flexibility to choose between Apache and Nginx. In practical terms, Nginx excels in handling heavy loads, suitable for scenarios with over 10,000 concurrent visitors. Apache, on the other hand, powers nearly 40% of all servers worldwide, while Nginx is used by approximately 10%. Of course, the distinction between the two is more nuanced—you can delve deeper into the differences between Nginx and Apache here.
CDN-Cache
CDN-Cache involves the storage of website content, including JS, CSS, media files, and possibly HTML, on servers located worldwide. This enables visitors to access your content from nearby servers, significantly improving their experience. WP-Engine leverages Stackpath and, for advanced packages, Cloudflare.
Object-Cache
Object-Cache can be activated as needed, but it isn't enabled by default like Page-Caching. Object-Cache stores database requests, eliminating the need to re-fetch them when someone visits a page on your website. Database requests often introduce substantial delays in page loading times. It's important to note that Object-Cache may not be recommended for test environments, as changes made to a website may not be immediately visible. You can learn more about WP-Engine's Object-Caching here.
WP-Engine Dashboard Review
The WP-Engine dashboard serves as your central hub for all website-related tasks and settings. Here, you can manage all your websites, install new ones, and set up test environments. It provides access to databases, SFTP access, and provides overviews of bandwidth usage and visitor statistics. Additionally, you can handle billing and payment details from this dashboard. As expected, the WP-Engine dashboard is intuitive, user-friendly, and easily navigated, making it accessible to beginners and seasoned users alike.
WP-Engine hosting Uptime
Both Google Cloud and Amazon Cloud (AWS) are renowned for their reliability, and WP-Engine is confident that its websites will remain online without interruption. In today's digital landscape, even brief website downtime can have significant consequences. Therefore, it's reassuring to know that the likelihood of such issues at WP-Engine is exceedingly low. The offline status of a large company's website can result in damage to its reputation, revenue loss, and, if the downtime persists, removal from Google search results—causing even more significant harm.
With the capability to seamlessly scale up to accommodate increased traffic, WP-Engine ensures that you'll never run out of bandwidth, regardless of the number of concurrent visitors to your website. Furthermore, WP-Engine takes proactive measures to prevent common issues that could disrupt your site's visibility, such as SSL certificate problems or security vulnerabilities.
WP-Engine hosting Security
WP-Engine maintains continuous 24/7 monitoring of your websites to ensure seamless operation. Security is prioritized with enforced login hardening measures for both your panels and websites. Protection against hackers is reinforced with Layer 3 & 4 DDoS Detection and individual firewalls. WP-Engine leverages only the latest technology for its servers and websites, while also providing essential Traffic Encryption through free SSL certificates.
WP-Engine incorporates additional security measures, including Disk Write Protection, which restricts processes with write access to the disk. This safeguard also maintains a detailed log of disk writes to detect any malicious code. WP-Engine exercises caution by not allowing arbitrary WordPress plugins on their servers. They employ a system scanner to identify and deactivate problematic plugins and offer Two-Factor Authentication for your Dashboard (My WP-Engine) to enhance overall security.
WP-Engine managed hosting review: Pricing
Undoubtedly, WP-Engine may not be the most budget-friendly hosting option, but you truly get what you pay for. Their pricing starts at $25 for a single website. If you aspire to have a website that outperforms your competitors in terms of speed and uptime, then WP-Engine or any other managed WP hosting provider is undeniably the solution. For most individuals, investing in this type of hosting quickly proves to be cost-effective. You can check out their pricing here.
WP-Engine hosting review: Conclusion
It has become clear that in the field of Wordpress hosting there is only a few other hosters that can compete with WP-Engine. This is the cream of the crop in terms of security, fast loading times, uptime and they also take all the work off your hands so that you can focus on the success of your business. If you or your company can spare the money, WP-Engine is an absolute must.
CLOUDWAYS HOSTING (WP-Engine vs Cloudways)
CLOUDWAYS HOSTING REVIEW
For a start, it is good to know that Cloudways offers many different datacenters. So you can choose where in the world you want to place your website. You can choose from the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France, USA, Canada and some other countries in which you will certainly be less interested, such as India, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea et cetera. Apart from that, enabling CDN at Cloudways is very simple as I will explain further below in the chapter for that.
CLOUDWAYS CLOUD HOSTING
What immediately stands out for me in this Cloudways hosting review as a big difference from other hosters is that you can choose between the Clouds of Google, Amazon, Digital Ocean, Linode and Vultr. The last 3 charge clearly less and that is also reflected in the price of Cloudways itself. I definitely prefer the Google C2 VMs as there is nothing faster than that. But at Cloudways you can choose what you want.
Network
A good cheap solution is to run your websites over the Vultr network. The best thing they have at Cloudways is of course the Compute VMs in the Google Cloud. A lot more expensive but well worth it. For example, a company like Kinsta has all of its clients on that network and on those VMs.
Cloudways Cache systems
At Cloudways you will find all possible cache systems as can be expected with such a high-quality service they offer.
Page-Cache
Obviously the usual Page-Caching that stores HTML and images for reuse at any time. As soon as someone calls up a page of your website, not all data has to be collected together, but is already available to offer it immediately. Visitors can delete this type of cache themselves via their browser.
Varnish, Redis and Memcached
Varnish can cache both static and dynamic content, which greatly improves website and server performance. Redis is used for both object caching and database caching. Redis is open-source and saves time by storing database requests. Memcached is also available at Cloudways and has a similar function to Redis. Read more about Redis here and more about Memcached here. The Woocommerce website in particular benefits greatly from Memcached because it avoids redundant requests to the database, thereby relieving the database considerably.
CDN-Cache
By activating Cloudways-CDN your website will be stored on servers worldwide, with the result that your website visitors can call up your pages from local servers. The picture below shows how simple this is.
Opcode Caching
PHP requests that have already been processed can be saved as converted bytecode that can be called up immediately in subsequent requests. You can see how this works in the picture below.
Cloudways Dashboard review
The Cloudways dashboard is used for all possible functions. You manage your websites here, and can install new ones. As discussed earlier, there is a very wide choice of different networks and data center. You can also arrange all your personal settings here. I must honestly say that there are hosts like Kinsta and WP-Engine that are definitely for beginners. are a lot easier to understand. However, if you have many special requirements, Cloudways will help you.
Cloudways hosting Uptime
Since Cloudways is a high-quality hosting, you can enjoy flawless uptime here. There is nothing more reliable than the Google and Amazon networks, so if uptime is very important to you, choose to have your website placed within these networks. As can be seen in the images below, there was just 0.00% downtime in a month. Cloudways is not unique in this of course, other top managed Wordpress hosters offer the same perfect uptime.
Cloudways hosting Security
Cloudways Firewalls temporarily block IPs that tried to log in incorrectly too often. SSH and SFTP logins are also limited to prevent brute-force attacks. Their partner Malcare, used by many hosters, monitors traffic congestion due to DoS and brute-force attacks, called Bot-Protection. Remote database access is only possible for whitelisted IP addresses. Your oaacount is completely isolated from all others (Race Protection), all websites receive free SSL certificates to encrypt your traffic. Cloudways has even more security, too much to mention, read here more.
Cloudways managed hosting review: Pricing
The prices at Cloudways are clearly lower than at a few other top managed Wordpress hosters. This is mainly because they offer other networks besides Google and Amazon, because the prices are the same as with other providers. As a result, with Cloudways you have the option of using top hosting with somewhat lower prices.
Cloudways hosting review: Conclusion
Cloudways is one of the top managed hosters out there and as mentioned above it offers the possibility to have this type of hosting a bit cheaper by offering several cheaper networks in addition to the usual Google Cloud and AWS. Cloudways offers a lot of options that are not found at other hosters, which makes Cloudways attractive for advanced users and less so for beginners.
WP-Engine vs Cloudways hosting comparison: Conclusion
Thank you for reading this WP-Engine vs Cloudways comparison to the end. It is clear that WP-Engine is a bit more expensive than Cloudways, but that is due to the complete service they offer as far as Wordpress is concerned. They really take all the work off your hands, which is a lot less the case with Cloudways. Both hosters use these best possible clouds that can be found, and when it comes to speed, you are equally good at both companies. If you are a beginner or just want all the work done for you, choose WP-Engine. Professionals who have special requirements for server programs and the like can benefit better from Cloudways, also because of the price.
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