Plans and what they cost
WP Engine’s plans page lists Essential, Business and Enterprise. Essential runs on a shared environment with 75 GB bandwidth, 24/7 chat support, daily automated and on-demand backups, and one-click staging and development environments, starting at $28 per month billed annually ($336 paid upfront). Business moves to an isolated environment with 550 GB bandwidth, chat and phone support, a 99.99% uptime SLA, premium onboarding and Git-based CI/CD, starting at $400 per month billed annually. Enterprise is custom.
The Essential capacity tiers below come from the plans page. Its annual billing toggle says Save 20%, but on October 29, 2026 the page text showed a price only for the entry tier, so get the price of a larger tier at checkout before comparing.
| Essential tier | Visits per month | Storage | Price shown on the plans page |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 site | 25,000 | 10 GB | $28 per month billed annually ($336) |
| Up to 3 sites | 75,000 | 15 GB | Not shown; check at checkout |
| Up to 10 sites | 100,000 | 20 GB | Not shown; check at checkout |
| Up to 30 sites | 400,000 | 50 GB | Not shown; check at checkout |
Add-ons a course site may need
The plans page lists Smart Plugin Manager, Site Monitoring, Global Edge Security and other products as extensions, but the page text we read on October 29, 2026 gave no prices for them, and site uptime monitoring is marked as an optional add-on. Application performance monitoring is not included on Essential; it is an optional add-on on Business and Enterprise.
Course owners often assume automatic plugin updates, uptime monitoring and a firewall are part of the plan. Before comparing WP Engine with a host that bundles them, get the price of each extension you would actually use and add it to the plan price.
Cache rules for logged-in users
WP Engine’s cache documentation lists default exclusions, including pages where a cookie containing wordpress_ has a value set. WordPress documentation says it sets a wordpress_logged_in_ cookie after login, so lesson pages, quizzes and member dashboards are served uncached. WP admin, wp-login.php and pages named cart, checkout, store or check-out are also excluded, and further exclusions apply when WooCommerce is detected.
The page cache expires after 10 minutes by default, and the cache-control minimum cannot be set below 600 seconds. Custom cookie exclusions require a request to support, and Edge Full Page Cache does not respect custom cookie exclusions. If your membership plugin sets its own cookie to personalise public pages, test that behaviour with support before launch.
WP Engine’s object caching article says its default state on new environments is enabled, although the introduction to the same article says object caching must be enabled manually, so check the setting in your environment. The same article gives a 1 MB object cache buffer and advises keeping autoloaded data below 800,000 bytes. Large LMS sites with heavy autoloaded options should check that number before migrating.
Disallowed plugins that touch course sites
WP Engine publishes a disallowed plugins list. Users with a listed plugin are notified, and the plugin is eventually removed. The categories most likely to appear on an older course or membership site are below.
| Category | Examples named on the page | Stated reason | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caching | W3 Total Cache, WP File Cache | Conflicts with built-in caching | Remove before migrating; rely on host caching |
| Backup | BackupWordPress, WP DB Backup, WP DB Manager, VersionPress | Local storage bloat or local-only storage; VersionPress needs server functions WP Engine disables | Use host backups plus an off-site tool that stores data externally |
| Related posts | Contextual Related Posts, Similar Posts | Database intensive | Use an external service or drop the feature |
| Heavy writes | WP PostViews and others | WP PostViews writes to the database on every page load | Use analytics instead of per-view counters |
| Membership | Digital Access Pass (not on the disallowed list) | Not actively removed, but WP Engine says it does not work properly because it relies on PHP sessions and system-level cron jobs | Treat any plugin relying on PHP sessions as a migration risk and test on staging |
Visits, bandwidth and overages
WP Engine counts one visit per unique IP address per day (UTC) and sums the days. Static assets, known bots, suspected non-human user agents and 403 responses are excluded. Environments on a plan are added together at the end of the billing cycle.
WP Engine does not throttle sites during spikes. WP Engine’s visits article lists overage at $2 per 1,000 visits for its Startup, Professional, Growth, Scale and Agency plans; the plans page does not use those names for the Essential tiers, so confirm the rate for yours. Overages are billed monthly even on annual plans, and visits cannot be purchased as an extension; to raise the limit you upgrade. Example at that rate: a one-site plan with a 25,000-visit limit that receives 35,000 visits in a launch month would pay $20 on top of the plan for the 10,000 extra visits.
Bandwidth is different. WP Engine’s bandwidth article says shared and premium plans are not charged bandwidth overages; instead WP Engine reaches out about reducing usage or changing plan. All environments, including staging, count toward bandwidth. The same article suggests hosting videos on YouTube, Vimeo or another provider.
Backups and restores
Daily checkpoints are automatic and you can create manual ones before updates. WP Engine’s restore guide says it keeps 30 days of backups; the plans page describes retention as no less than 30 days and no longer than 60 days. Backups can be downloaded as full or partial ZIP files, available for 7 days once prepared.
The automated restore is full-site and destructive: files not present in the chosen backup are removed. Restoring only the database or only files is a manual job over SFTP, SSH Gateway or phpMyAdmin, and restoring specific tables is not supported. On a course site, a full restore to yesterday also rolls back today’s enrollments and orders, so export recent orders before restoring.
Who fits and who should skip
| Situation | Verdict | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Small course site with modest, steady traffic and no banned plugins | Fit | Essential covers staging, backups and chat support; bandwidth is not billed as overage |
| Agency or creator running several small sites | Fit | Multi-site Essential tiers share one plan |
| Busy membership site with many simultaneous logged-in members | Consider Business or skip | Logged-in pages bypass cache; Essential is a shared environment |
| Site that spikes at every launch | Budget carefully | Overages billed monthly ($2 per 1,000 on named plans) and no visit add-on |
| Site built on a plugin that relies on PHP sessions | Test first | WP Engine documents that such a plugin does not work properly |
Pre-migration checklist
- Compare your active plugins with the disallowed plugins list.
- Check autoloaded options size against the 800,000-byte guidance.
- Estimate monthly unique-IP visits, including launch months.
- List the add-ons you need and price them.
- Move lesson video to a video platform.
- Confirm any custom cookie exclusions with support.
Questions before you decide
Does WP Engine cache pages for logged-in users?
Its default cache exclusions include pages where a cookie containing wordpress_ is set, which covers logged-in WordPress users, so those pages are not served from the page cache.
What does WP Engine charge for extra visits?
Its visits article lists $2 per 1,000 visits over the limit for its Startup, Professional, Growth, Scale and Agency plans, billed monthly even on annual plans; confirm the rate for an Essential tier. Visits cannot be added as a product extension.
Will WP Engine charge me for bandwidth overages?
Its bandwidth article says shared and premium plans are not charged bandwidth overages; WP Engine contacts you instead.
Sources & verification
Product details and prices can change. Check the linked provider before buying.
- WP Engine: Plans and pricing Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- WP Engine Support: Cache Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- WP Engine Support: Disallowed plugins Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- WP Engine Support: How visits are counted Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- WP Engine Support: Bandwidth causes and effects Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- WP Engine Support: Object caching Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- WP Engine Support: Backup and restore Accessed 29 Oct 2026
- WordPress Developer Resources: Cookies Accessed 29 Oct 2026
Sources link directly to providers. Product buttons may use separately labeled affiliate links. Read our disclosure.