I'm responsible for a small nonprofit's website, but I'm not very familiar with web hosting. The site has been online for about 20 years. Our domain is registered with GoDaddy, and the site uses WordPress. We've apparently been paying WP Engine about $420 per year. Since we do all of our editing through WordPress, I'm wondering whether WP Engine is actually necessary. Is it the same thing as WordPress, or is it a separate hosting service? If we cancel or move away from it, could we lose the website, its content, or anything else? We only make basic updates ourselves, don't accept payments directly, and use an outside service for donation links.
4 Answers
There are cheaper hosting options, including less expensive managed WordPress plans. WP Engine’s price is partly for convenience and support, so compare what is included before switching. Make sure the replacement host supports your site’s PHP and database requirements, provides reliable backups, and can handle your existing theme and plugins. Test a copy of the site before changing the domain’s DNS records, and keep the old hosting active until everything works.
You probably wouldn’t lose the site by migrating correctly. The important pieces are the WordPress files, database, media uploads, domain settings, email configuration if the domain is used for email, and recent backups. Those can be transferred to another host. The main question is whether the savings are worth taking on more responsibility for updates, security, backups, and troubleshooting. Since you aren’t comfortable with the technical side, have an experienced person document the current setup and perform the migration rather than simply deleting the existing account.
Opinions about WP Engine vary, but it is not automatically unnecessary. Managed hosting can be useful for a nonprofit if nobody on staff can maintain WordPress. On the other hand, a small mostly informational site may work perfectly well on a cheaper host with basic managed updates. Ask whoever handles the site now whether WP Engine is providing backups, security monitoring, staging, or support that you rely on, then compare those services with alternatives. Also review the domain registration separately—the domain and the website hosting are different services.
WP Engine is your web host, not the WordPress software itself. WordPress is the content-management system you use to edit pages, while WP Engine provides the server space, backups, security, caching, and other hosting services that keep the site online. You could move the site to a less expensive host, but you would still need some hosting service. Canceling WP Engine without arranging a replacement first could take the website offline.
So WordPress by itself isn’t enough? We would need another hosting company if we moved away from WP Engine?