[andreash]

pros and cons vs wpengine.com?

[swombat]

One obvious con will be that you have to set it up yourself while WPEngine is hands-off.

[thenomad]

Also, WP Engine do all the updates for you, which is not the case for this setup.

That's one of the major reasons I run most of my WP sites on a managed service - I'm a bit too busy to keep on top of all the updates that come out.

[nly]

Price maybe? $29/mo is pretty expensive for a personal blog.

[wodenokoto]

It's not the type of website that decides what hosting price is expensive, it is the amount of visitors.

If your site is visited enough to require non-trivial optimization, then 30 dollars a month is probably the least of your worries.