Rocket.Net vs. WP Engine Comparison In 2024

You can get fully managed WordPress hosting at WP Engine or Rocket.net. However, they are expensive compared to regular shared and VPS hosting.

WPEngine is more mature than Rocket.net, but Rocket has more features, like Redis PRO, increased monthly visits, complete Cloudflare Enterprise, etc.

Regular web publishers use WP Engine, but Rocket is specifically designed for modern WordPress users. WPE uses regular SSDs even though it uses Google Cloud as its web server. Read-write speeds on NVMe are faster than SSDs. Web hosting performance affects how fast your site can operate and handle traffic.

I wouldn’t recommend WPEngine or Rocket.net to newbies or small sites. Also, they’re unsuitable for users with a lot of bandwidth or storage requirements.

It may be more practical to compare WP Engine vs. Rocket using charts because their differences are clearly visible.

Rocket.Net vs. WPEngine: Comparison Table

Rocket.Net

Personally, I prefer RocketNet over most of the other managed WordPress hosting providers I have tried simply – because it is more modern and knows how to keep up with the latest developments.

RocketNet is too expensive for beginners, but it is simple to use and works smoothly. It can be affordable if you have a couple of sites, but it’s pricey if you have a bunch. More bandwidth and storage you need, the more you’ll pay.

It has gained a reputation for having robust Cloudflare Enterprise+Edge caching. RocketNet doesn’t cap PHP workers like other hosting providers, so you’ll get more monthly visits even on entry-level plans. The good thing is that there aren’t any restrictions on WP plugins, so you can even use security and cache plugins.

RocketNet offers hosting for small to large sites. They have Level 1 packages for small sites and enterprise hosting prices close to $2000 monthly.

Pros:

• Increased Visits Per Month: Even the starter plan offers more than 250K monthly visits, making it profitable compared to similar others.
• Full-page caching: TTFB can be improved worldwide using Cloudflare+APO (Edge) full-page caching – Global TTFB within 100 milliseconds.
• Discount For Entry: You can try any hosting plan for $1 for the first month, excluding enterprise. (It can change at any time).
• PHP Workers Without Limits: Good if you have a lot of dynamic requests on medium-to-big sites. Most similar hosts have a limit on PHP workers.
• Free Redis: Compared to Memcached, Redis is faster, more flexible, and saves you a lot of resources on online stores and dynamic sites.
• Quality Customer Service: Trustpilot reviews and other similar sites also give them great reviews for their customer service.
• Enhanced Security: The server has an Imunify firewall and real-time malware detection. Rocket.net lets you monitor Cloudflare Enterprise’s Web Application Firewall, DDOS mitigation, and bot detection.

Cons:

• Some Limitations: That’s for storage and bandwidth. Rocket-Net’s pricing is primarily based on bandwidth consumption. And most premium hosts are unsuitable for you if you want more storage.
• Expensive: Cost isn’t as high as other premium managed hosts – however, it can be quite expensive if you have multiple websites or require a lot of bandwidth and storage space.

Cloudflare Enterprise

Rocket/Net is notable for its full integration of Cloudflare Enterprise, and it has also become fashionable for most other web hosting companies to implement the same solution. And Rocket.net doesn’t limit staging sites like WPE.

This is good because most of your website traffic goes through Cloudflare CDN servers instead of the hosting server. Using rocket-net, you don’t need WordPress security, cache, image optimization, or any other plugin. And it’s not just for CDN or security reasons; you’ll get helpful enterprise features, such as:

• Argo Smart Routing: Cloudflare study found that Argo significantly reduces latency. And helps improve stability by intelligently handling requests through Cloudflare’s network (using the fastest routes).
• Image Optimization: Rocket/Net enhances images and removes attributes without losing quality using Cloudflare Polish and Mirage image optimization. You do not need to use image optimization plugins.
• More Protection: C-Enterprise plans come with more security measures. Your website is secure both by the host and CDN – secure without plugins.
• Load Balancing and Prioritized Routing: Cloudflare’s load balancing is a subscription-based feature that supports various mechanisms for traffic distribution. The result is lower latency and faster routines on each server. Prioritized routing helps reduce traffic overload, peaks, and outages.
• Various caching mechanisms: There are more caching features with Rocket/Net, Cloudflare Tiered Cache, and Full-page caching. It also includes various server-side caching layers.

Rocket.net also utilizes Cloudflare Enterprise to extend security features such as SQL-XSS prevention, malicious files, directory traversal, unauthorized access, anti-spam, etc. (FlyingCDN, for example, uses Cloudflare Enterprise).

Provide automatic protection against the most common threats to your WordPress site. You can see what’s happening with your website’s security in real-time – find detailed info about the incidents on the website.

WP Engine

WP Engine is a mature – managed WordPress hosting company. Yes, it is a big name, but it’s slow, especially for heavy websites.

WPE has a list of disallowed plugins – most are banned because they’re large in size or have vulnerabilities, but RocketNet hasn’t banned any.

See how much it costs to host one site on WPE with 100,000 visits a month—almost $100/M. I can host multiple websites with unlimited visitors on a cloud VPS like Vultr for that price. I think WP Engine is overly expensive, and the cost is due more to its brand and marketing tactics than to the quality of its service.

However, many other reputable providers still offer more competitive rates. Almost all web hosts use trick marketing strategies, but WPE’s marketing is too fancy for me. Scheduled maintenance isn’t included in uptime guarantees.

There’s usually a safe and reliable configuration on managed web hosts. And most bloggers/publishers recommend them because they pay big affiliate commissions. Compared to VPS, WP-E is like shared hosting – it’s popular with novices but hated by techies.

Pros

• Reliable: It is a reliable WP managed hosting service that has operated for many years. Good customer service and tech support.
• More Bandwidth: Offers more bandwidth than RocketNet.
• Google Cloud C2: WPE uses Google Cloud infrastructure but still uses SSDs instead of the faster ones.

Cons

• Marketing priorities: The marketing and brand make it pricey – Instead of focusing on quality, they focus on marketing tactics.
• Limitations: WPE has limited resources compared to Rocket-net, such as the PHP limit, monthly visits, object cache, migration, CDN features, etc.

Shared web hosting is slow because you have to share the same server with hundreds of other people – servers get slow, crash, and restart, causing security issues. More noticeable when your traffic’s high.

Sum It Up

Rocket.net definitely wins when it comes to features compared to WP Engine. Yes, both use Cloudflare Enterprise, but Rocket uses it with more settings, such as smart routing, dynamic cache, smart scaling, and full-page caching.

While WP Engine uses Memcached, RocketNet uses Redis as its object cache. Rocket uses LiteSpeed as the PHP handler, while most others use FastCGI.

When you’re looking for a good web host, you see many sites saying some are rubbish and not worth it. On the other hand, there are tons of happy customers.

Others have really positive reviews and suggestions, but they’re garbage. Many people opt for cheap hosting with discounts. But I think you can trust your own experience with hosting firms. Changing your web host, like moving from shared hosting to a fully managed host like RocketNet, will increase speed.

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