# WP Engine 6 Hacker News commenters recommended WP Engine and 12 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. **Verdict:** People recommend it as a major managed PHP host that handles issues well. Critics mainly object to its conduct toward WordPress and open source, plus recurring outages. ## Why people recommend it - Managed WordPress hosting people choose (2 comments): "surely they only got 50% of the market share by doing a better job of it?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49047728)) "if you're using something like WP Engine or Pantheon for hosting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736176)) - Responsive to incidents and issues (2 comments): "They're on top of it as I would expect any major PHP hosting service to be." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50176332)) "surely they only got 50% of the market share by doing a better job of it?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49047728)) ## What people warn about - Conduct toward WordPress and its community (5 comments): "they forked his open source project and built a hundred million dollar revenue business on top of it without contributing anything back to WordPress" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47605725)) "WP Engine has been highlighting WordPress and using the word in a way that it did make a lot of non-technical people believe" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49660107)) "they also started reaching out privately to theme authors with ambiguously-worded emails" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49641643)) - Ongoing hosting issues and outages (3 comments): "I am saying this as someone who has had repeated and ongoing issues with WP Engine as a hosting platform" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49635675)) "The incident status page says they're deploying, but there haven't been further updates about how far along they are." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50188116)) "personally been bitten by this particular WP Engine misfeature" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49635706)) - Costly, not price-competitive (2 comments): "cost a fortune - tens of thousands per year when you get a lot of traffic" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47753930)) "They compete on ads, not on price." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47998661)) - Not better than alternatives (2 comments): "If you use a service like WPEngine, that's no better than using substack." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48334951)) "WPEngine isn't even that amazing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49643735)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Neocities](https://hackerapproved.com/p/neocities.md): 34 recommend - [NearlyFreeSpeech.net](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nearlyfreespeech-net.md): 29 recommend - [DreamHost web hosting](https://hackerapproved.com/p/dreamhost.md): 16 recommend - [Mythic Beasts hosting](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mythic-beasts.md): 8 recommend - [pico.sh](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pico-sh.md): 5 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://wpengine.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "WP Engine", https://hackerapproved.com/p/wp-engine/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).