Flywheel

Flywheel Overview

I found that Flywheel offers a good range of features and hosting options, but I had trouble determining its target audience based on its pricing structure. For just a few dollars less, you can find shared or VPS server hosting that can host a WordPress site, but you'll need to put in some additional work. Alternatively, there are other managed WordPress hosting options available that offer more value for your money at a slightly higher price point. Flywheel offers two main hosting plans, Managed WordPress and Growth Suite, with each one catering to a slightly different audience. The Managed WordPress plan is suitable for small to midsize businesses or individuals who need a WordPress site. The plan ranges from one to 30 sites in total, and it includes increasing bandwidth, storage, and a maximum number of sites. The Growth Suite plan is designed for businesses that specialize in website building and need to manage their client subscriptions. The prices listed above are all billed monthly. If you purchase annually instead, you'll receive two extra months for free. Additionally, Flywheel offers e-commerce-specific plans through a partnership with WP Engine, although you can still install WooCommerce on your WordPress site even if you don't opt for one of these plans.

Flywheel Features

Flywheel offers a range of valuable add-ons with each of its hosting plans, including global availability from five different data centers, custom WordPress caching technology, and automatic plug-in security alerts. However, the following five features are particularly noteworthy and are included with every Flywheel hosting plan:

1. Built-in CDN (via Fastly): Flywheel's inclusion of a CDN provides a faster and more reliable site performance. A CDN takes the static parts of your website and copies them to a network of servers that deliver your content from a server close to whoever is accessing your site. This speeds up load times and adds reliability, even if your main server is down. Fastly is a well-known and respected CDN that Flywheel offers at no additional cost.
2. Staging sites: Flywheel's staging site feature is a valuable addition that allows you to make changes and preview new content for your site without ever going live. This feature is often a paid option with other hosting providers, but Flywheel includes it at no extra cost.
3. Nightly backups: Flywheel's hosting includes 30 days of nightly backups, ensuring that you can restore your site to a previous point in time if needed.
4. Blazing fast response times: Flywheel provides some of the fastest time-to-first-byte (TTFB) times among hosting providers, thanks to a combination of the Fastly CDN and Flywheel's own FlyCache, a custom WordPress caching engine that integrates with the CDN.
5. Value-added features: Flywheel has many other value-added features, including free basic SSL via Let's Encrypt, all-in-one SFTP access for multiple sites, and free migration tools. While Flywheel offers "free" migration through a WordPress plug-in, its white-glove migration service is available for an added charge. Overall, Flywheel's hosting plans offer a range of valuable features that can help improve your site's performance and ease of use.
   

Flywheel Alternatives

GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks has been a top eco-friendly green web hosting provider since its establishment in 2008. We are proud to contribute to the renewable energy sector by returning three times the energy we consume back into the grid. Our global team works tirelessly to provide customers from over 150 countries with an outstanding web hosting experience.

Hostinger

Hostinger is a highly renowned hosting provider that has built a near-perfect reputation over the years. It offers hosting services for any type of website, along with custom-configured options for specific use cases, making it an excellent choice for a wide range of situations.

Cloudways

Cloudways is a managed hosting solution that provides a configured server maintained by Cloudways. This is an ideal solution for many business customers, particularly small or medium digital studios, as managing servers manually can often become a burdensome task.