Due to recent events in the WordPress community, this comparison of WordPress.com vs WP Engine focuses on how the hosting plans now available from WordPress.com match up against the longtime behemoth of managed WordPress hosting providers, WP Engine. Which option gives you the better features, performance, and support? Is WordPress.com from Automattic now a better choice than WP Engine? Let’s take a look.
Advantages of Choosing WordPress.com over WP Engine:
Advantages of Choosing WP Engine over WordPress.com
WordPress.com provides a wider array of website plans, from personal sites up to business and eCommerce sites. Although WP Engine also has higher-level premium plans (priced from $400 mo. and up), their basic level or Essential WordPress hosting plans as they’re named, all include premium managed WordPress features. With WordPress.com, you’ll have to get the Business and Commerce plans if you want similar features. On the other hand, with WordPress.com, you do get automatic plugin updates, unrestricted bandwidth, and no limitations of website visitors.
This category is extremely close. For business site owners, we’ll give a slight edge to WordPress.com, but only on the Business and Commerce plans. For WordPress developers and agencies, WP Engine is the better choice.
Both WordPress.com and WP Engine deliver excellent website speed and performance. Page loading times and core web vitals are excellent with both hosts. While WP Engine posted faster results in some cases, we did notice some inconsistencies in their website speeds. On the other hand, WordPress.com provided more consistent results—although their fastest speed results were slightly below WP Engine.
Overall, in the Speed and Performance category, WordPress.com and WP Engine are both impressive. In our experience, WP Engine gets a slight edge here. See our sample test results below:
WP Engine has been known for their expert WordPress support for many years. Their live chat support is still very responsive, though initial connection times aren’t quite as fast as they used to be. WordPress.com does offer automated chat support. And, while they have improved their response times, there is still a bit of a delay for receiving a customized support answer. The Business and Commerce plans at WordPress.com do offer priority support. However, overall in the support category, WP Engine again gets a slight edge based on faster responsive live chat support with all of their hosting plans.
Started Business: 2005
BBB Rating: A+
Data Center Location:Data Centers: Global
Price: $4 mo. – $45 mo. (Enterprise Plans also available)
Unlimited Bandwidth: Yes
Unlimited Storage: No
Email: Yes
Free Domain: Yes
Host Multiple Domains: No
Hosting Interface: WordPress Dashboard
Server Uptime: 99.999%
Full Refund Period: 14 Days
Dedicated Hosting Available: No
Advantages of Choosing WordPress.com:
Choose WordPress.com if:
Started Business: 2013
BBB Rating: B+
Data Center Location:Data Centers: U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia
Price: $20 mo. – $58 mo. (Premium Customized Plans also available)
Unlimited Bandwidth: Yes
Unlimited Storage: No
Email: No
Free Domain: No
Host Multiple Domains: Yes (except StartUp Plan)
Hosting Interface: WP Engine Client Portal
Server Uptime: 99.95%
Full Refund Period: 60 Days
Dedicated Hosting Available: Yes
Advantages of Choosing WP Engine:
Choose WP Engine if:
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WordPress.com surprised us with the rapid improvement of their website and hosting plans. Using WordPress.com is now a viable choice for many website owners. And, this comparison between WordPress.com and WP Engine was definitely closer than we had anticipated earlier in this year.
For newer WordPress users, as well as business site owners that want great features and performance, in an easy to use environment, WordPress.com would be a better fit.
Experienced WordPress users that want premium WordPress hosting—especially for multiple websites would be better off going with WP Engine. We would recommend WP Engine for WordPress developers and WordPress agencies in particular. See our review ratings below.
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