WP Engine Vs Bluehost 2022 – Which Hosting Is Better?

When you have a website, sometimes it can be hard to keep up with it while running a business. That’s when a website hosting company comes in handy. They handle everything related to your website so you can focus on what’s important. There are so many hosting websites it may be hard to find which one is right for you.

In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about two of the website hosting services available on the market. WP Engine and Bluehost are two of the top WordPress hosting providers that you can find, and they both have many of the same great features. Read on to see which hosting service will work best for your needs and which one comes out on top.

WP Engine Overview – What Do They Do?

Wp Engine is the top WordPress platform, and they are focused on hosting only WordPress sites. Wp Engine is a great hosting site for those that want fast speed and excellent customer service. They offer a few different plans to choose from with varying storage options. They have a reliable and fast hosting site that is also very user-friendly.

Bluehost Overview – What Do They Do?

Bluehost will host a large number of different types of websites. They also offer several extra features. Bluehost has a few different plans to choose from, just like WP Engine. Their plans are pretty budget-friendly for what they offer compared to other website hosting providers. Bluehost also includes shared and dedicated hosting.

What Will Each Service Cost To Use?

Before digging into all the differences, they have and their standard features, let us talk about price. The cost of the hosting sites is significantly different and can be a deal-breaker for some.

It’s a good idea to know the price before you learn the pros and cons of each hosting site. Once you’re armed with that information, you will be able to make an informed decision when choosing between WP Engine and Bluehost.

WP Engine Pricing

They are not known for their inexpensive pricing, that is for sure. Let’s look at the different plans and what you can expect to pay. They often will have a promo code on their site to get a few months free when paying annually. You technically have a choice between sixteen different plan levels:

	Managed Hosting	Managed Hosting Plus	Secure Hosting	Ecommerce Host
Startup	$24 save $120 if paying annually	$27 save $136 if paying annually	$42 save $212 if paying annually	$36 save $72 if paying annually
Professional	$47 save $236 if paying annually	$50 save $252 if paying annually	$72 save $360 if paying annually	$75 save $150 if paying annually
Growth	$92 save $460 if paying annually	$100 save $500 if paying annually	$120 save $600 if paying annually	$140 save $280 if paying annually
Scale	$232 save $1160 if paying annually	$248 save $1240 if paying annually	$280 save $1400 if paying annually	$350 save $700 if paying annually

Bluehost Pricing

Even though they are known for being very inexpensive, they still offer many services and plans. You may be incredibly and pleasantly surprised at just how low their plans will cost each month.

They often have sales where their monthly plans are half-off. This means their prices can change. Below are the prices when you sign up for three years of hosting:

	Shared Hosting	Online Stores	Managed WordPress
Basic – Standard – Build	$2.95 – $8.99	$12.95 – $24.95	$9.95 – $19.95
Plus – Grow	$5.45 – $11.99	————————–	$14.95 – $24.95
Choice Plus – Scale	$5.45 – $16.99	————————–	$27.95 – $37.95
Pro – Premium	$13.95 – $26.99	$24.95 – $39.95	——————————

Comparing Ease Of Use

The hosting web is relatively easy to use with both hosting sites. It can seem a little overwhelming when you are just getting started, but both walk you through different how-to’s when creating your account. They also both have a nice dashboard that is straightforward, even for beginners.

If you get stuck on WP Engine, you can quickly get ahold of one of their customer service workers who will help you through any issues. While you can still get help with Bluehost, their response time can be a little iffy. You could hear from them in minutes or hours.

Website Staging

A staging website is a clone of your site. You may wonder why this is even an important feature. The reason? When you have a clone of your site or staging site, you can try out different features before making them permanent on your live site. This way, you can test everything and make sure there are no bugs.

WP Engine

You can easily create a staging site with WP Engine; it is quite simple. Here’s a step-by-step of the process so you can compare the WP Engine and Bluehost, which is immediately following this list:

• Within site, you need to go to sites
• Next, click on Add Staging
• Create a name for your staging site
• Click Create Environment
• The site will create a staging site allowing you to have free rein to edit and code anything you need to. You can test different features to see how you like them before letting those changes go live. 

Bluehost

Creating a staging site for Bluehost is extremely easy. Here’s their step-by-step process:

• Go to your site’s staging (beta) area
• On the next page, you click to create a staging site
• Bluehost will create the site for you, and then you view the site
• You can work on and tweak the site however you need to without making anything permanent until you are ready.

Performance – Comparing WP Engine and Bluehost

One part of having a website hosted by a different company is trusting them that their speed and performance are up to par. You now know that the two companys’ speed is a little different from each other. Let’s see just how different their performances are.

WP Engine

Performance is one big reason why their price is so much higher than other website hosting servers. Let’s look at what is behind their performance:

• Content Delivery Network Service – They include this in every one of their plans at no extra charge. It helps to make your site work much better by helping your website and server handle a large amount of visitor traffic.
• Page Performance Solution – To keep your page performing as it should, the software tests your site and notifies you of what improvements you should make to make the most out of your website.
• Extra Features – They can handle automatic updates and any upgrades quickly along with daily backups. You can worry about your business and let their servers do everything else for you.
• Fastest WordPress Platform – They have a high-speed server that will boost the performance of your site. Their platform will help you to have higher conversion and boosts your SEO.

Bluehost

Bluehost may not be as high-performing as some other website hosting servers, but they have many outstanding performance-enhancing features such as:

• Kernel-Based Virtual Machine Hypervisor – KVM is a layer within the Kernel-based machine. A hypervisor gives you the ability to operate many different systems to share one hardware host. This program picks out specific hardware resources so other website owners will not bother the performance of your website.
• NGINX – This is a web server much like Apache. These two web servers are actually behind half of the internet traffic around the world. NGINX is not as great as Apache, though. It doesn’t have the ability to process certain content.
• Virtual Private Server – Bluehost gives each website that they host their own VPS. When you have your own VPS, you will not need to share anything with other hosted sites. This means your website will be much safer, and your speed will not be jeopardized.

How Do Their Speeds Perform?

One of the most important features when looking into a website hosting service is speed. A few-second delay could cause issues with your website, meaning that you can and will lose money. Wp Engine has an integrated CDN and has faster loading times than Bluehost. In a test performed by The Meisle that showed both sites server times. Their server times were tested in a few parts of the world and showed the results below. It is easy to see that WP Engine is far faster. They may not seem like significant differences, but the speed difference can add up when every second counts the speed difference.

	WP Engine	Bluehost
Washington D.C.	648 milliseconds	5.11 seconds
San Francisco	430 milliseconds	2.24 seconds
London	989 milliseconds	3.13 seconds
Sydney	1.17 seconds	3.63 seconds
Tokyo	763 milliseconds	2.70 seconds

To be specific, 648 milliseconds equals .648 seconds; it isn’t even one full second.

Along with speed, you need to make sure the potential hosting server can handle more significant changes in visitors. Both websites can easily handle more significant changes in visitors quite smoothly.

There are other fast hosting options, but these are two of the best.

Uptime Amounts

A hosting site needs to be fast, but it also needs to be up and running at all times. This is why uptime is particularly important. If your site is not up and running, you will lose money and visitors. The excellent news is that both Bluehost and WP Engine are almost always 100% when it comes to uptime. There is no difference between the two regarding uptime because they both are online 99.99% of the time.

From February 2021 to May 2021, both web hosting servers had an uptime of 100% every single day. This means you won’t lose out on customers because your site goes down. Their server is very reliable.

Other sites had many different readings such as:

• DreamHost – They were only under twice, but one of the times was as low as 94%
• GoDaddy – They were under 100% almost ten different times
• Green Geeks – There were under 100% five times

How Do Their Customers Services Stack Up?

Sometimes customer service may not be an issue, and you may never need to contact them. However, when you have a company host your business website, you need to be able to reach them if there is an issue. If they take days to get back to you, that can be a real problem when issues come up. You could lose customers and money while you wait on customer service to get back to you. Let look at how the WP Engine and Bluehost compare in this area.

WP Engine

WP Engine is known for how excellent its customer service is. They have a customer service chat on their site. They offer their service 24/7 and 365 days a year. You can also reach them at 512-273-3906 if you would prefer to speak to someone over the phone. You just need your account information and will be quickly helped by their educated representatives.

Bluehost

While not as well-known for having excellent customer service, they are stepping up their game to compete with others hosting platforms such as WP Engine. Bluehost does have chat support available, but you will need to have your:

• Account Username
• Domain Name
• Admin Email
• Password Validation
• PIN Validation

They will then verify that you are who you say you are. Their chat looks to be constantly available, but they do take a little bit to get back with you in between questions which can be very frustrating when you are in the midst of an issue. If you prefer a person, you can call them at 888-401-4678.

WP Engine or Bluehost Which Would Benefit You?

Different sites may work well with one company and poorly with the other. There is no need to waste money on a hosting service that isn’t the right fit for you. More significant sites need faster speeds, whereas newer sites are ok with reduced speeds. Let’s look at which site will benefit you.

Who Will WP Engine Benefit More?

WP Engine is more for those that are making money and want a fast website. They will allow the money to roll in because your website will always be online, not to mention their speeds are far faster than the average web hosting server. They are higher priced, but their features are worth it. If your company can afford their prices and needs the speed, then WP Engine is right for you.

Who Will Bluehost Benefit More?

Bluehost is best for those just starting and may not be able to afford a sizeable monthly plan. Their speeds are still good. Their uptime is perfect. They are the perfect hosting service to use for new websites until you get more daily visitors. By choosing Bluehost, you will save a lot of money while your website grows.

Most significant Differences Between The Two

The most significant differences between WP Engine and Bluehost are the price, as you can see. WP Engine is for only WordPress hosting, while as you now know, Bluehost can take on many different websites. That difference limits who can use WP Engine, which many people do because their speed is top-notch.

WP Engine may be higher priced, but to some, it could make up for it with its speed and many extra features. Others see their prices and go their separate ways.

The other big difference other than cost is their customer service. As mentioned above, Bluehost has tried to meet the same quality customer service as WP Engine, but it is not yet up-to-par.

Advantages And Disadvantages

Like every great thing in life, there are bound to be some downsides. Below is a pros and cons chart of WP Engine and Bluehost to truly see how the two stack against each other.

Bluehost – Pros	WP Engine – Pros	Bluehost – Cons	WP Engine – Cons
Very inexpensive	Outstanding and fast customer service	16 plans to choose from can be confusing	Expensive
WordPress sites do very well	Very fast speeds	No free auto backups	Can only use WordPress sites
Free SSL certificate	Top-notch security	Limited storage  even though it says unlimited	They don’t allow all plugins
Free Cloudflare CDN	Uptime guarantee	No windows hosting	Not all themes are supported
NGINX caching	Easy to use	No uptime guarantees	You have to pay for extra visitors
Staging sites	Nice staging area	Slow loading times	No domain registrations
WordPress endorses the site	Great hosting panel tools	Pops ups to try and get you to upgrade	No CPanel
30-day money-back guarantee	Free 60-day trial	Slow response time from customer service	It can be a little hard to start for beginners
Great uptime	No long-term commitments	Renewal is pricey
Free domain name for your first year	Free CDN, SSL, data backup, and restore	Migration is not free like most sites

Bluehost Vs WP Engine Conclusion

It is extremely easy to see that both sites are not created equally. WP Engine is the go-to web hosting site for those that have the extra money to spend and want an extremely fast hosting site. Their customer service representatives are all well educated and efficient.

With Bluehost, you get inexpensive prices when you are just starting out while still have a great hosting site compared to others on the market.

I think a closer comparison to WP Engine is WPX Hosting or Kinsta, both which also offer great hosting options.