Introduction

WP Engine’s Hosting Platform API provides a RESTful interface for programmatically managing your WP Engine account, sites, and environments. With it, you can automate tasks, integrate with external systems, and build custom workflows tailored to your business needs—without logging into the WP Engine User Portal.

Why Use the API?

The Hosting Platform API allows you to:

• Manage Sites & Installs: Create, update, and delete sites programmatically.
• Work with Environments: Access and manage production, staging, and development environments.
• Deploy Code & Automate: Connect to your Git workflows and automate routine site operations.
• Monitor & Troubleshoot: Query performance data, logs, and status information.
• Integrate Systems: Tie WP Engine into your CI/CD pipelines, dashboards, and third-party tools.

API Principles

The Hosting Platform API is designed around RESTful standards:

• Uses standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE)
• Returns responses in JSON format
• Follows consistent URL structures
• Implements standard HTTP status codes
• Provides structured, detailed error messages

Versioning

The current version of the API is v1. All requests should include the version in the URL:

API Base URL

https://api.wpengineapi.com/v1/sites

Rate Limits

To ensure reliable performance, the API enforces usage limits:

• 1,000 requests per hour per account
• 100 requests per minute per IP address

Caution

If these limits are exceeded, the API responds with 429 Too Many Requests.

Bugs / Limitations / Warnings

Sites

• The Sites feature is not yet available to all customers and may not apply to your account at this time.
• Create site operation only takes the name property, with no additional options.
• For example, you currently cannot create a multisite install or associate a site with a group.

Installs

• Please be mindful when creating installs in large batches, as doing so can potentially:
  • Degrade the performance of the entire cluster that the installs are hosted on.
  • Overload the cluster, causing the provisioning of the installs to fail.
• Update install operation currently only applies to the new Sites feature in Portal, which is not yet available to all customers (as noted above).
  • For example, it currently only allows an install to be moved into a site with multiple environments.
• Create install operation is rate limited, so multiple create installs in quick succession will return a “Too many requests” message.

Domains

• Please be mindful when creating domains in large batches, as doing so can degrade the performance of API requests related to the corresponding install.
• Create and update domain operations are rate limited. Multiple requests to these operations in quick succession will return a 429 “Too many requests” message.

Caches

• Cache purging is rate limited. The limit is unique for each type (object, page or CDN) due to the nature of the cache type. Multiple requests to purge the same cache type in quick succession will return a 429 “Too many requests” message.

Support

If you encounter issues or have questions, you can contact WP Engine support.