Flywheel Review 2025: Is This WordPress Host Worth the Premium Price?

After thoroughly testing Flywheel’s managed WordPress hosting, I wouldn’t recommend it for anything other than a single website that has limited resource needs.

That’s not to say that Flywheel’s features aren’t impressive. It offers a content delivery network (CDN), SSL certificates, 99.9% uptime, staging sites, website cloning capabilities, daily backups, full-service migration, professionally built themes, strong security, and 24/7 chat support. Unfortunately, all of this is overshadowed by a confusingly organized control panel and pricing that simply doesn’t add up. In addition, you don’t get a free domain name in the first year, though this is a minor drawback compared to the two bigger issues.

Overall, my experience using Flywheel was mixed. I enjoyed some aspects, but it was also frustrating at times. If you’re a small business owner who only needs to build one website and you’re willing to pay a premium for reliable managed WordPress hosting, then Flywheel’s entry-level plan is a good choice.

For other use cases, you’ll generally find better deals elsewhere. In this comprehensive Flywheel review, we’ll cover all of the platform’s advantages and disadvantages in detail and how it stacks up in the real world.

Flywheel review at a glance

Price	$13-$290/mo
Money-back guarantee	Yes — 60 days
Uptime guarantee	99.9%
Monthly visits	5K - 400K
Number of websites	1 - 30
Storage	5 - 50 GB
Free SSL certificate	On all plans
Free domain for a year	No
Backup frequency	Daily
Migration assistance	On all plans
24/7 support	On all plans
Learn more	Get Flywheel

Score summary

Here's how our star rating is calculated:

Decision factor	Weight	Flywheel Verdict
Our experience	10%	3/5
Prices and capacity	18%	3.8/5
Performance	20%	3.5/5
Features	25%	4.5/5
Security	20%	5/5
Support and reputation	7%	2.8/5

We last tested Flywheel on October 21, 2025.

Our experience

Flywheel's backend provisioning is fast. I was able to spin up a blank WordPress installation in about 2 minutes, and adding a custom domain was straightforward.

Actually getting started with Flywheel's advertised features was a different story, though. The marketing material mentions that all plans get access to professional StudioPress themes and the Genesis framework, but it took a lot of effort to reach these features. For starters, there's not a single link to the StudioPress themes page anywhere in the control panel.

I spent 15 minutes hunting for it. First, I manually installed Genesis from the WordPress dashboard. Next, I followed a prompt suggesting I use a child theme (in effect, one of the StudioPress themes), but that link led to a generic knowledge base article about child theme benefits and not to the StudioPress theme library. After multiple knowledge base searches, I eventually found the theme page and was able to install my chosen theme.

For an advertised selling point, this should have been far easier. Unfortunately, it’s representative of Flywheel's broader organizational issues.

After importing one of the theme's prebuilt demo sites, I went back to the control panel to test more of the backend features. While I found them to be useful, they’re unhelpfully categorized and split between several tabs.

The home row has Overview, Plugins, Performance, Stats, Backups, and Advanced. For no logical reason, though, 90% of all the features are in the Advanced tab.

Other tabs, like Plugins, contain almost nothing except a list of the plugins currently installed on the site (information you can also find in the WordPress dashboard). It would make more sense to label this tab "WordPress" and consolidate WordPress-specific features — such as staging sites, cache management, and redirects — here, rather than burying them in the Advanced tab.

Overall, Flywheel's user interface feels less intuitive than other managed WordPress hosts I've tested. Namecheap's EasyWP, for instance, organizes features with clear functional categories (WordPress, Stats, and Security) rather than using a catch-all Advanced tab. That said, once you learn where Flywheel hides its features, everything works reliably — my frustration is purely with the usability and not the functionality.

Flywheel plans and pricing

Flywheel’s lowest tier starts at $15/mo with the annual plan and goes all the way up to $242/mo with the month-to-month Agency plan. There are also custom plans for those with heavy resource needs, but these don’t come with a listed price. All plans include 99.9% uptime, daily backups, a staging site, and a free website migration service, but they don’t include a free domain name in the first year.

One thing to be aware of is that Flywheel no longer advertises the Tiny plan on its pricing page, so you’ll see it as an option only after creating an account. It's unclear why this is the case, but if you’re interested, just create an account and confirm your email address, and it should appear as available.

Features	Tiny	Starter	Freelance	Agency
Price/mo (annual plan)	$15/mo	$30/mo	$115/mo	$290/mo
Price/mo (monthly plan)	$13/mo	$25/mo	$96/mo	$242/mo
Monthly visits	5K	25K	100K	400K
Number of websites	1	1	10	30
Storage	5 GB	10 GB	20 GB	50 GB
Bandwidth	20 GB	50 GB	200 GB	500 GB
Multi-site
Phone support
Dedicated account management
Learn more	View plan	View plan	View plan	View plan

The Tiny single-site plan is a good example of Flywheel’s confusing pricing, which is even more poorly thought out than the Advanced tab in the control panel. The plan itself supports one website and costs between $15/mo and $13/mo (depending on whether you pay annually or month to month), but if you want to add an additional site to the plan, it will cost you $20.

That doesn’t make sense, and even worse, the additional site has to share the plan’s resources — such as storage space and bandwidth — with the first site. One Reddit user pointed out an obvious workaround to this 3 years ago,[1] but Flywheel still hasn’t changed the pricing structure.

As for its overall pricing, Flywheel generally charges more but offers less than its competitors. Take Bluehost’s entry-level plan, for instance, which starts at $3.99/mo. When compared to Flywheel’s Tiny plan, it gives you 10 times as many websites, twice as much storage (with newer NVMe drives), and can handle 8 times as much monthly traffic. It’s a similar story with Hostinger, Namecheap, and other leading providers.

That’s not to say that Flywheel doesn’t have good points. The fact that its feature set is consistent across plans (with very few exceptions) means that even the Tiny plan includes enterprise-grade security, daily backups, and 99.9% uptime. These are features that cheaper competitors don't always match.

In the end, you have to gauge how important these nuances are and if you’re willing to pay a premium for them. If you do decide that Flywheel is worth it, choosing a plan is straightforward. Where they differ, it’s mainly in storage, monthly visitors, and the number of sites included.

For example, the Tiny plan works for small businesses with a single site, but you should avoid adding sites individually due to the resource-splitting issue. If you need multiple WordPress websites, skip to the Freelance plan ($115/mo for up to 10 sites). At that price point, though, many competitors offer better value.

Flywheel hosting features

Flywheel focuses exclusively on managed WordPress hosting. Almost all of its plans include the same core features, with only four exceptions: multi-site support, a migration dashboard, phone support, and dedicated account management. These are restricted to higher-tier plans and, in the grand scheme of things, are very niche features that most users won’t need. Here’s what you can expect:

• Fully decked out managed WordPress hosting with a custom control panel and one-click WordPress access
• Access to the Genesis framework and professionally made StudioPress themes, which come with dozens of prebuilt starter sites
• Your choice of self-service migration or 100% free full-service migration for as many sites as you want
• Blueprints that create and store your site configuration for easy replication on other sites
• Staging sites for testing new changes before you implement them on your live site
• A free local WordPress development tool that integrates directly with Flywheel’s hosting, so you can make edits on your computer and then push them to your live site

Types of web hosting available

Flywheel offers only managed WordPress hosting, and there are no other types of hosting available.

As with other managed WordPress plans with custom control panels (such as Namecheap’s EasyWP), Flywheel provides one-click access to the WordPress admin dashboard.

A notable difference, though, is that once you’re inside WordPress, the dashboard is much cleaner than many alternatives on the market and feels less cluttered. Many managed WordPress hosts try to stuff the WordPress admin area with pre-installed plugins, setup wizards, and other extras to enhance their perceived value. That’s not inherently bad, but if you’re already familiar with WordPress, it can be more distracting than helpful.

Web building features

You won’t be able to build a site in 10 minutes using AI here. What you get instead is the standard WordPress block editor, but with extra blocks, thanks to the Genesis framework.

Since all plans include access to professional StudioPress themes, you’ll also get dozens of prebuilt starter sites to choose from. I installed the small business site from the Revolutionary Pro theme and thought it was excellent.

Web migration

Flywheel offers two migration options: you can self-manage the migration from your existing WordPress website using the plugin, or you can have the Flywheel team handle it for you (within 3 business days for free or $49 for an 8-hour turnaround).

There are several ways to initiate the request. One is by clicking the Migrate sites for free button near the bottom of the control panel. Another is to tap on the + New Site button on the top right, and you’ll immediately see an option to MIGRATE MY SITE on the right-hand side.

Bonus features

Blueprints let you save site configurations as templates. I created one in two clicks. To launch a new site would have been just one more click, but seeing as I was using the Tiny plan, I didn't actually do that. It's a nice feature for agencies that need to build multiple similar sites, but it's almost pointless on the Tiny/Starter plans, where you only get one site.

Staging sites are also easy to manage. From the Advanced tab in the control panel, I was able to generate one in only three clicks. These are helpful for testing any changes you want to make to your actual site. If things break, you can investigate why and take measures to prevent it from happening on your live site.

Local by Flywheel is a free desktop app for local WordPress development with seamless deployment to Flywheel hosting. You actually don't even need a paid Flywheel account to access it. I've used it to build more than one static WordPress website in the past and think it's a great tool.

Flywheel performance

To evaluate Flywheel's performance, we ran three tests over a week, using PageSpeed Insights for load times, UptimeRobot for reliability monitoring, and Loader.io for stress testing under traffic spikes. We used the same prebuilt site from the Revolutionary Pro theme by StudioPress that I mentioned earlier in this review.

Speed test

Website speed directly impacts conversion rates and revenue. According to a 30-day study by Portent, a site that loads in 1 second has a 3x higher conversion rate than one that loads in 5 seconds.[2] Beyond conversions, page speed also affects SEO rankings, making it doubly important for business success.

We tested Flywheel's performance using Google's PageSpeed Insights, which measures real-world loading metrics including First Contentful Paint (when users first see content) and Largest Contentful Paint (when the largest content item finishes loading). We ran tests on October 20 and 22, 2025, testing both desktop and mobile performance.

Product	Performance score	FCP	LCP
Flywheel average	83.5	2.15 s	2.93 s

Desktop performance was strong, scoring between 96/100 and 98/100 with sub-second load times. Mobile performance dropped to around 70/100, though, primarily due to weaker results for First Contentful Paint (3.5 s) and Largest Contentful Paint (4.1 s to 5.9 s).

When I accessed the site from my laptop, it loaded almost instantly. From my phone, it took about 2 seconds, which was slower, but still faster than the PageSpeed Insights result. This makes sense if you look at the fine details, because PageSpeed Insights uses a throttled connection for mobile testing, whereas in real life, my phone had a strong 4G signal.

Uptime and response

We monitored the site for several days using UptimeRobot, checking availability every 5 minutes.

Product	Uptime	Average response time	Minimum response time	Maximum response time
Flywheel average	100%	26 ms	6 ms	212 ms

No downtime incidents occurred during our testing period, backing up Flywheel's 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Stress tests

• Stress test results: Flywheel passed the stress test.

We used Loader.io to simulate 250 concurrent users accessing the site over 1 minute, which is significantly more traffic than a small business site typically receives. The test aimed to determine whether the Tiny plan's resources could handle sudden traffic spikes without slowing dramatically or crashing.

The results were impressive: all 250 requests succeeded, with zero timeouts or network errors. The average response time remained at 27 ms even under load, with a maximum spike to 1.2 seconds. For an entry-level plan, this stress test performance exceeded expectations. The site remained stable and responsive even when hit with traffic loads that it would rarely encounter in the real world.

Flywheel security features

Web hosting security is a feature that many people understand is important without giving it too much thought when deciding on a managed WordPress plan. In my opinion, this is because security isn't exciting, it's not something tangible that you actually use, and it just works in the background. In addition, many security features, like WAF protection and IP blocking, are a little complicated for the average user.

If you want a simple answer to the question, "Does Flywheel provide strong security?" then the answer is a resounding, "Yes." For more technical specifics, here's what you get:

• Locked WordPress core files prevent hackers from tampering with your site's most important files.
• Automatic WordPress updates ensure your site stays updated with the latest security patches.
• Strong password enforcement means you can't use weak passwords that are easy to guess.
• Two-factor authentication (2FA) lets you add an extra login step using an authenticator app for better account protection.
• Intelligent IP blocking automatically blocks bad actors within seconds of suspicious activity.
• Web application firewall (WAF) blocks malicious traffic before it reaches your site.
• Plugin security alerts inform you when one of your plugins has a security vulnerability.
• Free malware removal means that if you get hacked, Flywheel will clean it up for free (within 24 hours).
• XML-RPC is an attack vector that’s blocked by default.
• Free SSL certificates encrypt your site traffic to protect visitor data.
• Cloudflare compatibility is available if you want to add extra security.

Flywheel customer support and reputation

Support type	Flywheel Help Center
Email or live chat	24/7 live chat + support tickets on all plans
Phone	Yes — but only on the top-level Agency plan
Online guides or forums

Flywheel provides easily accessible chat support from the control panel. The “Get help” link on the navigation menu in the header takes you straight to the customer support area. From there, you can start a chat, check any existing support tickets, or search through knowledge base articles.

Flywheel user reviews

• Trustpilot rating: 1.6/5

Flywheel’s online reputation is mixed, and the sentiment online largely matches our feelings about the service. A notable exception is on Trustpilot, where users have trashed the service, leaving it with a dismal 1.6/5 rating (though with just 61 reviews). Many of the complaints stem from a perceived downgrade in service quality after WP Engine took over the company in 2019.[3]

Top Flywheel alternatives

Flywheel has some real strengths, like its security and features, but if the pricing and poorly organized control panel outweigh those factors for you, then you may want to consider some alternative options. For instance, Bluehost, Hostinger, and GoDaddy all have comparable plans, and they’re worth looking at as managed WordPress hosting providers.

Bluehost

Unlike Flywheel, Bluehost doesn’t have a singular focus on managed WordPress hosting. It does offer a range of web hosting plans that include managed WordPress features. If you’re not a fan of custom control panels and prefer cPanel for site management, Bluehost is an excellent Flywheel alternative. It provides the power and flexibility of cPanel with newer NVMe storage, and also includes specific WordPress features such as one-click WordPress installation, staging sites, and automatic updates.

Learn more in our Bluehost review.

Hostinger

Like Bluehost, Hostinger offers a variety of hosting plans and integrates managed WordPress features into its standard web hosting offerings. Hostinger doesn’t use cPanel (unless you upgrade to a VPS plan) and instead provides its own hPanel solution. It’s less powerful than cPanel, but it’s better organized than Flywheel’s offering. If Flywheel’s price tag is too high and Bluehost’s cPanel is too intimidating, then Hostinger is a solid middle ground.

Learn more in our Hostinger web hosting review.

GoDaddy

GoDaddy’s managed WordPress hosting is closer to Flywheel than either Bluehost or Hostinger, in the sense that it’s a separate service from the regular web hosting plans. It also has a custom control panel (rather than cPanel), but it offers more powerful AI-based website-building and analytics features than Flywheel. The one downside is that the plans limit you to one website per plan, but you can always pay extra to add sites.

Learn more in our GoDaddy web hosting review.

Bottom line: Is Flywheel good?

Flywheel is good at some things and offers strong features and security, but it has major downsides.

While the control panel needs a major organizational overhaul, the real drawback is the pricing. The cost just isn’t justifiable for anything other than a small business site with relatively low resource needs. As soon as you need more than one website or your existing website starts receiving significant amounts of traffic, you’ll quickly outgrow the Tiny plan, and all the Flywheel WordPress hosting plans above that are significantly overpriced compared to the rest of the market.

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