Dedicated IP Address

Last updated on June 21st, 2021

A dedicated IP is a unique Internet address dedicated exclusively to a single hosting account. Normally, several hosting accounts reside on a single server and share that server’s IP address.

WP Engine’s Dedicated IP Policy states that we no longer provision Dedicated IPs for any accounts due to our preferred Infrastructure providers (AWS and Google) having no support for this request.

NOTE: WP Engine’s full dedicated IP whitepaper can be viewed here.

Table of Contents

1. Dedicated IP address for SEO

1.1. Google’s Response to Dedicated IPs

2. Dedicated IP Address to Ensure Email Integrity

3. Dedicated IP Address for SSL/HTTPS

Dedicated IP address for SEO

There are many sources with conflicting information as to what factors affect your site’s Search Engine Rankings (SEO), and that means it can often be difficult to find real answers to your SEO questions. At WP Engine we believe it’s best to look to a few trustworthy sources for answers:

Google and other search engines, since they make the search algorithms
SEO data points from reliable resources

Google’s Response to Dedicated IPs

Google is responsible for the search algorithm millions use to find content on the web daily. That means they have the ultimate say in what does and doesn’t affect your SEO.

With that in mind, Google has published documentation showing what hurts your search ranking, and shared IP addresses do not make the list.

Google has even published interviews and videos through the years specifically confirming that their search algorithm does not favor sites with dedicated IP addresses.

Trust reliable, proven data sources.

Some SEO experts may claim Google intentionally hides information about the effect of shared hosting on SEO. However, the available data simply does not support this notion.

Organizations like Moz gather large amounts of data regarding SEO rankings and what does or does not affect them, and their data (and community) agrees with Google.

A simple reverse-IP lookup will show you some of the leading sites in SEO (Google, Coca-Cola, CNN, Sucuri) all share their IP address with other domains.

If you are hosting many similar sites, you should consider the known risks to SEO: lack of HTTPS encryption, and overly cross-linking your websites.

Dedicated IP Address to Ensure Email Integrity

WP Engine uses some of the largest email infrastructure providers to ensure email deliverability. Due to our use of third-party email infrastructure providers, mail is not sent from your site’s IP address.

Instead, mail is sent through one of the IP addresses in our email provider’s IP range. The IP range is constantly monitored for blocklisting and the IP can be changed in a moment’s notice in reaction to issues without any effect on your site.

To better ensure email deliverability and reputation it’s best to use a third party email provider.

We also highly recommend configuring DMARC records for your email address.

Dedicated IP Address for SSL/HTTPS

WP Engine supports a technology called Server Name Indication (SNI) which allows our servers to intelligently serve the correct SSL certificate for the domain name requested.

It is true that much older browsers do not support SNI. However, SSL for those browsers is no longer supported by many other hosting providers (including WP Engine) due to the POODLE vulnerability.

As SSL is also not supported by those older browsers, a dedicated IP is not required to have SSL function appropriately on all supported browsers.

NEXT STEP: Learn how to configure CNAME flattening