I host my clients at WP Engine (and happen to have an agency account that offers 24/7 phone support, among other perks above and beyond the top-level plans). However I have a client that’s interested in the WP dotcom Business plan, which incidentally compares itself to WPE here:
[https://wordpress.com/compare/wordpress-vs-wp-engine/])Looking at the professed specs (see [https://wordpress.com/pricing/#lpc-pricing]) and that it allows a custom theme to be installed with the usual server access, what argument can I make that a managed host like WPE is better? Unless there’s some gotcha about the WP dotcom environment, I don’t see how/why I should persuade them otherwise except to say that my offering has 24/7 phone support.
The client’s theme is completely custom (using Gutenberg with some custom blocks) and uses a handful of trusted plugins. Ordinary brochureware.
Looking at the comparison table, if it is true, then [WP.com]) looks better obvsiouly. But WPEngine is overpriced these days, and traffic/”visits” limits are stupid.
If you have the technical knowledge, you’re much better off with an unmanaged VPS from someone else like Linode or Digital Ocean where you can comfortably stick 30+ clients on a $48pm server. If DevOps isn’t your thing, use Runcloud.io.