It doesn’t take much to overheat WP Engine

Fire on all cylinders without the extra fees. Learn why Nexcess is the best WP Engine alternative.

A website page is being built, the page shows high-heeled shoes, sneakers, and sunglasses for sale

Why hit the brakes with WP Engine?

Scripted support
Traffic fees
Plugins aren’t prioritized
No PHP workers
Security costs extra

Compare Nexcess and WP Engine

You’ll pay $56/mo at WP Engine for features Nexcess includes free
Key features
Nexcess
Starting at
$21/mo
White-glove migrations
PHP workers included
99.99% uptime SLA
Free email
Unlimited visitors
No traffic overage fees
Automatic SOC 2 security
Fast load times
Generous storage
Terabytes of bandwidth
Phone support
Multisite enabled
Ticket support
Chat support
Free visual regression testing
Free for all plans
Free automatic plugin updates
Free site and uptime monitoring
Free DNS
WP Engine
Starting at
$30/mo
White-glove migrations
PHP workers included
99.99% uptime SLA
$600/mo plan
Free email
Unlimited visitors
No traffic overage fees
Automatic SOC 2 security
Fast load times
Generous storage
Terabytes of bandwidth
Phone support
Multisite enabled
$20 per site
Ticket support
Chat support
Free visual regression testing
Only free for ecommerce
Free automatic plugin updates
$3 - $36/mo
Free site and uptime monitoring
$5/mo
Free DNS

Support that isn’t scripted

WP Engine support is available by chat, but you may reach someone who is following a script. That’s called “tier 1” support, and it’s not helpful.
A script can’t solve complex database issues or chroot a nameserver. Only an expert can do that. To do that at WP Engine, you upgrade your plan or wait in line.
Nexcess knows WordPress inside and out. Fast, friendly solutions from experts are a call, email, or chat away. You reach a real human 24/7/365.
Shop managed WordPress hosting
A hosting support representative smiles as he assists a customer at his desk, he types on his computer
A graph shows monthly costs increasing by 450% with WP Engine

Success shouldn’t cost extra

You throw a party. Tons of people show up. When the bill comes, you’re charged for every visitor that wasn’t on the guest list … despite having plenty of room.
That’s bogus, right? But that’s how WP Engine’s traffic overages work. Their definition of traffic includes single IPs on separate days, cookieless visits, and dynamic requests. Fees stack up fast.
Unlike WP Engine, Nexcess doesn’t cap monthly visitors. You get unlimited traffic and free autoscaling for unexpected traffic surges.

Plugin management gets expensive

Like any critical business asset, plugins need to be updated, maintained, and secured. But, WP Engine doesn’t do this — unless you spend more.
Automatic plugin updates with visual regression testing cost $3 - $16/mo. Even if you pay $600/mo, WP Engine considers it “optional.”
At Nexcess, we know plugin performance is essential. Automatic plugin updates, daily performance insights, and visual compare are built-in.
Elements of online store using plugins, pages show a handbag with a flamingo on it, a makeup pallet, and a suede shoe

Check your engine

Don’t take our word for it. Read how Nexcess can be 25 - 35% faster than WP Engine.

Not a PHP worker in sight

Instead of PHP workers, WP Engine caches more static pages to handle dynamic requests. It’s called EverCache® and it’s far from ideal for WooCommerce.
Transactional pages are uncacheable — milliseconds matter. When traffic spikes, static caching can’t guarantee cart and checkout speed. PHP workers can.
Nexcess empowers your revenue potential. With ample base and autoscaled PHP workers, your store stay fast when demand is high.
A control panel shows performance metrics for online store pages with millisecond load times and a 94 performance score
A list of IP addresses shows banned users, login attempts, admin logins, and security scan progress

Security isn’t a “premium feature”

Effective WordPress security shouldn’t be an add-on. Even so, WP Engine withholds enterprise-class security from paying customers.
WP Engine’s SOC 2 hosting and managed firewall costs up to $100/mo. If you need more than a basic SSL, you have to upgrade your plan and pay for it elsewhere.
At Nexcess, enterprise-grade security is built-in with proactive monitoring, a robust firewall, malware mitigation, and free wildcard SSLs for every site.

How WP Engine drives customers away

Never had good luck with these people

Never had good luck with these people. Today, they accidentally sent an entire chat transcript to the wrong person. The people they have on the front lines of the chat system are beginners and make bad recommendations. I don't even reach out to them anymore. I almost always find the issue first. When I was working for a large client, they tried to bully me around, going over my head as the lead developer/contractor to reach upper management. There are much better options tbh.

- Greg Bowen on Trustpilot

Unfortunately we've experienced a very...

Unfortunately we've experienced a very slow server even though we are paying around 700 USD per month. I wouldn't recommend WP Engine to anyone that are looking for a quick server. Furthermore it's almost impossible to get to know your server details. Even the most basic information like RAM they wont tell you. Probably because they are putting your site on a shared hosting

- Emil Andersen on Trustpilot

Getting worse by the day

We've been using WPE for years and as time goes more and more things are starting to break. The server error logs are not up to date (or show anything), copying environments from production to stage/dev keeps failing in one way or another, new PHP versions takes forever to be added and so on. There are good things though like the emails they send on vulnerable/out of date plugins, support is often nice, in built geolocation but as a developer these things don't make up the day to day struggles.

- Thomas Karlsson on Trustpilot

WP Engine alternative FAQ

WP Engine is a hosting platform that provides application support and features for individuals, agencies, and developers building websites on WordPress.

See why Nexcess is the #1 WP Engine alternative

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