Flywheel Hosting, founded in 2012, stands out from the crowded hosting market by exclusively focusing on managed WordPress hosting solutions. But with a starting price triple that of other well-known providers, is Flywheel worth the premium?
We thoroughly tested Flywheel’s managed platform across key criteria like performance, features, ease of use and support to determine where it truly shines for WordPress users versus DIY-oriented hosts. After extensive hands-on evaluation, Flywheel proves a justifiable splurge for busy site owners prioritizing convenience over cost. Yet it may underwhelm sites needing more advanced functionality.
Our 2023 Flywheel review cuts through the hype to reveal specifically who its managed hosting excels for, where it falls short and everything else WordPress site owners need to confidently decide if Flywheel’s five-star service warrants the higher expense compared to alternatives like WP Engine or GoDaddy Managed WordPress.
Table of Contents
What is Flywheel Hosting?
Flywheel Hosting is a hosting company, who were established in 2012, making them recent on the hosting scene. In 2013 Flywheel was in beta and then launched to the public. Since then they have moved to their main premises, reached over 100 employee’s and celebrated their 5th year anniversary. They are now located in various places around the world, including Europe, Asia, Australia and many spots in the US.
As a company they strive on giving the best customer support, as they know how we all feel, being their themselves. This is one of the few reasons flywheel became a thing. They also take a lot of pride in their workers, who are very diverse. Happy staff equals happy customers, eh?
Does Flywheel Hosting offer good hosting?
Flywheel offers many plans. You are able to purchase these plans on a monthly or a yearly basis, so whichever suits you best. Of course, purchasing their hosting yearly means it will be cheaper in the long run. Flywheel offer plans for single sites and also ones for lots of installs. they even separate one from the other making it easier for a customer to choose the right plan for them. Altogether they have six plans, which is quite unique.
Throughout the world Flywheel have seven datacentres, they use to host your site. These are located in Singapore, Toronto, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, San Francisco and New York. New York being Flywheel’s main server, where they would host your site by default unless you say otherwise.
What kind of plans do Flywheel Hosting offer?
It is worth to note that as of the 1stMay 2019, Flywheel made their biggest change in their history by offering new plans. This means that the plans offered before that date wouldn’t be offered anymore except to existing customers who already own one of these plans.
This means that the Single Site and Bulk Plans shown below are not offered anymore by Flywheel.
New Flywheel Hosting Plans
(As of Nov. 21st 2023)
Tiny Plan;
The first plan Flywheel Hosting offers is the Tiny Plan, suitable for bloggers and single site users. This Starter Plan costs a very small price of $13 a month which equalls to $150 a year including 2 months free.
This plan allows for up to one WordPress install, a cap of 5,000 visits a month to that one install, 5GB of disk and a bandwidth of 20GB.
Along with these features, this plan also has additional features, tools, support and add-ons. Since this is the cheapest plan available on Flywheel not all support features are available. The only support available is 24/7 chat support, which is great already since its 24/7.
Other important features that are included in the Starter Plan are SSL Certificates, CDN, Staging Sites and much more. To find out all the features available for the Flywheel Starter Plan visit the Flywheel site.
Starter Plan;
The second plan Flywheel Hosting offers is the Starter Plan, suitable for bloggers and single site users. This Starter Plan costs a very small price of $20 a month which equalls to $240 a year including 4 months free.
This plan allows for up to one WordPress install, a cap of 100,000 visits a month to that one install, 10GB of disk and an abndwidth of 50GB.
Along with these features, this plan also has additional features, tools, support and add-ons. Since this is the cheapest plan available on Flywheel not all support features are available. The only support available is 24/7 chat support, which is great already since its 24/7.
Other important features that are included in the Starter Plan are SSL Certificates, CDN, Staging Sites and much more. To find out all the features available for the Flywheel Starter Plan visit the Flywheel site.
Freelance Plan;
The Third Plan available on Flywheel Hosting is the Freelance Plan. This plan is a suitable plan for any freelancer out there as it allows up to ten installs. It costs a much larger amount a month due to it allowing up to ten installs.
This plan costs $77 a month which is billed at $920 a year including 4 months free. Not only does this plan allow up to ten site installs but it also includes up to 100,000 visits a month over all sites, 20GB of disk and 200GB of bandwidth.
Additionally to the features above the Freelance Plan includes all the additional features of the Starter Plan including the 24/7 support, CDN and SSL Certificates. The only features that are included in the plan that don’t feature in the Starter Plan are third-party SSL Certificates and the White Label add on. To find out all the features available for the Flywheel Starter Plan visit the Flywheel site.
Agency Plan;
the Agency Plan is the largest set out plan available on Flywheel. Other than this plan, you can contact Flywheel directly for a quote about larger plans.
The Agency Plan is by far more expensive than the first two plans, costing $194 a month, which is billed annually which works out to $329 a year including 4 months free.
This plan is ideal for a small agency or a large freelancer who needs a bigger plan than the freelancer plan.
This plan comes with almost all features available on Flywheel. The other features that are not included are only available on a cutom plan. With up to 30 sites made available on this plan, the site also has a visit cap of 400,000 visits a month over all sites, 50GB of storage and 500GB of bandwidth. To find out all the features available for the Flywheel Starter Plan visit the Flywheel site.
Flywheel Hosting‘s Performance. What’s it like?
Unlike many other hosting companies, Flywheel doesn’t guarantee uptime. If you go n their site and see no guarantee’s you might want to move on. Even without any uptime guarantee’s, Flywheel’s uptime statistics show excellent results. They have even received an award from cloudspectator.com for 100% uptime. You can’t get much better than that.
Along with their uptime stats, Flywheel seems to also perform well with upload time. This is something many hosts cannot guarantee or offer, with many generally being better at one thing over the other. By having great speeds, your SEO can improve.
What about Flywheel Hosting‘s security too?
With every plan, you get free SSL. This is Flywheels own simple SSL add-on. This secure socket layer helps to protect users of your website’s details, including their name, billing address and card details. The SSL does this by locking the page where the user needs to enter their details and all information entered becomes encrypted.
Flywheel also uses a plugin that limits the number of times you can try to login to your WordPress account. The limit is set at three times and then makes you wait to then enter your password again. This stops attacks trying to use brute force to access your sites as they have a limited amount of tries to get into your sites.
Flywheel also handles all security at the server level. So they recommend not installing any security plugin as they might conflict with the performance of your site. They even offer free malware removal. With a team of experts looking out for many harmful strategies, so they can fix any problems quickly and easily.
An IP Blocking feature is included with Flywheel too. This stops hackers gaining access to your website as the system is set up to detect intruders and then blocks their IP address.
Do Flywheel Hosting have a good support network?
Flywheel offer support 9 am-5 pm, Monday to Friday. These are just their standard hours. In an emergency, you can contact them 24/7. Emergencies would be if there is a problem with your site’s hosting, whereas, during the standard hours, they would be dealing with potential customers a lot more.
Flywheel also provides help documents and articles, similar to what I am doing here. Within this, they have separated different topics such as security, billing and many others. By separating the topics it means users can find what they are looking for quick and easy. There is also a topic called general questions, which to me and you are articles about faqs. Within this hep section, you can also search for different articles and it will generate search results, similar to what you searched.
There is also a section within Flywheels’s support called app status. Within this part of the support, it tells users of Flywheel if there are any scheduled maintenance on their app. It also tells users of any unscheduled maintenance that could cause downtime. This support feature is great because it means Flywheel is dedicated to giving their customers the best product and when they go down, their customers is the first to know. This even gives estimates of how long downtime will occur.
A ticket system is also used by Flywheels support. This helps prioritise different problems by customers.
Any unique/other features?
Flywheel is one of the first, if not the first hosting site to not charge overage charges. This means the number of visits shown in your plan is a rough estimate of how many visits you should get with that plan. So, don’t worry if you go over the number shown in your plan, because you will not be charged.
Nightly backups are also a feature Flywheel offer to all their customers. The backups are run every night and are available to restore for up to 30 days after the backup. This means if you do something terribly wrong and have been doing it for a while on your site, you can back whatever amount of days within the 30 to the point you would like. You can restore your backup with their one-click restore, so it’s easy for anyone to restore their website. This means you will never need any backup plugins if you host with Flywheel.
Like many other hosts, Flywheel also offers a site migration feature and one-click staging. The site migration tool Flywheel use is Migrate Guru. With this plugin, you must manually migrate your site across to Flywheel. Don’t worry though, a step by step guide to do this offer. The one-click staging also means you can edit your site without the edit going live to the world. This is a great feature as it means you can see if your edit works well with your site and if you don’t like it, the world will not see it.
Users also have access to the site cloning feature which allows users to copy their site and make small changes quickly.
The benefits to Flywheel Hosting;
Flywheel has many benefits to their hosting. Some of them such as the malware monitoring, auto backup, free simple SSL and you’re money-back guarantee are just a few I have previously talked about above.
One of the most important advantages of hosting with Flywheel is their datacenters. They have many around the world, and you’re also able to choose which datacenter you would like your sites to be hosted in. This can help to increase your upload speeds, if you’re hosting is in a data center located closer to you.
You’re also able to choose monthly or yearly payment. This is great because not everyone would want to pay yearly as its a very large amount all in one transaction. So paying monthly is a great alternative that many competitors do not offer.
Flywheel also allows users to create a site before paying for it. This is what we call a demo site. This feature is great for client work, as it means you can create a site for a client and then pass it over to them to pay for the hosting.
One final benefit of Flywheel is their interface. Flywheel provide a nice, cool and easy to use interface.
Disadvantages of Flywheel Hosting;
One of the biggest disadvantages to Flywheel is their price. You have probably thought it from this article and I am certain that’s their biggest downfall. Their price reminds you of WP Engine prices. I do believe that their price is expensive but for what you get with Flywheel, I can understand why. Their support, Security and performance just mark for itself.
Another disadvantage to Flywheel is you can only purchase it in dollars. This can dampen the appeal of Flywheel in more international markets, such as the UK, Europe and Asia. By having payment in dollars, some customers might get a shock when VAT is added at the end of their bill.
To increase the security of Flywheel, some plugins are disabled by Flywheel themselves. The simple SSL also doesn’t work with the multi-site feature. These can cause problems for some users as they might need to use some of the disabled plugins on their website. Using the multi-site feature also means the user will need to purchase their own SSL certificate and apply it to their site manually.
With almost every plan, if you want the CDN or the multi-site feature, it will cost extra. Usually its a $10 per month for each of the two additional features. The agency bulk plan costs an extra $8 a month for each of the added features.
The final disadvantage is again a big one. Flywheels support isn’t 24/7 unless its an emergency for your website. This can cause problems as many people may want to go with Flywheel but they cant inquire to the next day.
Flywheel Hosting My Thoughts;
I feel like Flywheel would be a great hosting to go for. Yeah, they are expensive, but they’ve got the goods to go along with the price. Their security, support (Apart from not being 24/7), and performance all seem excellent. Not only do they offer to host, but they offer many more features to help your site’s SEO and hosting.
Flywheel Hosting FAQ
Still, have some questions about Flywheel Hosting managed WordPress hosting service? Here are answers to some frequently asked questions:
Is Flywheel Hosting good for high-traffic sites?
Yes, Flywheel Hosting offers resource allocations capable of handling 500k+ visits per month. Enterprise-grade options can scale to millions of pageviews.
Does Flywheel Hosting offer a free domain name?
No, a free domain registration is not included. However, Flywheel does provide free migrations and SSL certificates.
What is Flywheel Hosting’s uptime guarantee?
Flywheel Hosting guarantees 99.98% uptime with financial credits provided if they fail to meet this SLA.
Does Flywheel Hosting manage WordPress core updates?
Yes, Flywheel Hosting handles all WordPress updates in the background for you to maintain performance and security.
Flywheel Hosting Conclusion
If you want a simplified, managed WordPress hosting experience where an expert team handles the technical backend, security, updates, staging, migrations and more for you, then Flywheel is likely worth the premium price. Top-notch proactive support and high performance give site owners peace of mind.
However, budget-focused users with technical confidence to manage WordPress independently can likely get by with cheaper DIY-style hosts, albeit with more hands-on admin effort required. Review all options to pick the right balance of convenience versus affordability for your needs.
This article was last updated on 21 November 2023
*ALL PRICING WITHIN THIS ARTICLE WERE ACCURATE AT TIME OF WRITING. ALL STERLING (GBP) AND EURO (EUR) WERE CONVERTED FROM DOLLARS (USD) USING GOOGLE’S OWN CONVERTER.
*ALL PLANS AND PACKAGES MADE BY FLYWHEEL ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE BY FLYWHEEL THEMSELVES.
Check out other hosting reviews;WP Engine | SiteGround | GoDaddy | HostGator | iPage | Flywheel | DigitalOcean | Bluehost | DreamHost | InMotion | NameCheap | 1&1 | Site5 | 123Reg | A2 | Liquid Web
To find out more about Flywheel and what they offer, check out FlyWheel
