Flywheel
Best For
About Flywheel
Flywheel was founded in 2012 with a laser focus on making WordPress hosting delightful for designers and creative agencies. Acquired by WP Engine in 2019, Flywheel continues to operate as a distinct brand with its own beautifully designed dashboard and agency-centric features. What makes Flywheel unique is its emphasis on collaborative workflows — designers can build sites on Flywheel's infrastructure, transfer billing to clients seamlessly, and manage dozens of client sites from a single dashboard with role-based access control. Every Flywheel site includes a built-in CDN (powered by Fastly), free SSL, nightly backups, malware monitoring and cleanup, and staging environments. Their Local development tool (free, standalone app) has become one of the most popular WordPress local development environments in the ecosystem, even for users hosting elsewhere. Flywheel's plans are priced per site, starting at $13/mo for a single small WordPress site. Agency plans bundle multiple sites at volume discounts. The platform handles all server management, security updates, and performance optimization automatically. Flywheel's white-label reports and client-facing tools make it the top choice for WordPress freelancers and agencies who need professional infrastructure without server administration headaches.
Performance
Key Differentiators
Pros & Cons
Seamless client billing transfer, white-label reports, and multi-site management designed specifically for WordPress agencies.
The most visually polished hosting dashboard in the industry — a delight for design-conscious professionals.
Flywheel's free Local app is one of the best WordPress local development environments, with live link sharing.
Malware scanning, automatic cleanup, hack-free guarantee, and nightly backups with one-click restore.
Fastly-powered CDN included on all plans for fast global content delivery without configuration.
Plans are priced per site, which gets expensive quickly for agencies managing many small WordPress sites.
Exclusively WordPress hosting — no support for other CMS platforms, custom PHP apps, or static sites.
Does not include email hosting; you'll need Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or another provider.
No SSH access, limited PHP version control, and restricted plugin access — managed hosting trade-offs.