WP Engine Changelog

What changed: WP Engine's plan builder (wpengine.com/plans, read live 2026-10-28, USD, regular prices) shows Essential at $35 / $65 / $130 / $330 per month (1 / 3 / 10 / 30 sites) on monthly billing and $420 / $780 / $1,560 / $3,960 per year on annual billing, which is the same monthly rate: no annual discount at regular price. On 2026-10-05 we had read annual billing 20% lower ($336 / $624 / $1,248 / $3,168 a year). A 25% promo code (WPE3FORFREE) was auto-applied during the 2026-10-28 read and is excluded.

Why it matters: Pages that quoted $28 a month billed annually for the entry plan, or $104 a month ($1,248 a year) for 10 sites, now show the same rate for monthly and annual billing. The WP Engine review, the comparison pages, the renewal-prices page and the agency multisite guide were updated.

Affects: WP Engine Review, WP Engine vs Kinsta, Pressable vs WP Engine, WooCommerce Multisite for Agencies

Read with Claude in Chrome on 2026-10-28 (plan builder, Monthly and Annual toggles). The discount seen on 2026-10-05 may have been a promotion; WP Engine says renewal pricing is subject to change.

What changed: WP Engine plans page, read live 2026-10-25 (USD): Essential from $28/month billed annually ($336 a year), 25,000-400,000 visits, 10-50 GB, shared environment; Business $400/month billed annually, 400,000-800,000 visits, 50 GB-2 TB, isolated resources, phone support, managed site migrations, 99.99% uptime SLA, one AI-powered automatic plugin and theme updates license and one uptime-monitoring license included; Enterprise custom. The plan that our pages called "Core" is listed as Business. Advanced DDoS and managed WAF (Global Edge Security) is listed as an optional add-on on all three plans.

Why it matters: Our comparison pages, the WP Engine review, the migration guides and the compare hub used the name "Core" and said Global Edge Security is included with it; they now say Business and describe the WAF as an add-on on every plan. The compare hub card said "from $20/mo" and now says $28/mo.

Affects: WP Engine Review, Kinsta vs WP Engine, Pressable vs WP Engine, WP Engine to Kinsta Migration

Read via Firecrawl (query, no cache) from wpengine.com/plans on 2026-10-25, after the 2026-10-18 price-change alert. Entry prices ($28 annual, $35 monthly) were already correct in the facts record.

What changed: WP Engine's plan builder (wpengine.com/plans, read 2026-10-05, USD) now shows Essential on monthly billing at $35 / $65 / $130 / $330 per month (1 / 3 / 10 / 30 sites) and on annual billing 20% lower: $336 / $624 / $1,248 / $3,168 per year, which is $28 per month for the 1-site entry. On 2026-09-28 we recorded annual billing at $420 per year for the entry tier, the same $35 per month as monthly billing, and the Monthly option changed nothing. Core still starts at $400 per month.

Why it matters: The "$35 a month on annual billing" figure on our pages is now the monthly-billing price. Paying yearly is cheaper than paying monthly, which reverses our earlier finding. Pages that quote the old annual price are being updated.

Affects: WP Engine Review, WP Engine vs Kinsta, WP Engine vs Rocket.net, Web Hosting Renewal Prices

Read with headless Chrome on 2026-10-05 and reported identically by three independent sites. WP Engine's page says first-year pricing and coupons apply to new Essential customers and that renewal pricing is subject to change, so we have not confirmed whether the annual discount continues after year one.

What changed: Our pages said WP Engine keeps 40 days of backups on all plans ("40-day self-service, 60-day via support"). WP Engine's own support doc (wpengine.com/support/restore/, updated 8 June 2026) says "WP Engine keeps 30 days of backups", and its plans page says it retains backups "for no less than 30 days and no longer than 60 days". We found no 40-day figure on any WP Engine page. All pages now say 30 days. The comparison figures were corrected at the same time: Kinsta keeps 14 days on its entry plans, 20 days on mid-size plans and 30 days on its largest plans and Agency plans (Kinsta docs), and Rocket.net keeps 30 days on every plan (Rocket.net pricing page), not the 14 days some comparisons assumed.

Why it matters: WP Engine's backup window is no longer a differentiator against Rocket.net (30 days on both) and is only longer than Kinsta on Kinsta's entry and mid-size plans. Sentences that named backup retention as a reason to pick WP Engine over Rocket.net or Pressable were removed or reworded; Pressable's own retention window could not be verified and is no longer compared.

Affects: WP Engine Review, WP Engine vs Kinsta, WP Engine vs Rocket.net, WP Engine vs Cloudways, Pressable vs WP Engine

Verified via Firecrawl (no cache) on 2026-10-03 against WP Engine, Kinsta and Rocket.net pages. This corrects an error on our side; WP Engine did not change its policy.

What changed: WP Engine's plan builder (wpengine.com/plans, read 2026-09-28) sells Managed Hosting Platform "Essential" by capacity, all on annual billing at regular prices: 1 site / 25,000 visits / 10 GB $420/yr ($35/mo); up to 3 sites / 75,000 visits / 15 GB $780/yr ($65/mo); up to 10 sites / 100,000 visits / 20 GB $1,560/yr ($130/mo); up to 30 sites / 400,000 visits / 50 GB $3,960/yr ($330/mo). Core starts at $400/mo and Enterprise is custom. A 25% first-year promo code (WPE3FORFREE) was auto-applied on the day (entry $26.25/mo) and is excluded from these figures. The named Startup/Professional/Growth/Scale tiers are no longer sold; the plan builder's internal IDs still map to the four capacity steps.

Why it matters: Replaces the earlier per-tier figures recorded in August ($30 / $55 / $109 / $276, which were the old named plans' monthly rates). Pages still quoting "Professional $59 (10 sites, 200k visits)", "Professional $50–55" or "Growth $109" were corrected: the multisite-agency cost table (10-site capacity is $130/mo, $1,560/yr, not $59/$708), the WP Engine-to-Kinsta migration guide, the Rocket.net alternatives page, the Pressable review comparison, and the WP Engine review's pricing table.

Affects: WP Engine Review — Pricing, WooCommerce Multisite and Agency Hosting

Read via Claude in Chrome on 2026-09-28. Follow-up the same day: with the plan builder's Monthly option selected (real DOM click, radio confirmed checked) the capacity step shows the same per-month prices, so monthly billing carries the same rate. WP Engine's support doc (updated 12 July 2026) says phone support is unavailable for Lite and Startup plans; the plan builder's ID for the 1-site entry capacity is "startup", so the entry capacity is chat/ticket only, but the docs do not list which higher capacities include phone. Note the earlier August entry's monthly figures pre-date this plan-builder view. Re-verified 2026-10-03 via Claude in Chrome after the weekly price check flagged the page: same regular prices ($420 / $780 / $1,560 / $3,960 per year); the auto-applied promo differed by session (20% in one fetch, 25% in another), so only the Regular price line is used.

What changed: Archived plans pages 2022–2025 print a struck-through regular price next to the first-year price: Startup $360/yr ($30/mo) list vs first-year $300 (2022), $240 (2023, 2024), $25/mo (2025, 2026); Jan 2025 page shows $30/mo on monthly billing. The 2022 page's footnote reads 'then $300/yr after first year', conflicting with its $360 list. Live 2026-09-28: entry Essential capacity $35/mo list.

Why it matters: Corrects the tracker's earlier claim that WP Engine never published a renewal figure; regular price +17% over the window. Fine print says first-year pricing does not apply to renewals and renewal pricing is subject to change.

Affects: Historical Hosting Price Tracker

Historical entry recovered on 2026-09-28 from the host's own archived plans pages (Wayback Machine); the exact change date falls between the two snapshot dates named. List price is not a stated renewal quote.

What changed: WP Engine's Professional, Growth, and Scale plans moved from $63/$100/$249 per month to $55/$109/$276 per month (mixed direction — Professional down, Growth and Scale up). Startup ($30/mo) and Core Hosting ($400/mo) are unchanged. Site/visit/storage allocations per tier are also unchanged — this is a price-only change, not a plan restructuring.

Why it matters: Professional is now cheaper than previously documented; Growth and Scale are now more expensive. Anyone comparing WP Engine's mid-tier plans against Pressable, Kinsta, or Rocket.net on price should use the current figures, not the older ones.

Affects: Pricing — The Full Picture

Discovered during a routine Rule 14 pricing verification, not a monitored announcement — exact change date unknown. content/by-situation/migration-guides/leaving-wp-engine.md already had the current figures, suggesting this changed before 2026-08-29 and only content/reviews/wp-engine.md's own pricing table was stale.