# tl;dr · verdict 4.0 / 5
Best for: WordPress-only teams that value StudioPress themes (bundled from Genesis), EverCache tuning, and a mature developer workflow (git push deployments, local development suite). Skip if: you want the fastest possible TTFB in the UK (Kinsta’s GCP C2 pips it), or you are outside WordPress.
Pricing.
Startup at £22/mo billed annually (£25/mo monthly): one site, 25,000 visits, 10 GB storage. Professional at £46/mo: three sites. Growth at £90/mo: 10 sites. Prices went up 12% in early 2025 and again in late 2025.
Performance test: London TTFB.
Median TTFB from London on 10 URLs: 212ms. P95: 264ms. LCP: 1.4s. Solid, but slower than Kinsta’s 184ms on the same test. WP Engine’s EverCache (their proprietary object cache layer) drops repeat-request TTFB to 60-90ms, still slower than Kinsta’s edge cache.
Support test.
Ticket response time: 1h 8min. Response was competent (a specific config change, well-documented, with a link to the KB) but not as depth-of-detail as Kinsta’s Level 2 reply.
What we like.
- Bundled StudioPress themes (Genesis framework) since acquisition in 2018. If you are a Genesis shop already, this is a big win.
- Local WP by Flywheel: the best local WordPress dev environment on the market, free.
- Managed WooCommerce tier is well-tuned (object cache pre-configured for Woo, Redis by default).
- Git-push deploy from Blueprint (their template system) on Growth tier and above.
What we don’t like.
- Two price increases in 18 months. Not a great signal.
- Support tier is Chat + email; no phone on Startup or Professional.
- The Silver Lake acquisition (May 2018) shifted the culture away from developer-first. Newer features feel enterprise-first.
Bottom line.
WP Engine is still a solid choice, especially if you are on the Genesis stack. But head-to-head with Kinsta, on our tests, Kinsta wins on TTFB and support depth. Match the tools to the team, not the marketing.