WP Engine is one of the largest managed WordPress hosting providers today. It's built on top of the Google Cloud Platform, providing great performance and reliability.
While relatively easy to use, this closed proprietary platform comes with plenty of limitations. For example, many WordPress plugins are blacklisted on WP Engine, PHP sessions are disabled, PHP modules are not allowed.
Sail is a great alternative to WP Engine at a fraction of the cost. It is completely open source and transparent, giving you the flexibility and freedom to host WordPress on your own terms. Visit Sail on GitHub to learn more.
|
WP Engine |
Sail CLI |
+ Premium |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy-to-use dashboard | |||
| Free SSL/HTTPS | |||
| Git push-to-deploy | |||
| Integrated page caching | |||
| Unlimited installs/domains | |||
| Unlimited visits/pageviews | |||
| Full root access to server | |||
| Custom configs for PHP, Nginx, MariaDB | |||
| Custom PHP modules support | |||
| Built-in performance profiling | |||
| Health & uptime monitoring | |||
| Image compression, WebP | |||
| Managed backups | |||
| Multisite support | Paid addon |
WP Engine pricing starts at $30/mo for 1 site, 10 GB of storage, 50 GB of bandwidth and up to 25,000 visits per month.
For a slightly lower price of $24/mo, with Sail on DigitalOcean you could run a server with a premium dual-core AMD CPU, 4 GB of RAM, 80 GB of NVMe SSD storage and 4 TB of bandwidth. Unlimited number of visits and sites/domains.
Sail Premium pricing starts at $9/mo per server (unlimited sites/domains).
|
WP Engine |
Sail + DigitalOcean |
|
|---|---|---|
| 1 site, 25,000 visits, 10 GB storage, 50 GB bandwidth | $30 | $5 |
| 3 sites, 75,000 visits, 15 GB storage, 125 GB bandwidth | $59 | $5 |
| 5 sites, 400,000 visits, 50 GB storage, 500 GB bandwidth | $290 | $10 |
| Additional storage, per GB | Unavailable | $0.10 |
DigitalOcean allows bandwidth pooling, which means if you provisioned two servers with 1TB of bandwidth each, your total allowed monthly bandwidth is 2TB, regardless of which server is actually consuming it. Excess data transfer is billed at $0.01 per GB.
With WP Engine you will incurr additional charges of $1 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors. Premium and higher plans may incurr additional data transfer charges.
WP Engine provides a 60 day money-back guarantee.
Sail Premium offers a 60-day money back guarantee. DigitalOcean provides a 60-day trial with up to $100 in credits. This is the equivalent of running a 4-core premium AMD/Intel CPUs with 8GB of RAM, 160 GB NVMe SSD and 5 TB of bandwidth for two months.
WP Engine provides chat and ticket support on the entry-level plan. Phone support is available on the Professional plan and higher. Support scope is limited.
Sail provides product support via our Slack community. Paid WordPress support options are available through vetted Sail partners starting from $49/mo.
Getting Started with Sail