WP Engine vs SiteGround
WP Engine bundles WordPress sites into USD plans with a published visit overage rate; SiteGround grades GBP shared tiers by approximate visits and states no overage policy at all. Currency, staging boundaries, support channels and the small print compared from both hosts' captured pages.
WP Engine is a WordPress-only platform selling USD site bundles, $35 to $330 per month on monthly billing, with a published $2 per 1,000 visit overage rate. SiteGround is a polished shared host selling GBP tiers ex VAT, graded by approximate visits, with unlimited websites from its second plan and no overage policy stated. Staging ships on every WP Engine plan but only from SiteGround's GrowBig tier up, while phone support runs the other way: included everywhere at SiteGround, held back to the Business tier at WP Engine.
By Sam Moreton
Researched
Which one for your use case
| Use case | Pick |
|---|---|
| Team that wants a phone line from the cheapest plan onward | SiteGround |
| Agency spreading many WordPress builds over one bill with transferable sites | WP Engine |
| Site that needs staging without paying for a higher tier | WP Engine |
| Buyer who wants email hosting and a free domain inside the plan price | SiteGround |
| Traffic likely to overshoot its allowance, where a published overage rate matters | WP Engine |
| First-time buyer who wants a refund window if it goes wrong | SiteGround |
Testing overlap: Both sides come from each host's own captured pricing, plan and support pages, WP Engine checked November 2026 and SiteGround October 2026; no test site was run on either and no benchmark is claimed.
What the captured pages state, side by side
From the per-host feature audit, checked through 2026-11-04. Cells carry the date their source page was captured; gaps render as not stated rather than guessed.
| Dimension | WP Engine | SiteGround |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price (cheapest published plan, trials excluded) | $35 per month (Essential (1 site)) Checked 2026-11-04. | £13.99 per month (StartUp; £1.99 per month first-invoice price) Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Trial | Not stated on the captured WP Engine pages. | Not stated on the captured SiteGround pages. |
| Apps | Managed hosting for WordPress websites only ('We offer hosting solutions for WordPress websites'); WordPress multisite is supported; WP, PHP and MySQL are managed for you. No other application types are offered on the captured pages. Checked 2026-11-04. | Free installation of WordPress or other CMS through the setup wizard; free shopping-cart install for ecommerce, or the all-inclusive SiteGround Ecommerce option. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Staging | 1-click staging and dev environments included on every plan group (Essential, Business, Enterprise); the product page lists staging environments among platform features. The number of environments per site is not stated. Checked 2026-11-04. | Staging is listed as a GrowBig exclusive feature; GoGeek lists staging with Git. Not listed for StartUp. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Backups | Automatic and on-demand backups included on every plan group; the plans page states backups of a customer's content are maintained for no less than 30 days and no longer than 60 days. Daily automated backups are an Essential key feature. Checked 2026-11-04. | Automated daily backups free on every plan; on-demand backups on GrowBig and GoGeek. Retention is not stated. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Migrations | Free site migration to WP Engine via an automated migration plugin ('It's free to migrate a site to WP Engine'); manual migration is documented; the product page lists free or assisted site migrations; Business plans additionally include managed site migrations. Checked 2026-11-04. | Free site migrations: an automatic migrator for WordPress sites or transfer by SiteGround experts, with the site stated to stay live throughout; a free email migrator is also included. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| CDN | Global CDN powered by Cloudflare included on every plan group; the product page lists server-level caching, CDNs and active monitoring. Checked 2026-11-04. | Free CDN with every site on all plans; the web hosting page states the built-in CDN serves content from the nearest location. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Control panel | WP Engine User Portal (not cPanel): plan upgrades, downgrades, add-on changes, billing recurrence changes, invoices and billing info, and user roles management. Developer access via SSH Gateway, SFTP (not plain FTP), Git version control and the WP Engine Hosting API. Checked 2026-11-04. | Site Tools: each site gets its own panel to manage, share access to and switch between sites independently; domain, email, website and backups are managed from one dashboard. Free SSH and SFTP access; WP-CLI is listed under the WordPress services. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Team features | User Portal user roles can be managed on the account; transferable sites are included on every plan group so an environment can be transferred to another WP Engine user. Checked 2026-11-04. | Collaborators included on every plan (web hosting page feature lists); white-label access and a free private DNS are GoGeek exclusives; the full feature list adds 'Ship Site to Client' under agency and designer features. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Support channels | 24/7 chat. Paid: Business support (custom pricing: 24/7 chat, 24/7 phone); Enterprise support (custom pricing: priority 24/7 support, dedicated account team). Checked 2026-11-04. | phone, chat, tickets. Checked 2026-10-11. |
| Benchmarks | Not tested by Kite: no benchmark runs exist yet (see the methodology). | Not tested by Kite: no benchmark runs exist yet (see the methodology). |
What the published data says
- Entry prices are published in different currencies (WP Engine USD, SiteGround GBP), so no cheaper-side claim is made: converting between them would need an exchange rate this audit does not hold. WP Engine: $35 per month (Essential (1 site)); SiteGround: £13.99 per month (StartUp; £1.99 per month first-invoice price) (checked 2026-11-04 / 2026-10-11).
- WP Engine publishes ~25,000 visits/month/~75,000 visits/month/~100,000 visits/month/~400,000 visits/month visits (as of 2026-11-04); the captured pages state no overage billing policy.
- WP Engine sells support escalation above the standard tier: Business support at custom pricing, Enterprise support at custom pricing (2026-11-04).
- SiteGround publishes ~10,000 visits/month/~100,000 visits/month/~400,000 visits/month visits (as of 2026-10-11); the captured pages state no overage billing policy.
WP Engine: what the captured pages do not state, and the sources
- No money-back guarantee or refund window is stated on any captured page; the only cancellation term found is a 30-day notice via a cancellation form per the terms of service (FAQ).
- No free trial is stated on the captured pages.
- Vertical or horizontal scaling is not stated on any captured page; the closest statement is always-on options for peak traffic under Enterprise.
- The Business plan's struck-through regular (renewal) price is rendered by JavaScript and was not captured; only the discounted 400.00 USD per month billed annually appears in captured text.
- Business and Enterprise resource figures are published as ranges, not per-tier numbers (Business: 400,000 to 800,000 visits per month, 50 GB to 2 TB storage, 550 GB bandwidth; Enterprise: 800,000+ visits, 2 TB+ storage, 550 GB+ bandwidth), so no single visits, storage or bandwidth value is entered for them.
- The Enterprise plan states no price, visits, storage or bandwidth numbers; it is custom quoted only.
- No server resources (RAM, CPU, PHP workers) are stated for any plan, and the storage media type (SSD or NVMe) is not stated.
- No overage price is stated for storage or bandwidth; only the visits overage (2 USD per 1,000 extra monthly visitors) is stated.
- The FAQ's overage answer still names the Startup, Professional, Growth and Scale plans, which do not match the Essential, Business and Enterprise lineup on the captured plans page.
- Renewal pricing after the first promotional year is not stated for Essential plans; the footnote only says product renewal pricing is subject to change.
- Monthly-billing prices are stated only for the Essential capacity ladder; Business is shown billed annually only, and Enterprise not at all.
- Support response-time guarantees are not stated on the captured pages.
- No separately priced support tiers exist on the captured pages: premium support is bundled with Business and Enterprise rather than sold as an add-on, and no price is stated for any of the listed optional add-ons (Smart Plugin Manager, site monitoring, Global Edge Security, NitroPack OneClick, pre-launch assessment, application performance monitoring, Managed Vector Database).
- The number of staging environments per site or plan is not stated.
- Visit counting rules are referenced (guidelines about which visits are considered billable) but the guidelines themselves are not on the captured pages.
- Country counts are unreconciled across captured pages: 90+ countries (plans page) versus 150 countries (FAQ page meta).
- Ecosystem products sold separately (Smart Search AI, NitroPack, Advanced Custom Fields, WP Migrate, WP Offload Media, WP Offload SES) are listed with no prices stated.
- Only the Managed Hosting Platform line is audited; the Headless Platform, eCommerce Solution and Newsroom Platform products named in the site footer are not covered by the captured pages.
- Headless WordPress is named as a footer product but no plan, price or feature detail appears on the captured pages, so the article's headless claims cannot be verified from these captures.
- The article's claim that popular caching plugins are not allowed is not stated on the captured pages; the support center only lists a Disallowed Plugins article category without its contents.
- WP Engine Plans & Pricing, WP Engine (checked 2026-11-04)
- WordPress hosting and migration FAQ | WP Engine, WP Engine (checked 2026-11-04)
- Support | WP Engine, WP Engine (checked 2026-11-04)
- WP Engine, the WordPress technology company (managed WordPress hosting product page), WP Engine (checked 2026-11-04)
SiteGround: what the captured pages do not state, and the sources
- No server resources (RAM or CPU) are stated for any shared plan: tiers are graded by approximate monthly visits, storage and feature set, so no like-for-like RAM anchor exists against RAM-graded hosts.
- Backup retention (how long daily backups are kept) is not stated.
- Visit allowances are stated as approximate ('~10,000 visits'); no overage, throttling or upgrade policy for exceeding them is stated.
- All captured prices are from the UK regional site (siteground.co.uk) in GBP, excluding VAT; the captured pages state no monthly (non-prepaid) term prices and no other region's pricing.
- No free trial is stated on the captured pages; the stated risk-free mechanism is a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- No separately priced add-ons are stated on the captured pages, so the add-on list is empty by evidence, not by assumption.
- An uptime SLA or guarantee is not stated.
- SiteGround's navigation lists Cloud Hosting, Reseller Hosting and WordPress/WooCommerce product lines; only the shared Web Hosting line was captured, so this audit covers that line only.
- Node.js application hosting is not documented on the captured pages: a blog headline dated 01 Oct 2026 announces it, but the captured feature lists do not include it.
- Staging is not listed for StartUp: the web hosting page ties staging to GrowBig (staging + Git to GoGeek) as exclusive features, while the full feature list shows staging without a per-plan split.
- Datacentre presence is summarised as 'servers on four continents'; no region choice per plan or customer is stated.
- Support response-time guarantees are not stated.
- Web Hosting Crafted For Top Website Performance & Speed - SiteGround, SiteGround (checked 2026-10-11)
- SiteGround Web Hosting Plans - Full Feature List, SiteGround (checked 2026-10-11)
Open this comparison in the interactive tool to swap either side for any of the other audited hosts.
WP Engine and SiteGround both host WordPress and both sell managed comfort, but they are not one product wearing two badges. WP Engine is a WordPress-only platform: its own portal, its own caching layer, a Cloudflare-powered CDN and site bundles priced in USD. SiteGround is a shared host polished well past its price bracket, running on Google Cloud with its own Site Tools panel, free email and a website builder folded into the plan. The honest comparison starts by admitting the two price lists are not even in the same currency, and that this page compares shapes and fit rather than pretending a single price verdict exists.
The bill, in two currencies and two units
WP Engine's Essential line, checked November 2026, is a bundle ladder in USD on monthly billing: $35 for one site and 25,000 monthly visits, $65 for three, $130 for ten, then $330 for thirty sites and 400,000 visits. Business plans start at $400 per month on the captured annual billing, Enterprise is quoted to order, and transfer is metered from 75GB to 550GB of bandwidth across the ladder. SiteGround's captured tiers, checked October 2026, are three shared plans in GBP excluding VAT: StartUp renews at £13.99 per month for one site and roughly 10,000 visits, GrowBig at £23.99 with unlimited websites and roughly 100,000 visits, GoGeek at £34.99 with roughly 400,000. The £1.99, £3.99 and £5.99 introductory rates cover the opening invoice of the 12-month prepay alone, and transfer stays unmetered across all three tiers. The audit table carries both lists in full; no honest summary converts them.
Different currencies, different VAT treatments, different billing terms. Anyone quoting a tidy cheaper-host verdict from these two pages has made three decisions for you silently. What can be compared is structure: SiteGround stops charging by the website from its second tier, WP Engine never does, and in exchange every WP Engine site sits inside the platform rather than beside it.
Overage: one published rate, one silence
WP Engine states what happens when you overshoot: visits beyond the plan allowance bill at $2 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors, per its FAQ checked November 2026. That same answer still names the retired Startup, Professional, Growth and Scale plans, so whether the rate carries across to today's Essential line is not spelled out; the number is published even if the plan names are stale. SiteGround's pages mark every allowance as approximate and then say nothing about exceeding one. No overage rate, no throttling rule, no forced upgrade appears anywhere in the captures. A spiky site can put WP Engine's worst case on paper; on SiteGround the worst case is a conversation you have not had yet.
Staging: everywhere versus GrowBig and up
Staging is where the platform habit shows. WP Engine includes 1-click staging plus a dev environment right through the plan range, Essential to Enterprise; the only missing detail is how many environments each site gets. SiteGround fences staging behind its second tier: it is listed as a GrowBig exclusive, with Git joining at GoGeek, and nothing is listed for StartUp. SiteGround's own captures disagree here, because the full feature list shows staging without any per-plan split while the marketing page ties it to GrowBig. That contradiction is kept visible rather than smoothed away, and the practical reading is plain: if you build on a copy of the site, WP Engine's cheapest plan has you covered and SiteGround's does not, unless you budget for GrowBig.
Support: where the phone lives
SiteGround answers by phone, chat and tickets around the clock on every plan, priority support being the GoGeek differentiator. WP Engine runs 24/7 chat as its base channel and adds phone only at Business, the tier starting at $400 per month, with a dedicated account team reserved for Enterprise. Neither host publishes response-time guarantees on the captured pages. The shape decides it: a one-person business that wants to ring somebody when the checkout breaks pays nothing extra for a phone line at SiteGround, and waits for a $400 tier at WP Engine.
Email, exits and other quiet dealbreakers
The small print separates these two more than the headline prices do. SiteGround bundles free email accounts at your own domain and a free domain name into every plan; WP Engine hosts no email at all and points you at Mailgun, Gmail or Sendinblue. SiteGround gives a 30-day money-back guarantee on every tier; WP Engine's captures state no refund window, only a 30-day notice cancellation term. Backups run daily on both, but WP Engine states its retention window, 30 to 60 days, with on-demand copies everywhere, while SiteGround includes on-demand backups only from GrowBig up and states no retention period. Migrations are free on both with a different hand on the wheel: SiteGround offers its automatic migrator or an expert transfer with the site live throughout, and WP Engine's included path is a migration plugin you run yourself, managed migrations arriving at Business. Neither page prices its WooCommerce story precisely: WP Engine names an eCommerce Performance Pack and SiteGround offers a shopping-cart install or an all-inclusive ecommerce option. SiteGround publishes no uptime SLA; WP Engine's plans page puts a 99.99% SLA on Business and Enterprise only.
Where each one wins
SiteGround for buyers who want one bill covering hosting, email and a domain, a phone line from day one, unlimited websites from the second tier and a refund window if it goes wrong. WP Engine for WordPress-only operations: agencies bundling many builds behind one portal with transferable sites, teams that need staging on the cheapest plan, and anyone who wants the overage rate and the backup retention window in writing before the traffic spike rather than after it.
If the premium-platform idea appeals but the pricing does not, Cloudways vs WP Engine covers the multi-cloud alternative to WP Engine's bundles. If SiteGround's shape is closer to your needs, Cloudways vs SiteGround sets it against the same managed layer. The hosting comparison tool puts both of this page's hosts against the other hosts audited under the same citation rules.
FAQ
Is WP Engine or SiteGround cheaper?
Not fairly answerable from the captured pages, and anyone who answers it flatly has picked an exchange rate and a VAT treatment for you. WP Engine bills USD: $35 per month for one site on monthly billing, checked November 2026. SiteGround's captured UK prices are GBP ex VAT: £1.99 for the first invoice of a prepaid 12-month StartUp term, renewing at £13.99 per month, checked October 2026. In shape, SiteGround is the smaller commitment at the bottom of the range, while WP Engine's bundles favour portfolios of many sites.
What happens if a site exceeds its visit allowance?
WP Engine publishes the rate: $2 per 1,000 extra monthly visitors, checked November 2026, though the FAQ answer naming it still lists retired plan names. SiteGround's captured pages mark allowances as approximate and state no overage, throttling or forced-upgrade policy, so what happens past the allowance is simply unpublished.
Do both hosts include staging?
WP Engine includes 1-click staging on every plan group. SiteGround lists staging as a GrowBig feature, with Git joining at GoGeek, and lists nothing for StartUp, although its own full feature list shows staging without a per-plan split. Treat GrowBig as the entry point for staging on SiteGround.
Does either host include email?
SiteGround does: free email accounts on every plan, plus a free domain name. WP Engine does not host email at all and recommends a third-party provider such as Mailgun or Gmail in its FAQ.
Can I get a refund if I change my mind?
SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on every plan. WP Engine's captured pages state no money-back guarantee or free trial; the only cancellation term found is 30 days' notice via a cancellation form.