Flywheel

Let’s review quick facts about Flywheel, a managed WordPress host before we provide our full Flywheel review.

As a WordPress hosting company, Flywheel offers users managed WordPress hosting services.

Its services include automatic updates, Flywheel’s caching system, a staging site environment for easy testing, and more.

Price

• Tiny: $15 per month
• Starter: $30 per month
• Freelance: $115 per month
• Agency: $290 per month
• Custom: Contact Flywheel for pricing

Discounts Available

If you choose to pay for the yearly plan, you can save money in the long run.

Lifetime Plan

• No.

Flywheel Pros

• A robust infrastructure in the cloud
• An affordable option
• International data centers

Flywheel Cons

• Doesn’t include backups to the staging area
• The company doesn’t provide domains
• Limited backend access

Introduction

Are you looking for an informative Flywheel review?

If so, you’ve come to the right place.

In this blog post, we will discuss everything you need to know about Flywheel’s managed WordPress hosting services.

We’ll cover what Flywheel is, the pros and cons of using it, how business owners can benefit from it, and its best features.

So, whether you’re just starting with WordPress or need a more reliable host for your website, Flywheel is worth considering.

Overview of Flywheel

Let’s look at what Flywheel is and how it began, to better understand what we’ll cover in our Flywheel review.

What Is Flywheel?

Flywheel is a WordPress hosting company.

The company remains focused on helping designers, agencies, and freelance professionals manage their WordPress sites more efficiently.

Flywheel History

Founded by Dusty Davidson, Rick Knudtson, and Tony Noecker in 2012, Flywheel operates with the mission of simplifying WordPress hosting for creative professionals.

Another giant in the WordPress industry, WP Engine, acquired Flywheel in 2019.

Pros and Cons of Flywheel

There are advantages and disadvantages to choosing Flywheel as your WordPress host.

Let’s take a look at some of them.

Pros of Flywheel

• One-click staging area
• Builds fast-loading websites
• Easy-to-use dashboard

Cons of Flywheel

• Doesn’t include custom-domain email hosting
• Doesn’t offer a free trial

How Much Does Flywheel Cost?

Each Flywheel pricing plan comes with several tools and capabilities to help you create, manage, and optimize your website.

Here’s a rundown of what they contain.

Tiny Plan

You get the following features with the Tiny plan.

• One website
• 5 GB storage
• 5,000 visits
• 20 GB bandwidth
• Fastly CDN
• FlyCache (excludes common plugins from caching)
• Free SSL certificate
• Genesis Framework
• 10 StudioPress themes
• Global availability
• Plugin security alerts
• Third-party SSL certificates
• Blueprints
• Billing transfer
• Staging sites
• Free demo site
• Nightly backups
• Site cloning
• Google Analytics add-on
• 24/7 chat support
• Free migrations
• Performance Insights
• Managed plugin updates

Cost: $15 per month ($13/mo when billed annually)

Starter Plan

The Starter plan adds the following features to the features inside the Tiny plan:

• 10 GB storage
• 25,000 visits
• 50 GB bandwidth

Cost: $30 per month ($25/mo when billed annually)

Freelance Plan

The Freelance plan includes all of the features of the Starter plan, as well as the following advantages:

• Up to 10 websites
• 20 GB storage
• 100,000 visits
• 200 GB bandwidth
• Multisite features

Cost: $115 per month ($96/mo when billed annually)

Agency Plan

The Agency plan adds the following features to what you receive with the Freelance Plan:

• Up to 30 websites
• 50 GB storage
• 400,000 visits
• 500 GB bandwidth
• Phone support
• Migration dashboard
• Dedicated account manager

Cost: $290 per month ($242/mo when billed annually)

Custom Plan

The following features come in the Custom plan, in addition to those received with the Agency Plan:

• 30+ websites
• Custom storage
• Million+ visits
• Custom bandwidth
• Quarterly business reviews

Cost: Contact Flywheel for pricing

Is Flywheel Worth the Cost?

Flywheel is an affordable solution for anyone from solopreneurs to large companies.

Therefore, it is worth the cost.

Why Flywheel Is Worth the Cost

Flywheel provides an easy-to-use interface, a one-click staging area, and performance insights.

The company also offers a wide range of features, including plugin security alerts, managed updates, and free site migrations.

Plus, it will provide you with excellent customer support.

Another reason to seriously consider Flywheel is that you can get managed WordPress hosting on the Tiny and Starter plans for pricing that some non-managed hosts charge.

You can only create a website for yourself on these plans.

However, even with the more expensive Freelance plan, you can turn the approximately $100 per month cost into additional revenue by managing multiple client websites.

The Problem Flywheel Solves

Flywheel solves the problem of having to spend a lot of time managing your WordPress website.

Flywheel’s features allow you to focus on other aspects of your business, while Flywheel takes care of the technical aspects of running your website.

Why Would Somebody Want To Use Flywheel?

Think about how many hours you currently invest operating your website.

Flywheel can save you time by optimizing your website’s performance and managing updates for you.

Flywheel’s services make it easy for busy entrepreneurs and small business owners to operate their WordPress websites with less hassle.

Who Is Flywheel Best For?

Flywheel’s managed hosting services are ideal for businesses of all sizes.

If you want to focus on running your business instead of managing your website, Flywheel is a good choice.

However, Flywheel works best for agencies in charge of managing client websites.

Why Flywheel Is Best for Agencies

Flywheel’s Freelance, Agency, and Custom plans work well for agencies that manage multiple WordPress websites.

The company makes it easy to collaborate with team members, track client billing, and migrate websites.

Flywheel also offers a migration dashboard and a dedicated account manager.

Who Should NOT Use Flywheel?

Flywheel is not a good choice for hobbyists or solopreneurs who want to use WordPress for a simple blog or personal website.

Why Solopreneurs and Hobbyists Should Not Use Flywheel

If you want to use WordPress for something basic, you can find cheaper hosting elsewhere.

You’ll find a better home with hosts such as Bluehost or Siteground.

What To Think About Before Buying Flywheel

Here are five crucial things to think about before purchasing Flywheel.

Cost

Before committing to a managed WordPress hosting solution, consider the cost.

Flywheel’s services are affordable.

However, they are not cheap.

The company offers a few different plans.

You need to make sure that the plan matching your needs also matches your budget requirements.

Ease of Use

Consider whether your chosen managed host provides a simple dashboard experience.

Flywheel’s interface is user-friendly. Its one-click staging area makes creating a test environment easy.

Features

Flywheel offers excellent WordPress hosting features.

The company provides a wide range of features, including plugin security alerts, managed updates, and free site migrations.

Flywheel also offers a dedicated account manager (with the Agency and Custom plans).

Website Size

Your website’s size is crcuial when choosing a Flywheel plan.

The company’s Tiny plan only supports one website with up to five thousand monthly visitors.

If you have a larger website, Flywheel’s other plans may be a better fit.

Support

Make sure to select a managed WordPress host that provides quality customer support.

Flywheel offers 24/7 customer support via phone and live chat.

The company’s support team is knowledgeable and helpful.

Features and Benefits of Flywheel

Flywheel boasts the following features and benefits.

Single-Server Resources

When you use a shared hosting provider, you need to share resources with other websites.

Flywheel provides single-server resources, so you don’t have to share your server’s resources with anyone else.

Consider what happens when a website sharing your server gets hacked or sees a traffic spike.

The resource drain could result in your website experiencing downtime.

You’ll achieve better performance and speed when using the one individual server provided by Flywheel.

Reliable and Fast Website Performance

Flywheel focuses only on serving WordPress websites.

It means that your website will load quickly and behave reliably.

The company’s container technology powers the infrastructure provided to you when using Flywheel.

Using the Google Cloud Platform, Flywheel can ramp up resources immediately to meet surges, traffic spikes, or any other needs.

FlyCache

Flywheel gives you superior performance by using its custom caching technology called FlyCache.

The company’s FlyCache works by storing your website’s static content, such as images, in a content delivery network (CDN).

When a user visits your website, the FlyCache will serve the cached content from the CDN instead of loading it from your server.

Using this technology, Flywheel optimizes everything for the most popular WordPress plugins and themes.

As it works to cache your website, it can even detect when some elements should not remain included in a current cache run.

It can help when you’re installing new plugins, for example, and need to test whether they show up on your site correctly.

If you’re running an ineffective cache technology, you may run into difficulties seeing the changes due to overly-aggressive caching.

CDN

As previously mentioned, a content delivery network (CDN) stores your website’s static content.

It typically does this in multiple locations around the world.

Flywheel gives you its world-class content delivery network on every plan at no additional charge.

Auto-healing Technology

If your website experiences any type of service failure, the Flywheel auto-healing technology will take over.

It will automatically restart any services that have stopped and get your website back up and running in no time.

The technology is beneficial because it can help to prevent any prolonged downtime for your website.

You’ll experience fewer site crashes and improved overall performance.

Security Against Malware and Hackers

Flywheel provides top-of-the-line security for your website with its managed WordPress hosting plans.

The company’s security team constantly monitors for any threats and will take action to protect your site if it detects anything malicious.

The host includes a firewall to block any suspicious traffic before it can reach your website.

It does this via its malware cleanup technology, using advanced security measures to prevent any malware or hackers from infiltrating your site.

If malware somehow makes it onto your website, Flywheel will remove it for free.

Automatic Nightly Backups

Flywheel automatically backs up your website every night so you don’t have to worry about losing any data.

If something happens to your website, you can easily restore it to a previous state using the Flywheel dashboard.

Backups get stored on separate servers for 30 days.

You can also create manual backups at any time with just a few clicks.

The Flywheel dashboard also makes it easy to restore files with its one-click restore option.

Staging Environment

A staging environment is a copy of your live website that you can use to test out changes before making them final.

Flywheel includes a staging environment on all of its plans.

You can make any changes to your site in the staging environment without affecting the live version.

Once you’re happy with the changes, you can push them from staging to live with just a few clicks.

The Flywheel staging environment is a useful tool that can help to prevent any website disasters.

WordPress Updates

Flywheel will automatically update your WordPress site to the latest version as soon as it’s released.

It is a valuable feature because it can help to keep your website secure while improving its performance.

High-quality Support from Experts

You’ll gain access to high-quality support from a team of WordPress experts when using Flywheel.

You can contact the support team 24/7 for help.

It’s important to note that many website hosts don’t hire WordPress experts when they don’t cater to WordPress only.

Since a managed host focuses exclusively on WordPress, you won’t experience low-quality responses from reps who don’t fully understand the WordPress environment.

Collaboration Features

Inside your Flywheel account, you’ll see collaboration tools that help you remain in contact with freelancers, your team members, or clients.

Use this feature to ensure streamlined collaboration during each phase of your website-creation process.

Streamlined Workflows

Flywheel brings superior workflow solutions to the table for its customers.

It does this through the use of customized dashboard features, staging sites, website templates, and more.

Use these extras to make your Flywheel experience unique and productive.

The Genesis Framework

Flywheel partnered with StudioPress to give customers the Genesis Framework for WordPress.

The framework is a theme that helps improve your website’s performance and security while making it easier to manage your content.

You’ll also find an extensive selection of child themes available for the Genesis Framework.

These themes help you save time on website design while allowing you to create a unique website.

Blueprints

With the Flywheel Blueprints feature, you can quickly save a theme and plugin combination that you like as a starting point for other projects.

If you’re starting a new site, simply click on one of your existing Blueprints with no installation required.

Billing Transfer

Using the billing transfer feature, you can move a site to your client or change billing to a different account.

Send your customer an invitation to a secure payment method that will allow them to immediately make the payment.

You will still be able to collaborate on the site through Flywheel with full access.

Free Migrations

It isn’t easy to move a website from one server to another.

Flywheel will help you complete the process with its free migrations feature.

You can quickly and easily move your site without any downtime.

Performance Insights

The Flywheel Performance Insights add-on not only gives you an intuitive dashboard but also site-specific performance insights.

These summaries provide an in-depth analysis of your website’s performance, highlighting where to make improvements.

You’ll also receive actionable insights directly from the Flywheel team, so you’ll know what to do to improve page load speed.

Flywheel Customer Service

If you need help from Flywheel’s customer service team while working inside your dashboard, you can easily reach out to them.

For example, you might experience difficulty when trying to add a new user to your site.

You can also use the Flywheel customer service team to get help with billing, website migrations, or anything else related to your account.

Does Flywheel Offer Customer Service?

Customers of Flywheel can expect quick and effective customer service from experts.

What Types of Customer Service Does Flywheel Offer?

Flywheel provides 24/7 customer services through its live chat and email ticketing options.

If you like to work on troubleshooting issues before contacting customer support reps, Flywheel also provides extensive help documentation.

Use it to look up answers to common questions about getting started, billing, account management, site management, and help docs about features.

Why Should You Trust Us?

We understand that you may worry about trusting our data and analysis related to Flywheel.

However, we have conducted a thorough investigation of the hosting company, including research on what consumers say after using the service.

• “The Flywheel dashboard includes a straightforward layout.
  It is simple to discover the main tools you’ll need to work on your WordPress websites.
  At a glance, you may check on the status of your plugins, visitor counts, and backups.
  Support is accessible through chat or email at any time.” – Keith E.
  
• “I use Flywheel for server management, site backups, and one-click site restoration because it is easy-to-use and user-friendly.
  Additionally, their Local feature allows you to edit WordPress sites on a local server.
  It comes in handy if you need to grab media or something else lost during a restoration process.” – Camille S.
  
• “What attracted me to Flywheel was the ease of use, pricing, and features.
  I had previously used several other hosting companies.
  I found Flywheel to be more user-friendly.
  The bulk packages were a real draw, and although it’s a different product, their Local development software was a breakthrough making local dev and deployment a breeze.” – Kyle S.

Flywheel Alternatives

Consider the following three competitors when contemplating whether or not to use Flywheel for your WordPress website requirements.

WP Engine

With WP Engine, you can receive a Flywheel-like experience.

The company offers managed WordPress hosting services with many of the same features as Flywheel.

Its main features include automatic updates, daily backups, and staging sites.

How Does WP Engine Differ From Flywheel?

The difference between the two companies is that WP Engine lets you set up multiple staging environments.

You only get one staging area when using Flywheel.

Who Is WP Engine Best For?

Digital agencies needing to manage client websites will find WP Engine a solid option.

Expect to pay a bit more, however, when compared to Flywheel.

Try WP Engine.

Kinsta

Kinsta is also a managed WordPress website hosting company.

Close to 25,000 website owners use Kinsta to power their businesses.

Kinsta’s most crucial features include security, speed, and scalability.

How Does Kinsta Differ From Flywheel?

Kinsta caters to larger websites compared to Flywheel.

It also comes in as a more expensive option than you can get from Flywheel for managed WordPress hosting services.

Who Is Kinsta Best For?

Kinsta works well for Enterprise companies, eCommerce businesses, and agencies.

Try Kinsta.

Pressable

A third managed WordPress hosting competitor for Flywheel, Pressable, provides a similar feature set.

The company is WordPress-recommended and known for its security features and customer service.

How Does Pressable Differ From Flywheel?

Pressable provides more hosting options than Flywheel does.

For example, you can get plans that allow up to two million visits before you need to look at a custom plan.

Of course, these plans come in at considerably higher costs than Flywheel’s plans.

Who Is Pressable Best For?

Pressable caters mainly to WordPress professionals.

Try Pressable.

Wrapping Up

Managing a WordPress website takes up considerable time each week and month for most business owners.

The managed WordPress hosting services offered by Flywheel solve this challenge.

You can use Flywheel to free up website management time and reinvest it back into other aspects of your business.

For instance, you can use its automated daily backups, the CDN feature, and its caching solution instead of investing manual work in these areas.

Are you ready to decide on one of Flywheel’s hosting plans?

Check out the company’s website and make your final decision.