Servebolt vs. WP Engine
Comparison
Is it time to migrate to a new hosting provider? Let’s simplify the decision based on data. Servebolt is the ideal alternative to WP Engine for WordPress hosting. Choose a hosting provider that outperforms WP Engine in speed and performance.
Servebolt is the Highest-rated Host on the WP Hosting Benchmarks Awards
For four consecutive years, Servebolt has been consistently awarded Top Tier in every price category at the independent WP Hosting Benchmarks Awards. We are verifiably the fastest in every location tested across every tier.
This recognition reaffirms Servebolt as one of the top-performing hosting companies in the industry, achieving Top Tier status across all plans, from Starter to Enterprise. Our Cloud hosting platform has demonstrated year after year that it is reliable, consistent, and among the fastest in the industry.
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It’s rare I say there was an obvious winner because I’m not sure it’s happened before. However, Servebolt was the fastest in every single location tested.
What sets Servebolt’s Bolts apart from a Мanaged WordPress host like WP Engine?
Why are we comparing ourselves to WP Engine? We understand that our customers have options when it comes to creating and managing their online businesses. We want to ensure that there is no confusion about the exceptional speed, service, and support we offer to businesses of all sizes.
True Performance and Scale, a Hardcore Approach to Performance
While others try to add more components to their hosting to make it go faster, we decided to build our hosting cloud fast from the ground up. We did so by stripping out everything we knew was deadweight. Our hosting is amazingly fast, without the use of complicated HTML caching strategies, cache in memory and so on. Instead, our platform makes sure both cached and uncached requests are immediate. And of course, this applies to the back-end as well.
The Servebolt Cloud is the perfect mix of managed performance. It’s built with everyone in mind, offering both easy-to-use and advanced developer tools. We continuously enhance our proprietary stack to yield real-world performance improvements for all our customers.
WP Engine’s improved website speed relies heavily on cache. This means that uncached pages (shopping carts, dashboards, etc.) won’t have this same benefit. At Servebolt, we offer raw performance at the origin server, giving you just the edge you need to scale your site at the points where it’s needed the most.
The Best Experience for Your Users Regardless of Where They Are
Choose from 6 data centers worldwide that back Servebolt’s platform. From origin to edge, we deliver high-performance experiences for our customers.
WPEngine is one of the best-known brands in the WordPress hosting space. But users only discover after paying for WPEngine that it charges extra for hosting your site in certain locations.
Better Infrastructure, Bigger Scale for Everyone
The ability to adapt and succeed in unpredictable traffic conditions is crucial for your business’s success. As your business expands, your website traffic is likely to increase significantly. Servebolt’s Managed Cloud Platform is designed for high availability, with failover components in all layers of the stack. Whether you’re on a starter Pro plan or an Enterprise plan, you can benefit from Servebolt Cloud Platform’s high-speed servers and enjoy the fastest hosting experience, regardless of your budget.
While WP Engine offers top-tier infrastructure from Amazon Web Services to allow for high-availability and clustered server solutions, which offer redundancy for scalability and disaster recovery, lower-tier plans are provided with less robust servers.
Security Isn’t a “Premium Feature”
At Servebolt, we know that the security of your data is of the utmost importance, which is why we’re dedicated to providing the most secure hosting service by taking a variety of active and passive measures to safeguard your site. Our managed platform offers a higher degree of security than any self-managed server solution, with all servers being secured by AppArmor and other security measures. We, and our upstream partners Blix Solutions and Cloudflare, proactively work to stop malicious traffic before it even comes close to your website.
As part of their security measures, WP Engine utilizes technologies that restrict writing to specific directories and limit the number of plugins used. If you need more than basic SSL, you’ll need to upgrade your plan and purchase it elsewhere.
Support That Isn’t Scripted
When you have an issue, getting it resolved quickly and correctly can be the difference between a successful or unsuccessful project. When evaluating a WordPress digital experience provider, it’s important to consider aspects like hours of available support, support limitations, and response and resolution time.
Servebolt knows WordPress inside and out. But we are not limited to that. Our engineers provide immediate help, working with you to diagnose issues and provide specific recommendations for your PHP & MySQL applications.
Fast, friendly solutions from experts are a chat away. From onboarding to going live and beyond, we’re here for you every step of the way. With an impressive CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) score of 98.8% over the past 12 months, it’s clear that we are committed to providing top-notch support. Our median response time of just 1 minute and 4 seconds ensures that our customers receive rapid assistance.
While WP Engine offers 24/7 support, they use a tiered support system. To get actual expert support, you regularly need to upgrade your plan or wait in line.
White-glove Migrations
Save time and money by taking advantage of Servebolt’s free and easy transfer service handled by an expert engineer. Our skilled migration team is well-equipped to handle complex migrations seamlessly, further enhancing our service offerings. You can count on us to provide the best support and service possible.
WP Engine handles migrations with a DIY plugin. This means you have to handle the migrations yourself, so you won’t get a personalized migration experience for your site.
No Overage Fees, Traffic Limits, or Metered PHP Workers
Our predictable pricing and leading price-to-performance ratio contribute to an ROI. All plans are customizable with add-ons for all your needs. More storage, requests, memory limit or production sites can be added in seconds. Allowing your to pay for what you need, and scale your operation easily.
We believe we shouldn’t limit you in any way in making your website successful at all times. Unlimited PHP workers allow for all of your site’s features always to get processed fast without any price hikes.
Unlike WP Engine, we do not meter bandwidth usage, which allows any number of visitors to interact with your website. All our plans always have enough RAM available for your site to process a large number of concurrent requests from campaigns without any interruptions.
No Plugin, Theme and Revisions Limitations
WordPress is designed as an open ecosystem that can be modified by anyone to suit their needs. WPEngine, on the other hand, takes a more closed approach, offering limited flexibility. Servebolt aligns more closely with the WordPress ideology, providing open customization with no plugin restrictions and the ability to add PHP extensions.
Plugins, like any other critical business asset, need regular updates, maintenance, and security measures. However, WP Engine doesn’t include this service in their standard plan and requires an additional fee.
WP Engine disables WordPress revisions and does not allow revisions to be enabled in the wp-config.php or php.ini. This limits the use of core WordPress features such as Post Revisions, which are valuable for publishers and bloggers.
WordPress? Absolutely. Any other PHP Application? You bet!
Host all your projects in the Servebolt platform. We focus on the key factors for a successful website and eCommerce infrastructure, and that results in the best-managed hosting for PHP & MySQL applications in the world. WordPress multisite is also supported. Migrate your Laravel App to Servebolt and experience loading speeds you have never seen before!
WP Engine works with Local, but their Local Connect feature, necessary for transferring sites between Local and WP Engine (or other remote hosts), currently does not support multi-site functionality. As a result, importing and deploying multi-sites to and from Local will involve a more manual and time-consuming process.
Independent in a Corporate Hosting Industry
We are one of the few privately-owned, independent global web hosting companies today. Being independent means we can select the best partners for our hosting services, from the best hardware through to the best software without being influenced by external forces.
Over the last few decades, many other hosts have emerged, grown, and eventually been sold or merged with other players. WP Engine has also undergone a change in ownership, as it has been acquired by the private equity firm Silver Lake.
However, we have remained dedicated to maintaining our independence, believing it is best for our customers and our employees. As Servebolt is the only larger hosting company owned by Norwegians, you can trust in our commitment to sustainability.
Don’t take our word for it. Read how Servebolt can be 25 – 35% faster than WP Engine
Build your own plan
Servebolt ensures transparent and predictable pricing.
The sliders will automatically optimize for the most affordable plan that fits your needs.
Custom/mo
279/mo
30/mo
0/mo
From €699/mo
From €349/mo
From €99/mo
What to expect for your website when you move over
Unrivaled speed, uptime, and scalability make Servebolt the best place to create rich digital experiences. We’ve taken the uncertainty and inefficiencies out of migrating to Servebolt so you can confidently move to the most reliable and performant web platform today.
Award-winning Global Performance
You can expect to shave off seconds of your load time when you start using Bolts for hosting your site. Our performance is our pride, and we are proud that the work we put in every day to make Servebolt Cloud faster results in top-tier results in the largest independent hosting benchmark in the world.
Servebolt NextGen Linux
We develop, optimize, and maintain our own distribution of Linux. Servebolt Linux 8 is optimized for maximum speed at all levels and maximum utilization of our hardware. This ensures that your website or store is faster in the Servebolt Cloud.
Optimized MariaDB and PHP
Servebolt is about performance at all levels. Therefore we also have our own versions of PHP and MariaDB, which are optimized for maximum performance.
Most sites see a 2-6x improvement in performance when moving to Servebolt.
Free Premium Support
From onboarding to going live and beyond, we’re here for you every step of the way. While we won’t actually fix code, we do go the extra mile in helping you figure out what’s going on and point you in the right direction of where the fix should be applied.
Servebolt CDN and Edge Caching
Get a 98% improvement in website performance with our Enterprise-grade CDN for FREE. How’s that possible? That’s the magic of Servebolt’s CDN Edge Caching. It delivers your webpages to your visitors faster, reduces server requests, and dramatically improves your TTFB.
Join the ranks of satisfied customers who have made the switch from WP Engine
We’ve gone through several specialist WordPress solutions (WPEngine, Kinsta, PressLabs), but Servebolt is truly a unique support experience.
For the month of May 2019, my average load speed (site hosted on WP Engine) was 14.04 seconds! Enough was enough and on June 3rd I migrated my site over to Servebolt. After their tech team did some optimisations the load time is now under 2.5 seconds and my 504 errors are all but history. Oh, and Servebolt is 1/2 the price of Wpengine! I’m very happy.
Just migrated over from WPEngine and my site feels insanely fast now. Customer support during the migration has been absolutely phenomenal, both via in-app chat and email communications. They’re friendly and helpful, and I’m looking forward to continuing to work with them!
Can I try Servebolt’s Managed WordPress Hosting for free? How does this differ from WP Engine?
Absolutely! We allow for free trials so you can see for yourself how fast your website could be in our environment. We’ll even assist you in migrating your site to your trial Bolt! Just reach out to our Support Team.
With WP Engine, there is a 60-day money-back guarantee, but they may require a 30-day wait time before processing your request. That may mean by the time you get a response, 60 days have come and gone.
Can I run my headless WordPress on Servebolt?
At Servebolt, we’re big advocates for WordPress and its ecosystem. With how large the ecosystem and the developer community that surrounds WordPress is, it’s no surprise that people use WordPress in different ways. One such approach is using WordPress as a headless CMS – in short, referred to as headless WordPress, which is growing in popularity. You can easily run any static version of headless WordPress and manage deployments using WP-CLI and Git integration pre-installed in every Bolt. In this article, we’ll break down everything you need to know about headless WordPress, its advantages, disadvantages & more from our team’s first-hand experience.
How does Servebolt migrate a WP Engine site?
If you are moving from WP Engine, Servebolt offers you the option of self-managed migrations or managed migrations performed by our migrations team. All migrations are completely free and very straightforward. Our experts in website migration will transfer your site, data, and settings seamlessly with minimal downtime.
Do you offer CDN, and do I need one?
Yes. We are Cloudflare partners and recommend Cloudflare CDN. You need a content delivery network if your visitors have a large geographical distribution and their average distance to the origin server is high (more than 100ms on a fiber network).
Does Servebolt support Multisite? Multi-network?
Yes. Servebolt supports all configurations of WordPress, and you can connect an unlimited number of domains for your multisite configurations.
Which WordPress themes and plugins are supported by Servebolt hosting?
Servebolt supports all WordPress themes and plugins available in the WordPress repository. We know, however, that slow WordPress plugins are one of the biggest performance killers in the WordPress ecosystem. Be sure to check our stance on that.
Do you provide special agency solutions for WordPress hosting?
Absolutely! Join our Agency Partner Program and make performance your competitive advantage. Get priority support, revenue share, performance training, and much more.
What kind of WordPress support do you offer compared to WP Engine?
Compared to WP Engine, who use a tiered support system, we offer just one line of support. Our Support team is made up of DevOps engineers who specialize in WordPress. You and your team will only have to focus on making the best possible site or store while we handle all things server management.