Siteground vs WP Engine: Who is The Better WordPress Host for 2022?

Welcome to my best WordPress hosting shootout where Siteground vs WP Engine will battle it out to see who reigns supreme.

In this all-new guide, you’ll learn:

• The not so obvious differences between these hosting companies
• All the ‘hidden’ features you get when signing up for each company
• My personal review having hosted hundreds of different WordPress websites across both Siteground and WP Engine

With that said, if you want to find out which one of these two WordPress hosting services will best suit your needs, you’ll love today’s guide.

Let’s get started.

Table of contents

1. WP Engine
   1. Features
   2. Pricing
2. Siteground
   1. Features
   2. Pricing
3. Siteground vs WP Engine
4. Conclusion

WP Engine

WP Engine is all about exceeding your expectations of what a WordPress hosting company could be. Boasting some of the most powerful hardware on earth, you can work with confidence knowing that WP Engine has your website covered.

Each WP Engine plan comes with access to the StudioPress collection of themes and plugins. StudioPress creates some of the most well-coded, SEO-friendly and fast-loading WordPress themes. It’s my personal choice of WordPress theme when it comes to powering this very blog.

Features

Infrastructure

• Dedicated (not shared) servers & server clusters
• Performance monitoring of code, themes, & plugins
• WordPress-optimized caching
• Site content in the cloud (CDN)
• WordPress multisite available at an additional cost
• 20 different server locations on four continents (North America, Europe, Asia, Australia)

Security

• Platform-level protection to detect threats & block attacks
• Automatic WordPress & PHP updates
• Free SSL certificates
• WordPress-optimized WAF
• Activity logs & user permissions
• Multi-factor password authentication

Management

• Free automated migrations
• One-click staging sites
• SSH access with WP-CLI, MySQL, and bash
• GIT & SFTP connections
• Page performance monitoring
• Transferrable sites to hand off to clients

Developer Tools

• Unlimited development sites
• Easy push & pull to & from staging or live sites
• Automatic WordPress installation
• 10 premium StudioPress themes
• Free access to the StudioPress Genesis Framework
• Genesis Gutenberg-ready block-building tools

Customer Support

• 24x7x365 chat & ticket support
• Automated site backups
• WordPress experts ready to help
• 60-day money-back guarantee

Pricing

WP Engine offers four different hosting plans with four plans per tier. Each plan has a custom option.

Their base Managed Hosting Startup Tier starts at $25/month for an annual plan. This includes:

• One WordPress website installation
• 25,000 website visits per month
• 10GB in web server storage
• 50GB in bandwidth per month

All plans come with the following base features:

• 24/7 live chat support (phone support available on higher-tier plans)
• 10 premium themes
• Free automated migrations
• Daily backups
• Free SSL and SSH
• One-click staging site
• Faster site speed with website caching
• Threat detection & blocking
• Site content in the cloud (CDN)
• Handoff to clients with transferable sites
• Activity log & user permissions
• Page performance monitoring
• Local developer tools
• SSH access with WP-CLI, MySQL, and bash
• GIT & SFTP connections
• Multi-factor password authentication
• Up-to-date PHP

Other plans scale up in price depending on server resources, features and services. Costs will differ depending on what server location and currency you decide to pay with. In addition, WP Engine supports the following local currencies for payment:

• Pound Sterling (GBP/£)
• Canadian Dollar (CAD/$)
• Euro (EUR/€)
• Australian Dollar (AUD/$)
• US Dollar (USD/$)

Siteground

Developed with experts in the industry, Siteground has built hosting that is powerful yet simple to use. Siteground has long been the best entry-level WordPress host with plans starting from as low as $4/month with an annual purchase. The company’s WordPress hosting comes with the endorsement of WordPress.org, Woo & Yoast.

Features

Infrastructure

• Shared web server environments with the option for dedicated servers on high-tier plans
• WordPress comes pre-installed on your web server
• Files and databases stored on SSD
• WordPress performance-optimized shared servers
• Free automated WordPress transfer
• Free business email accounts
• Unlimited WordPress databases
• 100% renewable energy match
• Pre-installed SG Optimizer caching plugin to increase your website speed
• Pre-installed server ‘Supercacher’ to help increase performance
• Free CDN with each account
• HTTP/2 enabled servers for faster load times
• Six server locations are available across four continents (North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia)

Security

• Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates
• Automated daily backups
• WordPress auto-update keeps your plugins automatically up to date
• WordPress advanced security patches have known WordPress issues
• Anti-hack systems and security firewalls help keep hackers out
• Shared hosting installations are isolated from each other to minimize security issues

Management

• Server monitoring checks every 0.5 seconds
• Unlimited subdomains and parked domains
• Server file, database, DNS, backup and caching management tools
• Simple handover process to client’s own Siteground account
• Individual collaborator access to your WordPress servers

Development Tools

• WP-CLI Pre-installed
• Managed PHP version (7.4)
• Custom PHP Versions 8.1, 8.0, 7.4 & 7.3
• Free SSH and SFTP Access
• MySQL & PostgreSQL databases
• Unlimited FTP accounts

Customer Service

• 30 days money back
• 24/7 customer support via phone, chat and ticketing

Pricing

Siteground offers three tiers across their two different WordPress and WooCommerce hosting plans. Also, they offer four different tiers for the managed cloud hosting plan, which can support WordPress/WooCommerce.

Their base WordPress plan StartUp tier starts at $3.99/month when paid for 12 months in advance. This includes:

• 1 WordPress website installation on a shared (not dedicated) server
• 10GB of server storgage
• Up to 10,000 website visits per month
• Unlimited server bandwidth

All WordPress plans come with:

• Free WordPress installation
• Free WordPress migration
• WordPress autoupdates
• Free SSL
• Daily backups
• Free CDN
• Free email
• WP-CLI and SSH
• Out-of-the-box caching
• Unlimited databases
• 100% renewable energy match
• 30-days money-back
• Add collaborators feature

Siteground vs WP Engine

Which One Offers the Best WordPress Hosting Service?

I’ve been dealing with WP Engine and Siteground WordPress servers for years.

To summarise who is the best:

• Siteground: most affordable, decent performance, reliability and customer support
• WP Engine: best customer support, great performance, reliability and security. However, it is the most expensive option but you do get free access to some of the best WordPress themes ever made.

For years, I have recommended Siteground as the best option for small WordPress site owners on a tight budget. However, for only a fraction more in cost, you can now get a significantly better server with a cloud hosting company called Cloudways. That’s why I choose to host my personal websites with Cloudways.

With that said, Siteground is still a good option for beginners with tight budgets. WP Engine is my go-to recommendation for large WordPress websites or for those who want white-glove customer service.

Conclusion

So there you have it. That’s my shootout and comparison of Siteground vs WP Engine Now I want to hear from you: which WordPress hosting company do you host with?

Are you hosting with WP Engine or Siteground? If so, how do you find them?

Or, are you hosting with a company that I haven’t listed?

If so, let me know how you rate them by leaving a comment below.