3 Cheapest WP Engine Alternatives in 2024
Last Updated:
WP Engine is one of our favorite hosting companies, there’s no doubt about that—and we consistently recommend them as one of the best WordPress hosting options. But—they are a bit on the expensive side, and quite frankly, as awesome as they are—they’re just overkill for some people.
The truth is that there are a handful of WP Engine alternatives that still provide a really solid hosting service at a fraction of the cost, and include things like email (which WP Engine has never done) free of charge. Or even website builders, as is the case with Hostinger.
In this breakdown, we’re going to look at our three favorite alternatives to WP Engine and explain why each one is a solid choice if you’re looking to either move from WP Engine (presumably to save some money) or are looking for new hosting, and WP Engine is just in the running among other hosting companies you’re considering.
Before we jump into this breakdown, we wanted to quickly mention that if you purchase hosting (or any service) from links on this page, we might earn a commission. Believe us when we say that doesn’t affect the quality of our reviews at all (there are plenty of hosts paying high commissions that we don’t recommend)! But, it does help keep the site running and awesome content like this coming to you free of charge! ?
With that said, let’s jump right in and take a look at the best WP Engine alternatives for 2024!
Cheaper Alternatives to WP Engine for WordPress Websites
WP Engine is a hard hosting company to beat—especially when it comes to WordPress. In fact, there are many places on this site where we say they’re the best—and while there are some caveats around WP Engine (like visit counting), they generally are considered top-tier WordPress hosting.
But, not everyone needs “the best” for everything, and “the best” often comes at a cost too. For example—do you need to have a Ferrari when a Corvette is a great sports car, and much more affordable? The same thing applies to the web hosting world. If you’ve got a site that doesn’t get an insane amount of traffic, chances are that you’d be served just fine by another hosting provider that’s honestly less expensive.
Also, if you don’t require the level of support or instantaneous backups that WP Engine offers, you’d probably be fine with a less expensive provider. The thing is, WP Engine is about 10x more expensive than shared hosting providers, and if you can’t justify that cost, it probably isn’t worth it.
Now, let’s take a look at our list of WP Engine alternatives…
#1 Hostinger
Hostinger has emerged as our newest favorite when it comes to WP Engine alternatives, and this is for a few different reasons…
First of all, they have an awesome website builder, and this is a feature that WP Engine doesn’t have. While it’s true that if you’re using WordPress, you might not need a website builder, you might also not need WordPress! If you really only need a simple website, sometimes WordPress (with all its constant plugin updates and other updates) can be more of a headache than it’s worth. The nice thing about WordPress is that it’s relatively easy to use, but not as easy as a website builder. So the point here, is that maybe you don’t need WP Engine or WordPress! In that case, Hostinger offers and awesome website builder that’s free with every plan.
Secondly, if you are set on using WordPress, you might not need all the extra stuff that comes with WP Engine, because it sure comes at a price ($20/month with our coupon) vs. Hostinger, which is $2.69/month with our special coupon. So for almost 10% of the price, you should still host your WordPress site on an awesome hosting company, and save a lot of money. Yeah, WP Engine is awesome, but as we said before, they are overkill in a lot of situations. And, they also nag people about visits and other things like bandwidth, and Hostinger tends not to do this as they don’t count visits in the same way. So, with all that said, they’d an awesome alternative to consider!
#2 SiteGround
In terms of shared hosting companies that do an awesome job with WordPress, SiteGround is one of the absolute best! They are the most expensive on this list, coming in at $2.99/month for their cheapest plan (StartUp), but that’s still quite a bit less than WP Engine (which is $22.50/month) for their cheapest plan (and barely more expensive than DreamHost or Hostinger).
The best thing about SiteGround is they pretty much do everything well—there really aren’t any holes in their game, so-to-speak. They’ve got super fast servers, great pricing for what you get, and awesome customer service.
In fact, one of our favorite things about SiteGround is just how awesome their tech support is, most specifically, their chat. It’s rare that we’ve had to wait more than a few minutes to get someone in chat, and their techs are super knowledgeable too. In terms of competence, they’re usually able to solve problems right then and there in chat, and rarely require the creation of a ticket to dive deeper (in our experience).
They’ve also got some other cool features like their Supercacher WordPress plugin, which helps to make sites hosted on their platform blazingly fast. It’s also super easy to install as well—you just download the plugin from the WordPress repository, and with a few clicks you’re up and running—and with a few more, your site is optimized and running smoothly!
If you’re looking for the cheapest alternative to WP Engine that’s the most like WP Engine (in our opinion), SiteGround is it—and definitely worth a look!
#3 DreamHost
Once upon a time, we weren’t the biggest fans of DreamHost—but a lot’s changed where they’ve really stepped up their hosting game in the past year or two.
They used to have an incredibly convoluted, proprietary hosting panel that honestly—just really sucked. It was so much harder to use than the ever-popular cPanel, and just made no sense at all. And all they used to offer was shared hosting that honestly, wasn’t that great either.
Fast forward to now—they’ve revamped their interface and made it much more user-friendly, and they’ve made a bunch of other really cool improvements as well. We’ve taken the time to speak with an DreamHost engineer who worked on the upgrade project and they’re really spend a lot of time making it a quality product.
On top of that DreamHost does offer managed WordPress hosting on their DreamPress platform which starts at $16.95/month, and has a lot of the awesome features of WP Engine (backups, staging, etc.). Considering that WP Engine is $22.50/month on their cheapest plan, DreamPress is almost half the price!
And if you’re looking to host a lower traffic site that doesn’t require all of the whizbang WordPress features, you can do that on their shared platform for $2.59/month, which is nearly 10x less expensive than WP Engine.
So, if you’re looking for a cheaper WP Engine alternative, DreamHost is definitely worth considering!
WP Engine Alternatives FAQ: Popular Questions Across the Web
We hope this guide to WP Engine alternatives has been informative thus far! However, we felt is would be incomplete without an FAQ question where we answer popular questions being asked across the web about alternatives to WP Engine.
So, with that said—let’s take a look as some questions (and answers, of course) related to WP Engine alternatives!
Which Hosting Company is the Cheapest Alternative to WP Engine?
From a purely dollar perspective, it’s DreamHost. But we think the best alternative to WP Engine is Hostinger if you’re looking for the best balance of cost and features.
If you want the closest thing to WP Engine for about 90% less money, SiteGround is probably the best option in that scenario.
What is the Best Alternative to WP Engine?
Hostinger is the best alternative to WP Engine in our opinion because they have some features that WP Engine doesn’t (such as a website builder), and they’re also a recommended host by WordPress.org, which is a pretty high honor.
Where Can I Find a WP Engine Coupon Code?
If you’re considering WP Engine but worried about how much they cost, we’ve got a little bit of good news for you—we have a WP Engine coupon that offers a few months free.
In order to take advantage of this discount, check out our WP Engine coupon code page.
Where Can I Host My Email Since WP Engine Doesn’t Do It?
There are a lot of options for email hosting that you can use, but it really depends on your budget. If you don’t need hosting (because you already have WP Engine) we recommend using Microsoft 365 or Amazon WorkMail.
Final Thoughts on WP Engine Alternatives
At the end of the day—we really think there are 3 good options for cheaper WP Engine alternatives, and those are Hostinger, SiteGround, and DreamHost.
Each provider offers something a little bit different, with prices ranging from $2.59/month to $2.99/month, depending upon who you pick and the plan that you sign up for (although each hosting company also offers more expensive plans as well).
They’re all long-standing names in the web hosting industry with good customer service, reliable servers, and any of the above would make a great cheaper alternative to the venerable WP Engine!
