WP Engine and Flywheel are both highly respected managed WordPress hosts. But which one is the better WordPress hosting company?
While WP Engine is a bit more popular than Flywheel, it doesn’t mean Flywheel is anything less than WP Engine. Both offer really great service at affordable prices.
Deciding which one of the two to go with can be tricky if you don’t know the pros and cons of each.
In this Flywheel vs WP Engine comparison, I will go through the pros and cons of both the web hosts so you can pick the best one for your needs.
It’s a tight race but WP Engine is the winner between these two WordPress hosts. Find out more about WP Engine vs Flywheel in the below comparison table:
Plans
Both WP Engine and Flywheel offer very similar services but at different prices. While WP Engine’s plans start at $29 per month, Flywheel offers an entry-level offer to people who just want to test the service. Flywheel’s pricing starts at only $14 per month.
But to make this a fair comparison, we will be comparing WP Engine’s Personal Plan with Flywheel’s Personal Plan. Both of these are priced at $29 per month. But both have different features and benefits to offer for the same price.
Both of these plans allow only one WordPress site. You can, however, add more sites for an additional $14.99 per site on WP Engine.
WP Engine Personal
- 25,000 Visitors a Month
- 10 GB Disk Space
- 1 WordPress Site
- Unlimited Bandwidth (Data Transfer)
- From $35 per month
Flywheel Personal
- 25,000 Visitors a Month
- 10 GB Disk Space
- 1 WordPress Site
- 500 GB Bandwidth (Data Transfer)
- From $15 per month
Features
When it comes to picking a managed WordPress host, there are a lot of features you need to look for. One of those features is Daily Backups. Both these web hosts offer free daily backups for your websites.
Google prefers displaying websites that are secure with HTTPS. And if you have ever tried installing an SSL certificate on your website, you would know that it can be a pain in the… you know. WP Engine and Flywheel both offer a free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate that you can install with just one click.
WP Engine Personal
WP Engine offers stellar support and service that makes them one of the leading web hosts in the industry. Their customer support has won 3 Stevie awards.
They offer a premium caching service called Evercache that is designed to improve your WordPress website’s speed.
Their plans are almost the same as Flywheel. But one thing that I liked about their plans is that they allow additional sites for just $14.99 per site on the Personal plans.
Flywheel Personal
Just like WP Engine, Flywheel offers a caching service for all your WordPress sites that will cut loading time in half. They offer blueprints that you can use to launch a template-based website with just one click.
One thing that I really like about Flywheel is that they never overcharge you for going over disk space or bandwidth.
Performance
Every half-second delay in your website’s speed can result in massive drops in not only your conversion rates but also your search engine rankings. Search Engines like Google prefer to display websites that offer a good user experience.
When your website takes a lot of time to load, people leave. And when they leave, it sends Google a signal that your site is neither trustworthy nor does it offer a good user experience. This can result in a big drop in search engine traffic.
Now, when it comes to improving your website’s speed, you could go on and read a thousand tips and implement them all. But if your web server’s performance sucks, nothing will help you get any gains in terms of speed.
It is really important to only host your site with web hosts who optimize their servers for speed. Another factor you should keep in mind is the web host’s uptime. While you cannot possibly know the correct uptime of your web host (because they can fake it!), you have to see what guarantees a web host has to offer.
WP Engine Uptime
WP Engine has a stellar reputation when it comes to Managed WordPress Hosting. To keep this reputation intact, WP Engine does all they can to keep their servers up at least 99.9% of the time. They offer 5% of your plan’s fee as a credit if they fail to keep your site up for 99.95% of the time.
Flywheel Uptime
Unlike WP Engine, Flywheel does not offer an SLA (Service Level Agreement) so you won’t get any free credit if your site goes down. But just like WP Engine, Flywheel has got a reputation to maintain and they manage to maintain a 99.9% uptime.
WP Engine Speed
Homepage:
Pricing Page:
Flywheel Speed
Homepage:
Pricing Page:
Pros and Cons
It’s not a review if it doesn’t end with a list of pros and cons:
WP Engine Personal
Pros:
- Offers generous 60-day money-back guarantee.
- Offers a free post-hack cleanup service.
- Free daily backups.
- One-click installation for free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate.
Cons:
- Unlike Flywheel, WP Engine doesn’t migrate your site to their servers. You have to do it yourself using their free WordPress plugin.
- You will only get Live Chat support on the personal plan.
- Plans start at $29 per month, so there is no way for you test the service out.
- CDN Service costs $19.9 per month. Flywheel charges only $10 per month for that.
Flywheel Personal
Pros:
- Free migration service for all your sites.
- No overage charges for bandwidth or disk space.
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate you can install with just one click.
- Offers a free post-hack cleanup service.
- Plans start at only $15. Allows you to get a taste of the service.
- Free daily backups.
- Unlike WP Engine, you only have to pay $10 per month to enable the CDN service.
Cons:
- Unlike WP Engine, you cannot add more sites to your plan for $14.99 per site.
Flywheel vs WP Engine Comparison Table
| Flywheel | WP Engine | |
|---|---|---|
| Founded in: | 2012 | 2010 |
| BBB Rating: | Not Rated | B+ |
| Address: | 1405 Harney St #201, Omaha, NE, 68102, United States | 504 Lavaca Street, Suite 1000, Austin, TX 78701 |
| Phone Number: | (888) 928-8882 | (512) 827-3500 |
| Types of Support: | Phone, Live Support, Chat, Ticket | Phone, Live Support, Chat, Ticket |
| Data Center | New York City | United States, United Kingdom and Japan |
| Monthly Price: | From $15 per month | From $35 per month |
| Unlimited Data Transfer: | No (From 250GB) | Yes |
| Unlimited Data Storage: | No (From 5GB) | No |
| Unlimited Emails: | No | No |
| Host Multiple Domains: | No | Yes (except Personal Plan) |
| Controlpanel | FlyWheel Interface | WP Engine Client Portal |
| Server Uptime Guarantee: | 99.99% | 99.90% |
| Money-Back Guarantee: | 30 Days | 60 Days |
| Bonuses & Extras: | Hosting accounts come with Free SSL certificate, Free site migration, 24/7 customer support, plus loads more. | CDN (Content Delivery Network) is included on professional and business plans. EverCache technology speeds up page-load time. Transferable Installs and Billing Transfer. Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. Page Speed Tester tool. |
| The Good: | Good developer tools; Clone sites, make changes, duplicate themes, and more with our slick set of development tools. Hosting that is made for WordPress sites. Free site migration service is included. | Optimized For WordPress: WP Engine is focused on giving the best WordPress hosting experience possible. Scale For Size: WP Engine’s sliding scale tools help you find the plan that best suits your needs. WordPress-centered Security: WP Engine has DDoS and brute force mitigation, real-time network monitoring, and constant installation of the newest patches and updates to ensure utmost security for your website. |
| The Bad: | Not ideal for absolute beginners. Not ideal for non-WordPress sites. | WordPress Hosting Only: WP Engine exclusively offers managed WordPress hosting. Mighty Expensive Plans: WP Engine’s plans come with an expensive set of price tags, not to mention some resource limitations. |
| Pricing | From $15 per month | From $35 per month |
WP Engine vs Flywheel Summary
Selecting the perfect web host is a difficult task. But I am sure this guide has helped make the choice easier (if not easy) for you.
WP Engine and Flywheel are both reputable web hosts who are leading the Managed WordPress Hosting industry.
Whichever you choose will definitely offer you a great WordPress hosting service.
