Flywheel
Managed WordPress hosting built for designers and creative agencies; now part of WP Engine.
Overview
Flywheel is a managed WordPress hosting product, now part of WP Engine, positioned for designers and creative agencies. Plans run on Google Cloud across five data center regions, with NGINX serving sites and a free Fastly-powered CDN and edge WAF on every plan. Sites default to PHP 8.2, carry a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate, and back a 99.9% uptime SLA. Management happens through a custom Flywheel dashboard rather than cPanel.
The platform leans toward a hands-off, managed experience: automatic WordPress core updates, nightly backups with one-click restore and 30-day retention, one-click staging, and free site migrations. Developers get SSH and WP-CLI access, and every plan includes 24/7 chat support plus free malware cleanup for infected on-platform sites. Agency-focused features such as billing transfer to clients, collaborators, and multi-site management round out the offering.
Pricing starts at $25 per month on the Starter plan ($300 per year with annual billing), which covers one WordPress site, 25,000 monthly visits, and 10 GB of storage. There is no free trial, though Flywheel offers free demo sites and a 60-day money-back guarantee that excludes its Agency and Custom plans.
Best for
- Creative agencies managing client sites, which get white-label tooling, billing transfer to clients, collaborators, and multi-site management.
- Developers who want a real workflow: SSH and WP-CLI access, one-click staging environments, and free site migrations on all plans.
- Teams wanting a hands-off managed setup, with automatic WordPress updates, nightly backups retained 30 days, free malware cleanup, and 24/7 chat support.
- Sites that need edge performance and security out of the box, with a free Fastly CDN, a Fastly-based WAF and DDoS protection, and free SSL on every plan.
- Small or low-traffic single sites, since the $25/month Starter plan covers one site, 25,000 monthly visits, and 10 GB of storage.
Less ideal for
- Performance-tuned, database-heavy sites that need a persistent object cache, which Flywheel does not provide; it offers page caching (FlyCache) only.
- Buyers running a WordPress multisite network on the entry tier, since multisite requires the Freelance, Agency, or Custom plan and is not available on the Starter plan.
- Teams wanting hosting and email from one provider, since Flywheel includes no email hosting and recommends a dedicated provider like Google Workspace.
- Buyers who want a hands-on free trial before committing, as Flywheel offers no free trial, relying instead on demo sites and a 60-day money-back guarantee.
- Multi-site or higher-traffic projects on the cheapest plan, where the Starter tier caps usage at one site, 25,000 monthly visits, and 10 GB of storage.
Pricing
Performance & infrastructure
WordPress management
Support & security
Platform & integrations
Alternatives to Flywheel
Bluehost Budget-friendly, WordPress.org-recommended hosting aimed at first-time site owners.
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Cloudways Managed cloud hosting that runs WordPress on your choice of DigitalOcean, AWS, or Google Cloud. Owned by DigitalOcean.
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DreamHost Independent host whose DreamPress tier is managed WordPress hosting; WordPress.org-recommended.
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