WP Engine is popular because they hit a sweet spot of automation, capability, and price. That means some things are turned off or tuned. In my experience, WP Engine generally has made good choices there.
That said, they are choices that won’t be perfect for everyone.
> we've had enterprise customers who had to fight tooth and nail to get this turned back on and paid an arm and a leg for it, this would not have been a problem on any other WP host I'm aware of.
Then just move those sites to another host? Why would you bother fighting and paying for this? I have 3 Wordpress sites that are too complex for WP Engine and they are hosted elsewhere. And yes, it’s more expensive than WP Engine, but if a site is truly “enterprise” then the difference is not material.
Like how wordpress.com disables stats unless you're on a premium tier? Or like how wordpress.com disables plugins entirely unless you're on another premium tier? That kind of disabling of things?
That said, his point is valid. WPEngine is one of the most expensive hosts in the industry yet they meddle with the behavior of WP as well as the underlying PHP and web server and disable a lot of things. Anyone who would like to build a website on WPEngine is advised to read:
https://wpengine.com/support/platform-settings/
And that's just the stuff they admit to.
The revisions being pulled out are the most egregious I would say. Revisions are an insanely important feature for some publishers, we've had enterprise customers who had to fight tooth and nail to get this turned back on and paid an arm and a leg for it, this would not have been a problem on any other WP host I'm aware of.
Their 'long query governor' can be very frustrating and in my experience, contrary to this document it cannot be fully disabled.
All these restrictions have crept in over the last few years. WP Engine pulled the usual trick of finding ways to lock people in, and then reducing service to increase margins.