WP Engine VS Flywheel: Which Web Hosting is Best for You?

by | Apr 22, 2021

WP Engine or Flywheel
WP Engine and Flywheel are both exceptional WordPress hosting services. But since their features are almost identical, it might be hard to figure out which platform is best suited to your needs.

Furthermore, WP Engine’s recent Flywheel acquisition might make it even harder to distinguish the two hosts. If this is your current dilemma, don’t worry. You will find all you need to know about these two platforms here. Then, you can go ahead to choose the best web hosting for you.

Hosting Plans and Pricing

While WP Engine and Flywheel hosting services are quite alike, they feature different prices. For instance, WP Engine’s pricing starts at $30 per month, but Flywheel’s plans start at $30 per month.

Flywheel’s entry-level offer, the Tiny Plan, is the cheapest. It’s ideal for WordPress beginners or sites with less traffic. It features 5GB storage, 20GB bandwidth, and 5,000 visits a month.

After the buyout, both hosting companies aligned the features, specifications, and pricing of plans on a similar level, such as WP Engine’s Startup Plan and Flywheel’s Starter Plan.

WP Engine’s, Flywheel’s and Tiny Startup Plan

Web Hosting WP Engine’s Flywheel’s(Starter)(Tiny)
Price $30 per month $30 per month $15 per month
Monthly visits 25,000 visitors 25,000 visitors 5,000 visitors
Storage 10 GB 10 GB 5 GB
Sites 1 1 1
Bandwidth 50GB 50GB 20GB
Support 24/7 support Complete customer support
Money-Back Guarantee 60 days 30 days on yearly plans,
72 hours on monthly plans
72 hours of buying their plan
Free Site Migration Yes Yes
Automatic Backups Yes, on all plans Yes, on all plans
Free Demo Site No Yes
Free CDN Yes Yes
Free Site Migration Yes Yes
Hosting Plans Multiple Plans Limited Plans

Let’s check out the entire plan

Here’s a snippet of WP Engine’s plans:

Here’s a snippet of Flywheel plans:

WP Engine’s Professional plan is the best option for someone with three sites with 75,000 monthly site visits. It goes for $53/month. Flywheel doesn’t have any offer that matches this Professional plan. If you have a site with these features and want to use Flywheel, you’d be forced to go for the $115/month Freelance plan. That’s almost twice the price.

The key takeaway with pricing is this: Flywheel has the Tiny offer, which is the cheapest of the two but can only work with low-traffic sites. WP Engine takes the crown for the bigger plans, with significant savings in the $53/month Professional plan that doesn’t have a Flywheel counter-offer.

Features

One essential feature to look out for when selecting a managed WordPress host is daily backups. Fortunately, both web hosts provide free daily website backups. Besides, they boast an impressive array of WordPress freebies and tools across all plans.

For example, both Startup and Starter plans preinstall WordPress, manage WordPress updates and give you access to 30+ StudioPress themes. Also included is the Genesis Framework, which assists you in site design and optimization, and an easy-to-install SSL Certificate.

The two hosts offer website staging on all their plans. This allows you to duplicate your site for testing purposes. Flywheel even gives you a free 14-day demo to test out the features of its Tiny plan.

WP Engine and Flywheel partner with Google Cloud to offer cloud hosting services across their plans. This makes their services scalable and more dependable than the competition.

WP Engine provides the Large product, which makes it possible to store and transfer virtually unlimited data, enhancing your WordPress experience. That’s useful for people who use large amounts of media on their websites.

Performance

Both WP Engine and Flywheel sport excellent WordPress optimization tools and strive to maintain their servers’ uptime at 99.9%. WP Engine even goes further to offer a 5% credit on your plan’s fee if your site is not up 99.95% of the time. The result is that both hosts deliver outstanding performance and uptime.

Flywheel offers a choice of five data center locations, while WP Engine has 11 data centers across multiple continents. Both platforms display your site to visitors from around the globe quickly via their internal caching tools and integrated CDN.

WP Engine and Flywheel Pros and Cons

WP Engine Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Free daily backups Plans begin at $30 per month
60-day money-back guarantee Some Plugins and Themes are not allowed
Free post-hack cleanup service Surpassing Set Number of Visitors and Storage will Result in some Additional Charges
LargeFS allows you to store and transfer unlimited data LargeFS allows you to store and transfer unlimited data Allocated resources per site, and thus site performance, has decreased.
Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate installation Do not provide the opportunity to co-brand email notifications to all site owners on the roll-out of WordPress core updates.
Free migration service for your sites WP Engine are WordPress experts only. You can’t host any other CMS.
CDN service available for free
You get 5% credit if your site is not up 99.95% of the time
Pros
Free daily backups
60-day money-back guarantee
Free post-hack cleanup service
LargeFS allows you to store and transfer unlimited data
Free Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate installation
Free migration service for your sites
CDN service available for free
You get 5% credit if your site is not up 99.95% of the time
Cons
Plans begin at $30 per month
Some Plugins and Themes are not allowed
Surpassing Set Number of Visitors and Storage will Result in some Additional Charges
LargeFS allows you to store and transfer unlimited data Allocated resources per site, and thus site performance, has decreased.
Do not provide the opportunity to co-brand email notifications to all site owners on the roll-out of WordPress core updates.
WP Engine are WordPress experts only. You can’t host any other CMS.

Flywheel Pros and Cons

Pros Cons
Free daily backups After the Starter plan, the rest of the plans are more expensive than WP Engine’s
Free migration for all your sites No Large service
Free one-click Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate No options for 3 website plans as compared to WPEngine.
Free CDN service
Plans start at $15 per month
Pros
Free daily backups
Free migration for all your sites
Free one-click Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate
Free CDN service
Plans start at $15 per month
Cons
After the Starter plan, the rest of the plans are more expensive than WP Engine’s
No Large service
No options for 3 website plans as compared to WPEngine.

Conclusion

With this detailed guide, it’s now easier to choose the best web hosting for you. While both hosts are reputable managed WordPress hosting services, WP Engine has a slight edge over Flywheel on features, support, and performance.

However, if you own a small website or have a limited budget, you may want to reconsider. In that case, Flywheel’s Tiny plan provides a suitable alternative. This post may contain affiliate links, and we may earn from it when you click on the links at no additional cost to you. As an affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases from this link.