Flywheel vs. WP Engine

Last verified 35 days ago · 27 sources · Updated automatically

Flywheel and WP Engine compared across Company facts, Pricing, Performance & infrastructure, WordPress management, Support & security and Platform & integrations — every fact sourced and re-verified from each vendor's public material.

Flywheel

Managed WordPress hosting built for designers and creative agencies; now part of WP Engine.

HQ Austin, TX

Visit Flywheel Full profile

WP Engine

Managed WordPress platform for businesses and agencies, with staging, CDN, and developer tooling.

HQ Austin, TX

Visit WP Engine Full profile

Attribute

Flywheel

WP Engine

Company facts

Headquarters

Austin, TX Flywheel is a WP Engine product; WP Engine is headquartered in Austin, TX

Austin, TX Founded 2010 in Austin, Texas

Employees

1.1k Headcount of parent company WP Engine (~1,100 globally)

1k 1,000+ globally distributed employees (lower bound)

Pricing

Starting Monthly Price (USD)

$25 Starter plan billed monthly; $300/yr (2 months free) if annual

$30 Startup plan, billed annually ($30/mo)

Entry Plan WordPress Sites

1 sites 1 WordPress site on the Starter plan

1 sites Startup plan: 1 WordPress install

Entry Plan Monthly Visits

25k 25,000 monthly visits on the Starter plan

25k Startup plan: 25,000 monthly visits

Entry Plan Storage (GB)

10 GB 10 GB disk on the Starter plan

10 GB Startup plan: 10 GB local storage

Free Trial Length (Days)

0 days No free trial; free demo sites and a 60-day money-back guarantee instead

0 days No free trial; 60-day money-back guarantee instead

Money-Back Guarantee (Days)

60 days 60-day money-back guarantee (excludes Agency and Custom plans)

60 days 60-day money-back guarantee (annual plans)

Performance & infrastructure

Underlying Cloud

Google Cloud Runs on the Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud, AWS Google Cloud on all plans; AWS (and Azure) on Premium

Datacenter Locations

5 5 data center regions worldwide

28 across Google Cloud, AWS & Azure; AWS and Azure regions plus 3 GCP regions are Premium-tier only

Free CDN

Free global CDN powered by Fastly on all plans

Global CDN included on all plans

Web Server

NGINX NGINX serving static files and reverse-proxying PHP-FPM

NGINX NGINX-based stack

Built-in Object Cache

Page caching only (FlyCache); no persistent object cache

Object caching enabled by default; dedicated Redis on higher tiers

Latest PHP Version

8.2 PHP 8.2 (default for new sites); 7.4 also selectable

8.4 PHP 8.4 (beta; requires WordPress 6.7+)

Free SSL Certificate

Free Let's Encrypt SSL (Simple SSL) with any plan

Auto-renewing SSL included on all plans

WordPress management

Automatic WordPress Updates

Automatic major and minor WordPress core updates

Managed WP, PHP & MySQL updates included

Staging Environments

One-click staging sites included on all plans

1-click staging & dev environments on all plans

Automatic Daily Backups

Automatic nightly backups with one-click restore

Daily & on-demand automatic backups

Backup Retention (Days)

30 days 30 days of nightly backups retained

40 days Revert to any backup up to 40 days

Free Site Migration

Free site migrations included

Free automated migration plugin (WP Migrate)

SSH & WP-CLI Access

SSH gateway with WP-CLI on all Cloud Platform sites

SSH gateway with WP-CLI and Git on all plans

WordPress Multisite Support

Multisite requires Freelance, Agency, or Custom plan; not on the entry Starter plan

Multisite supported as add-on (Growth+); not on Startup

Support & security

Uptime SLA (%)

99.9% 99.9% uptime

99.99% 99.99% uptime SLA

24/7 Support

24/7/365 chat support on all plans

Malware Removal / Hack Fix

Free malware cleanup / hack fix if your site is infected on-platform

Free hack fix / malware cleaning for infections on-platform

WAF / DDoS Protection

Fastly-based WAF and DDoS protection at the edge, included on all plans

Basic network DDoS included; managed WAF + advanced DDoS via paid Global Edge Security

Platform & integrations

Control Panel

custom Custom Flywheel dashboard (replaces cPanel)

custom Custom dashboard (WP Engine User Portal / my.wpengine.com)

White-Label / Agency Features

Billing transfer to clients, collaborators, and multi-site management for agencies

Agency plans, partner program, multi-site client management

Email Hosting Included

No email hosting; Flywheel recommends a dedicated provider like Google Workspace

No email hosting; recommends a dedicated provider (e.g. Google Workspace)

The verdict

Flywheel

Best for a cheaper entry plan with WAF included

Starts at $25/mo versus WP Engine's $30, for the same 1 site, 25k visits, and 10 GB. It also bundles a Fastly-based WAF and DDoS protection on every plan, where WP Engine charges for that via Global Edge Security. Same 60-day money-back guarantee and 24/7 chat.

Full profile

WP Engine

Best for performance, scale, and multisite

Adds a built-in object cache (Flywheel has none), newer PHP 8.4, a 99.99% uptime SLA versus 99.9%, and 40-day backup retention versus 30. It also spans Google Cloud plus AWS across 28 datacenter regions (Flywheel: Google Cloud, 5) and supports multisite, which Flywheel does not.

Full profile

Sources · 27 verified references

wpengine.com getflywheel.com medium.com

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