Hetzner vs WP Engine

Hetzner is strongest for budget-conscious developers. WP Engine is strongest for WordPress-only sites. Here's how they stack up on price, uptime, and support.

Feature	Hetzner	WP Engine
Starting price	$0.6/mo	$30/mo
Best for	Budget-conscious developers EU-based workloads Self-hosters High-performance dedicated servers	WordPress-only sites Agencies managing multiple WP sites Enterprise WordPress High-traffic WordPress blogs/publishers
Stated uptime SLA	99.9%	99.99%
Storage	NVME	SSD
Regions	6	1
Managed Kubernetes	No	No
Support channels	Ticket, Docs, Community forum	Chat, Phone (Professional plan and above), Docs, Dedicated support team (Enterprise)
Compliance	GDPR, ISO 27001	GDPR
Hidden costs to watch for	Setup fees on dedicated servers (e.g. AX42/AX102 setup fee raised from 39 EUR to 79 EUR in 2026; AX162-R/S setup fee raised from 79 EUR to 159 EUR) Traffic overage billed per GB beyond included pool (20 TB EU, as little as 0.5-1 TB in USA/Singapore regions for some lines) CPX and CCX cloud lines saw very large price increases in the 15 June 2026 adjustment (CCX +2.1x to +2.73x, CPX +2.4x to +2.75x monthly in EU); CX and CAX rose a smaller ~1.3x-1.4x Load Balancer and Volume prices separately increased ~36-39% in an April 2026 adjustment VAT excluded from all listed prices	Visit overages billed at $2 per 1,000 visits beyond plan allowance Extra sites beyond plan limit billed around $20/mo per additional site on Startup Annual-billed prices shown on the marketing site often include a first-year-only promotional discount; renewal/steady-state annual rate can be higher than the advertised starting price Month-to-month billing (no annual commitment) costs roughly 17-20% more per month than annual billing Email hosting is NOT included; third-party estimates put it around $6-7 per mailbox per month Smart Plugin Manager and NitroPack optimization add-ons priced/bundled separately on Essential plans (included standard on Core) Numeric 99.99% uptime SLA is marketed prominently for Core/Enterprise tiers; not clearly guaranteed with a published SLA credit policy on Essential (Startup/Professional/Growth/Scale) plans
Last reviewed	2026-07-18	2026-07-18